Page 58 of Lagoon

Then she shot them both.

In the head.

Afterwards, she kicked both of their lifeless bodies. “Fuck,” she muttered. “Fuck, now I’ve ruined my damned cabin with these bodies.”

She went outside.

Luther was out there.

She put her gun away. “Help me get these bodies out of here and I’ll let you put the tip in me.”

He snorted. “What?”

She put a finger in his face. “No eggs, mister, got it? You can put it in and that’s all.”

He swallowed visibly. “Yeah, sure, got it.”

“And you have to haul these bodies out of here,” she said.

“Moving dead bodies,” he said. “Totally stimulating foreplay.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’ll help, okay? I’ll get the feet. You get under their arms.”

It took longer to move the bodies than she thought it would. After it was over, they were tired and sweaty and they both collapsed inside her cabin on the couch in her living room.

They just sat there, next to each other, not saying anything, and she tried not to think about how great he smelled when he was sweaty.

“I might have beer,” she said finally, getting up to look in her fridge. But no, it had been cleaned out, by the other guards undoubtedly. She shut the fridge and collapsed into the wall. She had just killed two people. She’d been protecting herself, sure, and they’d raped Nancy to death, and they were morally bankrupt jerks, but…

“Hey,” Luther was there, touching her shoulder.

Tears were leaking out of her eyes. “Everything is bad, Luther.”

“Oh, no doubt,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “Very, very fucking bad.”

She sobbed into him, and he was huge and warm and so, so firm, and he cradled her against his chest, and she was very confused.

“We’re not going to do anything,” he said.

“No, I said—”

“You’re crying, Angela. I’m not turned on by women in tears.”

She sniffled, half-laughing, thinking that this was not the universal constant he seemed to think it was. People were turned on by that, people who weren’t even bad people. Sexual arousal was weird.

Case in point, this.

“I mean it,” he said.

She pulled away and looked up at him, nodding.

He used his webbed fingers to brush away her tears, and she felt weak-kneed and a little smitten, looking up at him like this. She let him pull her back to the couch, and he tucked her into his chest, half on his lap, and she snuggled into him, and that was when she realized he was crying, too.

That made her cry harder.

They sobbed together for a while, and then, after a time, it passed, like a storm that had blown through them both.

They were still close. She looked up at him.

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