Page 25 of Montana Falls
I hated it so much that I liked it, which was a headfuck of the worst proportions.
“Are you old enough to drink?” Sipping my whiskey again, I tried to bite down on the irritation in my tone. Partly because she was barely an adult. Mostly because she was Kody’s cousin.
If I upset her, he would have a tantrum about it and then Sapphire would want to speak to me and it would become a whole big thing that I didn’t have the mental energy for.
Rika leaned back on the chair as she slid her heels off. “In my country, yes. It is you who think people cannot drink until they are old.” She snorted, and I glanced at her face, finding her eyes red around the edges, and the slightest sign of dampness under her eyelashes. “You can drive as a child and buy guns in the supermarket, yes? But beer is so bad. It is fucking stupid, this country.”
She sniffled. Just a bit. Enough to make me wonder if she’d been crying.
Then I wondered if I cared.
Apparently, my brain was broken, because I did.
“You don’t like America?” I forced the conversation on, wanting to wait for an opportunity to ask why she’d been crying, like a regular man did. “I don’t; I’m only here for Sapphire.”
“No, I don’t like it. I am here to do college and for Koko.” She snorted and wiped her eyes with a handkerchief from my suit jacket that I silently handed over. “If I was moving for pleasure, it would be England, or maybe Scotland. Something wet and dark and fucking miserable.”
“You prefer the cold?” So did I sometimes. Perhaps it was my DNA. Or maybe it was because I was fucking miserable and when I was in the snow, I didn’t feel quite so bad.
It was hard to feel like shit when everything was a blur of beautiful white.
She stamped her cigarette out on the ashtray she must have bought with her, before instantly lightning another. “I prefer the winter vibes. It makes me feel like… like.” She waved herhand around. “Like witches or something that haunts places. I feel spooky, and it is more fun to read in blankets and with hot chocolate.”
“You like reading?” Look at me, making conversation and asking about her hobbies. I was practically a fucking saint.
Beau from a year ago would have walked away the second she sat down.
“I love reading. And writing. My dream one day is to be an author. Maybe thrillers or romance. Or both.” She blew smoke out of her lips. “I could do a romance with a man in a mask chasing a pretty woman he wants to fuck. That sounds fun to me.”
“Yeah. Sure. Sounds great.” I paused a second as she grabbed another beer. “You should watch how much you have to drink, and not just because hangovers are a bitch. But because alcohol doesn’t solve whatever upset you.” Swallowing down my disgust, I added, “What did upset you? Anything I can help with?”
Even saying it made me want to throw up. It was sickening how much I had to care about other people’s wellbeing lately.
Nauseating that all the reasons I had to kill her, and women like Ruby, weren’t enough for me anymore. I needed actual crimes or real evil deeds to convince my brain to kill a woman. I couldn’t justify it with the simple fact she was a woman, and they were evil themselves.
“Don’t you think it is funny?” Rika sat up suddenly, poking her finger into my arm as she tucked a lock of her ridiculous pink hair behind her heavily pierced ear and refused to answer my question.
I pulled back so she couldn’t touch me, but restrained myself from reaching for my gun on the table next to me. “What’s funny?”
“How you love me? Very obsessed kind of love that makes you care for me.” She gave me a simpering smile in between drags on the last embers of her cigarette before finally declaring herself done.
“I’m obsessed with dreaming about putting a bullet in your skull.” I huffed and reached for my bottle of whiskey, not bothering with the glass when the bottle worked just fine.
Before she could respond, the patio doors opened again as the party made its way outside. Or at least partly outside. What with Ruby hurrying to take off her clothes, as she was apparently dared to jump into the pool.
I didn’t look. At all. My eyes were on my bottle. And Rika. Definitely. It was Rika who stared, her eyes on Ruby’s ass, watching the way it bounced and jiggled in her skin tight skirt as she slid it down and –
And did fuck all because Iwasn’tlooking.
“How dangerous is Aiden?” Rika muttered through a sip of beer. “We talking very dangerous, or like a cat that’s a little mad when in water?”
“He will kill you.” I didn’t need to clarify why she was asking me that question. “Then I’d have to kill Kody because he would want revenge, which would then lead to Sapphire hating me and starting a war.”
“But she’s so pretty.” Rika whined as I forced my eyes on to a nearby bush, when Ruby lost the last of her clothes and did a terrible dive into the pool. “Everyone around me is so fucking pretty and yet not a single one is gay, or my kind of bi, or single. Do you know how annoying that is? I could find a girl to fuck in the woods and mountains. But not here basically in Sin City?”
I ignored the giggles and cheers from behind me, refusing to see what was causing them.
“No. I don’t date, so I don’t notice shit like that.” I snapped.
