Page 23 of Can't Stop
“We’ll find him. If I have to tie him down and force him to look at a Playboy to get the truth out of him, I’ll find your squirrel.” I kiss the top of her head. “It won’t take weeks, either. If we have to spend more than another day in this Dawn of the Dead remake, I’ll lose my shit.”
A door slams near the front of the house, and Rayna and I freeze. The only hiding space is a tall wardrobe tucked in the corner. There is no closet in sight, and the bed is practically touching the ground, so there’s no way we could cram ourselves underneath. I push Rayna toward the wardrobe, shove her inside, and tuck myself beside her before closing the door.
Holding our breath, we peer through the slats as the bedroom door flies open. Samuel pounds into the room, eyes narrowed, steam practically billowing from his ears. His fists clench and unclench at his sides as he glances around the room—at the bed, at the trunk, at the wardrobe where we hide—before raring back and kicking the trunk at his feet. Wood splinters and litters the floor.
Rayna’s head slowly turns toward me, revealing her wide eyes. What the actual fuck? she mouths.
I turn back to the slats. Samuel has gone to the bookshelf now. He’s speaking to himself as he paces back and forth, running his big hands through his hair, but I can’t make out a word of what he says.
“Are they in there?” a man’s voice calls from the front of the house.
Samuel shakes his head. “No sign of them. I think they were here, though. Probably looking for that squirrel.”
Thank fuck I parked the truck in the forest at the head of the driveway. Rayna gives my hand a squeeze, likely thanking me for exactly that.
“Maybe they left town. You’ll need to get back out there and?—”
“They haven’t left town,” Samuel says, just loud enough to silence the man. He steps toward the bookshelf and pulls out a thick copy of some ancient medical book, which he opens. Inside the book is a hollow depression, and inside the depression?—
“Van Gogh,” Rayna whispers.
I wrap my arm around her shoulder and pull her against me. I’m not trying to quiet her, though. She needs me right now, and I’m letting her know I’m with her in the only way I can. Her shoulders tremble in my grasp, and as she tilts her head to the side, unable to witness the way Samuel handles her baby, a single tear falls onto my hand.
Rage coils under my skin. It winds into a tight ball, waiting for the moment when I release the tension and allow it to spring forth, unchained. Unrestrained. And I will release it. By making Rayna cry, they all but guaranteed it.
“They die today, bones,” I whisper in her ear. “All of them. Every one of them. They die today. For you.”
Her trembling stops, and even though another tear falls down her cheek, a smile breaks through.
“I’m going back to the main house to check on your mother and brother,” the man calls from the front of the house. “Will you be joining us for dinner, or would you prefer to remain here?”
“I’m coming with you, Pa!” Samuel shouts back as he wiggles Van Gogh. Then he tucks the squirrel into his back pocket and exits the room.
Rayna and I remain in the wardrobe until the crunch of tires on gravel fades to silence. We unfurl from the shadows and stand in the room, looking at the floor but seeing nothing.
I reach for her hand. “Come on, bones. Let’s follow them and use the element of surprise.”
She shakes her head and steps toward the bed. Her backpack slides off her shoulders and lands on the mattress. “No. The father said something about dinner, so I think we should wait until they’re seated at the table. At least make sure Van Gogh isn’t present before we attack.”
I see what she’s saying. If we spring a trap on them while they have Van Gogh in their possession, they will have the upper hand. We need to get him first.
“What should we do while we wait?” I ask. “We already fucked up their carousel.”
Rayna’s eyebrow rises as she sits on the bed and begins rifling through her bag. A mischievous smirk slides onto her face. “Step out of the room, and don’t come back in until I tell you to.”
An anticipatory sweat slicks my brow as I rise and exit the room. Rayna’s surprises are usually well beyond the scope of what people consider normal. Even people like me. The shock is a small price to pay for the fantasy she fulfills for us both.
A few minutes pass before she calls for me to enter. When I open the door, my jaw nearly hits the floor. She’s wearing the dreadful rat-thong bikini we purchased at the oddity shop.
“I am so fucking attracted to you, bones. You know that. But . . .” I search for the right words, but only one seems to do. “No.”
“No? What do you mean?” She turns and wiggles her hips, showcasing the scaly rat tail dangling between her full ass cheeks.
When she faces me again, I finally realize how the bottoms tie together. The rat was skinned in a T pose, making it look like a rodent reenactment of the crucifixion across her pelvis. White ribbons attach to the hands and feet, then connect at her hips. The top isn’t much better. A rodent head glares at me from the apex of each furry triangle struggling to cover her full breasts.
And yet, despite the grotesque ensemble, despite the fact that I’ve already drained my balls within the last six hours, my cock begins to strain against the front of my gym shorts.
Rayna has twice the screws loose that I ever had. In fact, since meeting her, she’s unscrewed a few extras from me. I don’t particularly like rodents of any kind, but I do like Rayna. Even as she sits on the edge of that small bed and pouts, the front of the taxidermy rat gives an obscured view of what I want, what I always want, even when it’s behind something so macabre.
