Page 289 of Rage

Cover For Me

By: Ashley Pines

Olivia

Praying mantises didn’t get enough credit. They truly were the most intelligent women on the planet, ripping their mate’s head off and devouring it before they got a chance to get brave and raise a hand to them?

Pure.Genius.

Unfortunately for me, unlike in the bug world—a blissful, cop-free utopia—I was facing twenty-five to life if I murdered my husband in cold blood.

If they could prove I did it, that is.

This meant instead of taking a chainsaw to the lying, cheating, money-stealing cunt I called my‘life partner’, I was going to have to take a page out of another famously murderous insect’s book, the black widow.

Well, technically spiders aren’tinsects. But given I was on my third round of Cuervo of the evening I figured I could cut myself alittleslack for a more fluid metaphor.

The club was heavy with the pound of the base. It’d been ages since I’d been out to a club like this. It just wasn’t proper, wasn’t good-old-family, oradvertiser, values for the wife of an NFL footballer in a red state to be seen slurping down scotch and sodas and dancing on tables.

Player though? Their bad behaviour, for the most part, could be swept under the rug. Sometimes it felt like Charlie got away with murder while I was on parole for a crime I didn’t even commit.

Until he didn’t, of course.

These things always had a way of coming back around.

I was lucky, he’d only managed to steal my early twenties from me—still plenty of fun, going-out years left now that I was twenty-six. Even if it was a horrible time to become a widow. I could almost read my dating profile now.

Oliva Hastings, formerly Beaumont, twenty-six.

Yes, I was married tothatBeaumont.

And I killed him too, not that I’d include that on Bumble.

Do you think they’d give me a little knife emoji if I put murder under my hobbies and interests?

The air was sticky and sweaty despite the blasting AC, a product of Miami in the dead of August. A viscous, tangible thing you could wade through, slowing my hand as it brought my spicy mango margarita to my lips.

God, I’d missed drinking. Missed clubs too. I loved dancing, even the noise that came with it. Even if after I left I could feel my ears ringing, that tingle of adrenaline in my veins always pulled me right back.

Tonight, the adrenaline wasn’t just a tingle. It was a raging ocean of shot nerves and wicked excitement.

Karma wasfinallygoing to get me what I deserved and all I needed to do was give her a little shove in the right direction.

I’d given up my youth in favour of a white picket fence and attempt after attempt at the two-point-five children Charlie demanded of me. But no matter what I did, it never stuck.

Daily injections. Doctor’s appointment after doctor’s appointment.

It just never worked.

At first, I’d reasoned this whole thing was my fault.

That Charlie needed an outlet for his disappointment. That there were worse things he could be doing than having a couple of beers and playing cards.

But Charlie didn’t need an outlet.

He needed a fucking scapegoat.

I excused a lot of shit that knuckle-dragging cunt did at first—the late nights, the missed dates and dinners, the yelling. Even the first time he shoved me I let go. It was a one-off, I’d said. He’d never hurt a fly.

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