Page 33 of Black Hearts

He reached out and gently pushed a strand of fake hair away from my eyes. “I didn’t mean to upset you, honestly. It’s all in the past. I know why you did it, and you’re a hundred percent forgiven. I’m sorry for even bringing it up.”

I swallowed hard. “Thank you,” I murmured. “For forgiving me. I don’t deserve it.”

“Of course you do,” he said, entwining his right hand with my left. “You forgave me, didn’t you? For the things I did when I took you.”

I nodded. “Yes. You did what you felt you had to at the time.”

“Well, there you go. You did exactly the same thing.”

My shoulders relaxed. “You’re right. Sorry. I’m just nervous about everything and it’s making me feel weird,” I said, my smile widening a bit as I looked into his eyes.

“Yeah, I get it.” He smiled back, then shook his head. “No more joke attempts from me. It’s clearly not my style,” he added. Then he pressed his lips to mine in a brief peck. “I adore you, Celeste,” he murmured gruffly. “Don’t ever forget that.”

The checkout operator arrived before I could reply, and he gave us a hesitant glance as he saw what we were buying. “You two work on a farm or something?” he said, one brow arched. “That’s agricultural-grade stuff.”

Alex and I pasted on our ‘innocent friendly couple’ expressions. “We’ve just finished building a giant greenhouse on our property,” I said. “We want to grow all our fruits and vegetables from now on. Save the environment and all by producing our own food.”

“We also want to stick it to all those asshole supermarket CEOs,” Alex added with a wry grin.

The guy nodded and finally smiled back at us. “That’s cool. So with the greenhouse, you can grow stuff all through the winter, huh?”

“Yup.”

“Nice.” He was relaxed now, unsuspicious. “Hey, depending on where you are, there’s a farmer’s market in East Liberty that I go to sometimes. It’s great. If you end up growing too much, maybe you could sell some stuff there. No waste then.”

“Great idea,” Alex said affably.

“Cash or card?”

“Cash.” Of course. No electronic trail for us.

“Good luck, you two,” the checkout guy said when our transaction was complete.

If only he knew what we really needed luck with…. That’d wipe the smile right off his face.

I helped Alex haul the fertilizer out to the car. He handed me the key once it was all in the trunk. “Get in and keep yourself warm with the heater. I’ll be back in a second.”

He went back into the hardware store and returned five minutes later with a big plastic bag. When he dumped it on the back seat, I turned and curiously poked through it. It was filled with ropes and thick black cable ties.

“Do we need that for what we’re going to do?” I asked, brows knitting as I turned back to face Alex. A lot of the main plan had been based off my ideas, and I couldn’t remember anything about tying anyone or anything up.

He chuckled. “No. They’re for you.”

“But I… oh.” It finally dawned on me what he meant.

“We need to have some fun while we do all this shit,” he said, squeezing my hand with a lusty gleam in his eyes. “Or else we’ll go crazy.”

“Maybe we already are crazy,” I said softly. I had to admit, it had crossed my mind once or twice over the last week, especially when it occurred to me how little I cared about all the death and destruction we were going to cause shortly.

Alex frowned. “Do you think we are?”

I hesitated, chewing on my bottom lip.

What we were planning was against the law, obviously. Murder would never be considered okay in a legal sense. But in an ethical sense, I actually felt it was okay. The people we were targeting were the absolute scum of society. In fact, they didn’t even belong in any sort of functional society at all.

I didn’t think everyone in the world should have free rein to turn vigilante, but in our case, it felt right. Not crazy.

I finally shook my head. “The only thing I’m crazy about is you.”

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