Page 38 of Sully

Sometime around six-thirty, I had her dressed in one of my hoodies, and we were all piling into the SUV in the garage before heading out.

Nave and Perish were silent company from the front seat on the short drive across town.

Bonnie’s place was in one of the older apartment complexes in the area. All tan bricks straight out of the seventies with dubiously secure wrought iron balconies and windows that all looked in need of replacing.

“This is me,” Bonnie said as Nave navigated the labyrinthine complex to get to the center of all the identical buildings.

“I’m gonna linger right here,” Nave said as he parked illegally right at the end of the sidewalk. “You got what you need?” he asked Perish. And we all knew that he was asking about a gun.

“Always,” Perish agreed.

“Come on, honey,” I said, sliding out of the SUV, wanting her to come across the seat with me instead of walking around the car.

I didn’t genuinely believe the sick fuck who’d strapped a bomb to her chest was going to be lying in wait in a room with asniper rifle. But I wasn’t going to take the chance that he wasn’t, either.

It was an eventless trip into her building, though, then up to her second-floor apartment—down a long hall with hideous, filthy gray carpet and chipped paint on the walls. Not an ounce of charm in the place.

That is, until she unlocked her door and we moved inside with Perish standing sentry in the hall.

Bonnie’s place was a testament to how much time she spent there, how much she saw the place as her safe space, her refuge from a world that often felt too big, loud, and overwhelming.

Her living room had one wall lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves painted a barely-there blush pink and filled with books, some shelves two deep.

The wall directly across from it featured a long desk and tons of shelving containing what seemed to be an endless amount of crafting supplies.

The only seating in the room was one of those super plush oversized chairs with a matching ottoman. It felt telling that there wasn’t a single space for a guest to sit. The chair itself had no fewer than four pillows and three blankets. Plus a pair of those super-soft socks sitting on the edge of the ottoman.

The kitchen was a cramped and dated space featuring orange-tinted faux wood cabinets and tiled countertops.

Still, Bonnie tried to add some cute to it. All of her small appliances were from some line that made them look kind of vintage. There was some stained glass hanging in the window over the sink. And a stack of recipe books on the end of a counter next to some questionably brown bananas.

“Wait a second,” I said, shooting her small eyes. “You didn’t mention that you know how to cook.”

“I like baking more than cooking,” she admitted. “Oh, that reminds me,” she said, rushing to her fridge to pull out a bigglass container of some sort of thick, tan, bubbly goo. “I have to feed this,” she explained.

“You need to feed the bowl of goo?” I asked. “Is this some sort ofLittle Shop of Horrorsthing, but with goo? Is that thing going to start killing people?”

To that, she let out a little tinkling laugh. “It’s sourdough starter. It’s ‘live,’ so you have to feed it or it dies, and I can’t use it to bake with anymore.” At my blank look as she added flour to the mix, she said, “It’s a replacement for the little packets of yeast that you use to make dough rise. And it’s good for the gut,” she added as she tucked the container back in the fridge. “It will be good for another week or so now,” she told me. “Hey, do you think I could maybe take a quick shower while we’re here?”

As much as the horny part of my brain would have preferred her showering in my bathroom, there was no reason to deny the comfort of familiarity.

“Sure. Just don’t scrub around the cut on your head,” I told her. “I’ll plant my ass in that comfy-as-fuck chair in the living room,” I said, gesturing toward it.

“Careful, it swallows you up and doesn’t want to let go,” she said as she made her way down the hall to her bedroom.

I didn’t snoop when I was alone. I mean, nothing about this woman said she had any grand secrets. Instead, I got into the chair that did, indeed, swallow me up, and reached for the book on the little drink table right beside it.

“Oh, youdohave secrets,” I said with a grin as I opened to the bookmarked page. To find an explicit-as-fuck sex scene going on. “Really fucking good secrets,” I concluded as one sex scene damn near melted into another with hardly any plot in between.

“Sorry, I lost track of time in the—oh,” Bonnie said, making my gaze lift to find her standing a few feet away in a pair of black leggings and a red sweatshirt under a chunky striped cardigan I bet she’d made herself. Her hair was darker when it was wet,hanging heavy down her chest. “Oh, that’s…” she tried to speak again. The heat was high on her cheeks.

“Some really good, smutty fun?” I asked, watching her somehow go even redder. “Yes, yes it is.”

“It was, um, recommended to me,” she said, shifting her feet.

“Yeah, well, you owe whoever recommended it a thank you. Or a bill for the batteries you would need to keep up with these two’s escapades without getting carpal tunnel.”

Sure, she could be mistaken for a tomato right about then, but she let out a shocked little laugh, too.

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