Page 23 of Bird on a Blade

How did I get to be so fucked up, that I married one psychopath and then nearly fucked another?

“Edie?” Charlotte’s voice cuts through my thoughts.

“I’m here,” I tell her. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah, and we’re going to keep you that way. Have you eaten yet today?”

I close my eyes. “I slept in. I’m about to fix something.”

“Sleptin?”

Part of me wants to tell her. Charlotte has an artist’s dark streak. A fascination with the macabre. But my mouth won’t form the words. As far as she knows, Sawyer Caldwell tried to kill me fifteen years ago in the exact same manner my husband tried to kill me last week.

And trying to explain how he’s still alive… even I don’t understand that.

“I was exhausted from driving out here,” I finally say. “Seriously. I’m going to fix lunch right now, and then I’m going to drive into Roanoke to get real groceries.”

“Text me when you’re back,” she says. “And I’ll keep you posted, okay? Especially if Scott starts pulling out that mourning husband missing person bullshit.”

“Thanks.” My throat’s dry as we say our goodbyes and I hang up. For a minute I just stand there in the kitchen. The last twenty-four feels like a dream, like something disconnected from reality. I escaped Scott and ran into a nightmare, who?—

Who killedfor me.

The porch. The blood. That feels like a dream, too, something too bizarre to be real. But that’s the last fucking thing I need. No one comes out here, Sawyer said, but what the hell does he know? He said he’d been in the ground for the last fifteen years, whatever that means. Surely he wasn’t beingliteral.

I suck down a gulp of air and stride over to the front door before I can stop myself. My stomach surges as I brace myself for seeing that gore in the sunlight. At least I won’t have to see thehead again. I don’t remember the man’s face. I only know who it is because of what Sawyer said to me. How he deserved it.

Did he deserve it?

But when I pull the door open, the porch is clean. Not a trace of blood anywhere.

I blink down at it, not sure what to make of it. I’m so unmoored after all the trauma of the last few weeks, of the last few years, that for the first time, it occurs to me that maybe I hallucinated Sawyer’s visit last night. That it had been an exhaustion dream.

You found his cum on your kitchen floor.

I stumble back into the cabin, leaving the front door open to let in the afternoon sunlight and the cool September breeze. I barely realize what I’m doing until I’m standing over the trash can. I press the lever with my foot, and there it is. Proof.

The bundle of paper napkins I used to clean up Sawyer’s mess. I lift it up, bring it to my nose for a quick sniff. There’s no denying that fishy bleach smell, and I feel the same thing I did when I first found it, a surge of disgust and desire. And a relief, this time, that I hadn’t imagined it after all.

I step back, tossing the napkin back in and then letting the trash can lid close with a metallic clink. Outside, the wind surges, pushing autumn into the cabin. Dead leaves, a faint scent of old soil. I wash my hands and go back out to the porch, feeling numb.

So he cleaned it.

Sawyer Caldwell, the notorious Fat Camp Killer, slaughtered another person in my defense, brought me the head like a deranged cat, and then cleaned up the mess.

Because you asked him to. I had, hadn’t I? Last night comes to me in tatters, but I remember that much. Worrying about the head. The blood. And he’d taken it away.

I lean against the wooden banister, the peeling paint glossy against my palms. The forest rustles around me. The leaveshaven’t started to turn yet, not really, but there’s a burnished quality to them. Like gilded pages in an old book.

He’s out there somewhere. Lurking in those trees. Sliding like smoke through the shadows. Watching me. The thought blooms in my head and then goes straight to my clit, which aches the way it had last night as Sawyer kissed me, touched me. Worshipped me.

I squeeze my thighs together, dizzy at the memory. Dizzy—and ashamed.

The wind blows. The trees sway, slow and lazy. And I wonder if he’s watching me now.

CHAPTER TEN

SAWYER

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