Page 292 of Rage

Case opened and closed in the same night, a bad batch and a partying playboy. A sad story heard a hundred times over.

That abusive shithead was going to seal his own coffin tonight. He’d probably be all over the news for a couple of weeks while they tried—andfailed—to find his dealer and then it’d be a sad anecdote once a year from there. If that.

Damn, turns out that celebrity really wasn't for forever.

The worst part was going to the next few months pretending to be a gutted widow—but nottoogutted. I’d already been feeding blind items to the press about his infidelity, letting the world call me an idiot for staying, for letting it happen, for trying to continue on with my life like nothing was wrong.

And you couldn’t miss the cast I’d been walking around with for the last six weeks. That was the night I’d finally snapped, when I’d stopped hoping things would get better and started taking steps towards getting even.

I thought that cunt was going to kill me. The only reason he didn’t was his own hubris letting him believe I wouldn’t do the same.

Charlie always did have a bad habit of underestimating me.

Which brought me here,tonight. Looking for the oldest alibi in the book. A night of drinks and dancing with a girlfriend—trying to cheer me up about the shambles of my decaying marriage,obviously—along with a few too many drinks until I made a horrible mistake.

Except, there would be no mistakes.

I was a little buzzed, sure, my first sips of anything harder than white wine in damn near a year hitting me like strawberry wine before my sophomore winter formal. Even so, I was playing it up for the bit. Making sure that everyone in that bar heard me when I ordered another round. Andanother.

Selene returned to my side, rolling her eyes and flashing her hand as she pointed to her ring finger. “Married,” she mouthed, not bothering to shout over the music.

I offered her a frown and a thumbs down, along with the rest of my drink.

Back when I was twenty-two and still enjoyed life, clubs like this were fun—exciting—the perfect way to blow off steam. But they really lost the draw when every time I went out it was an argument. Or worse, when it turned into bottle service, white lines cut with black Amexes, and media headlines the next day.

There were a lot of things that Charlie ruined for me: giving head, going to restaurants that didn’t offer chicken nuggets on the menu, and red wine. But the worst, by far, was dancing.

I used toloveto dance.

So when Selene hooked her thumb towards the floor, her eyebrows raised in a silent question, I was already eagerly sliding off my stool, wobbling a little in my heels as she grabbed my hand to tug me towards the light-up dance floor.

Selene’s dark purple-painted grin was slow, cat-like as we found a space in the middle of the crowd, her hand moving to find my hip as we swayed to the beat.

“I missed this,” she shouted over the music into my ear. “I missed you, really.”

“I’ve been around,” I called back, wrapping my arms around the taller woman’s neck.

She shook her head, lightly upturned nose wrinkling. “Not really, notyouat least.”

I didn’t have to ask what she meant, but it did hurt to hear.

Someone bumped into my back, a bit of sticky drink sloshing onto my shoulder, forcing Selene’s eyes off me—likely to tell them off. But whatever she saw made her release me quickly, pulling away with a little nudge in the direction of the clumsy asshole that’d bumped me.

I turned, intending to tell the guy off, my lips popping open in surprise as I met a pair of dark hazel eyes.

A soft, apologetic smile tugged the corner of their mouth up into a charming, lopsided sort of expression. “Ah, fuck, gorgeous. I’m sorry about that,” they said, using their hand to wipe away the alcohol with a grimace. “Not my smoothest moment.”

“I–um?—”

The air was too hot, too full as I tried to breathe through the sensation that the world had stopped turning. The pulse of music and the heavy press of bodies making my head spin as the air completely vacated my lungs.

“Let me make it up to you?” they offered, the tilt of their head showing off the finely shaved sides of their hair, the long, shaggy top slightly curled in the humidity as it was painted pink and blue in the lights. “A dance? A drink after?”

Their hand found my hip, the question in their eyes before they made contact washed away by the jerky bobble of my head, so fast it likely could’ve fallen right off.

My arms slid around their neck as they pulled me close, the warmth of their body only adding to the stifling heat of the club as we moved to the music. Every graze of their fingers against my bare skin felt like the beginnings of a wildfire, like my body was a tinderbox waiting to go up in smoke after years of unanswered desire—met instead with carefully scheduled attempts after temperature checks and rounds of vitamins.

Sweat slipped down my back, making my hair stick to my face and neck as I leaned in close, throwing all decorum out the window as my lips made contact with their strong jaw.

---