Page 10 of Black Sheep

“All of what?”

“That you’ll…tear his head off.”

“I fucking will.” A solemn promise. A brief pause. “You think I’m a sick psycho?”

“I think you’re…you’re…”

“What?”

“I think you’re effing amazing.”

“Effing?”

Pink color stains her cheeks. “Don’t tease me.”

“I won’t if you say the word. The actual word, Cleo.”

“I won’t.”

“Right. Then I’m not as amazing as you want me to think, am I?”

Blue eyes, opened wide. “You are.”

“Then say it. You’re not going to burn for it. It’s just a word.”

“I hate you when you’re like this.”

“You don’t hate me, but fine. Don’t say it.”

The camera swings out to the lake, to the setting sun that’s almost swallowed up by the orange water.

“You’re f-fucking amazing. There. Are you happy?”

“Nope.”

A crunch of footsteps in the sand before she steps boldly in front of the camera. “You’re fu-fucking incredible and f-fucking amazing, Axel Rutherford.”

“Am I?”

“Fuck, yes! Now will you stop being fucking mad at me?”

“I will if you stop saying fuck!”

An outraged yell before she lunges. The camera drops to the ground a second before grappling bodies swing into frame.

It shows a bear of a teenage boy in swimming trunks, his heart in his eyes, his arms slowly drawing her to him.

A voluptuous teenage girl who holds his world in her soft, deceptive hands.

She makes space for him between her young thighs and pushes his overgrown hair behind his ears.

“I can never be mad at you, Cleo. I fucking love you,” he whispers.

She frames his face in her hands. “I love you, too. My Axel. My Romeo.”

A long, endless kiss sealing his doom.

Another screen. Another camera, this one manned by Troy, his middle brother. Ronan stands next to their father, who’s seated behind his massive cherrywood desk, elbows on armrests, fingers in a steeple. Despite being in his mid-fifties, Finnan Rutherford has little to no gray hair. He liked to brag that it was because he was planning to live forever and his body knew it.

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