Page 2 of Looking Grimm

“I’m hardly holding back.” Nash turned toward the door, then paused to survey the discarded bottles and cigarettes within my reach. His nose crinkled as he motioned toward the mess. “And you’re gonna clean that up.”

Sucking on the cig caused the ash end to flare. I exhaled and glared at him through the fumes. “I will when I’m damngood and done.”

“It’s been three weeks, Fitch,” Nash retorted. “When are you gonna be done?”

How could he even ask? Three weeks was a pittance compared to my brother’s twenty years of life or the decades I would have to live with the guilt of knowing he died because of me.

Our eyes stayed locked for several moments before Nash blinked and shook his head. He was always first to back down, to give up. No doubt he thought he was giving me what I wanted. But even I didn’t know what I wanted these days.

“Take it easy, all right?” he said with a heaved breath. “I don’t need you blacked out before noon again.”

The passing jab elicited a snort from me as he exited the bedroom and pulled the door closed.

I didn’t move from the bed. The mattress must have had an imprint from the hours and days I’d spent in this exact position. Not sleeping—sleep came with nightmares and panic attacks from which I woke sweating and crying into my pillow while Nash offered comfort I didn’t deserve.

Nash… fuck.

I gazed forlornly at the closed door.

Sometimes I thought I hated him. It felt good when he wrapped his arms around me and kissed my teary cheeks. But it felt a thousand times worse when I snapped at him or threw things and screamed like a demon had possessed my body and wanted everything around me to go away and die.

Everyone dies.

Ash tumbled off the end of my cigarette and landed on my bare chest. I swore and sat bolt upright, swiping at thesinged skin. Angrily, I spun and stabbed the cig into the ashtray, burying it amidst the spent butts.

A few weeks ago, with Donovan freshly dead, I had a plan to destroy Grimm and everyone allied with him. I reveled in the thought of taking my well-earned vengeance until I realized it was a dead end. Grimm had gone to ground.

Besides the Capitol, I hadn’t known where to look for him since the gang had vacated the Lazy Daze Motel and moved their operations somewhere new. I’d never been invited and should have taken that as a sign. Attacking Grimm, taking Donovan away, strengthening my ties to Holland Lyle and her investigative team, all of it had estranged me from the Bloody Hex. I hadn’t minded the distance, but I should have wondered more about Grimm’s nonchalance about my attempt on his life, or my threat to expose his illusioned charade to the world.

He was done with me. Done enough to allow Jax and his ilk to make their play for official gang membership by trying to kill Ripley, Donovan, and me. Ultimately, they failed. But they succeeded in the way that hurt worst of all.

I raised my left hand to the muted light and squinted at the Hex mark tattooed there. The skull stared back at me, and I moved on from it to counting the strings inked on each finger. I never got past thirty, unwilling to let Isha put a needle to me ever again. She’d lost that right when she gave Donovan the cursed mark that cost him his life. Like I knew it would.

With a grunt, I rolled over and began sifting through the empty booze bottles on the floor, hoping to find one with some residue I could suck down and avoid a trip downstairs that would involve facing Nash again, or worse, his sisterPippa.

I was still searching, hanging headfirst off the edge of the mattress, when the bedroom door swung wide.

Nash stepped in. “Throw something on and come downstairs,” he said.

Worming my way back onto the bed, I sat up and frowned. “Why?”

He cast a glance at the state of things, the state of me, as though he hadn’t seen it all a few minutes earlier. I’d been living in his clothes since burning mine along with everything else I owned and had piled my dirty outfits on the floor instead of the bathroom hamper. The bottles and cigs were more signs of my presence, like a breadcrumb trail leading to a pit of despair.

Nash walked across to the balcony window and pushed the curtains open, letting in light and a view of the ocean I was in no mood to appreciate. “The room needs to air out,” he said. “It smells like smoke and self-loathing in here.”

When he turned back toward me, I bared my teeth in a sneer. “Wrong time to grow a spine, asshole.”

Nash’s features hardened, and I braced for him to come back at me. I wanted him to even the score by giving me every bit of the shit I’d given him for the past three weeks. Get angry, for God’s sake. Instead, he rolled his eyes away.

“Downstairs,” he said. “You have a visitor.”

I was running outof non-plaid options when raiding Nash’s wardrobe, leaving today’s ensemble a bottom-of-the-barrel grab of an oversized sweatshirt and Crayola red gym shorts. After stopping in the bathroom to splash water on my stubbled face and drag a comb through my tangled blond locks, I stumbled down the spiral staircase and padded barefoot into the bar.

The Bitters’ End wasn’t open at such an early hour, so I didn’t expect customers. But, even if I had, I never would have expected the towering man in a business suit who stood by the counter. He turned to my approach.

“Briggs?” The name squeaked out of me.

Nash bustled by, pushing a mop across the already spotless wood floor.

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