Page 9 of This Life and All the Rest
“Don’t care who you fuck,Lennon,” I say, keeping my tone detached and even.
I almost believe it myself.
I reach in my pocket for my pack of cigarettes and shake one out, placing it between my lips and lighting it up as I speak.
“I just find it interesting that perfect, wholesome Lennon Washington flunked out of art school to become a freeloading, directionless Frenchman’s whore.”
I feel the crack of her palm on my cheek before I even realize she moved. My head whips to the side and stays there, staring at the pavement where my cigarette fell from the force of her slap.
I breathe deeply through the onslaught of thoughts and the raging boil of emotion in my stomach.
Lennon just slapped me.
Hard.
Guilt and excitement mix, but before I can make sense of them, she closes the distance between us, stopping just inches from my face as her voice, low and commanding, wraps around my body and causes the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on edge.
“You watch your fucking mouth when you speak to me. You don’t know anything about me anymore. You don’t know shit about what I’ve been doing in Paris.”
Slowly, I turn my head and face her, keeping my expression blank, so I don’t react to our closeness. The small space of air between us is charged, and I swear when our eyes meet, I’m zapped with a current.
“I just sold a painting for twelve grand,” she states, smugness swirling with her fury. “I’ve got commissioned work lined up for the next year. And what have you done, huh?”
Her eyes scan my face, my hair, before falling on my left arm and studying the tattoos there. The surgical scar on my wrist tingles as her lip curls in disgusted humor.
It’s the cruelest fucking smile I’ve ever seen on her pretty face.
“You joined the Marines,” she says cloyingly.
She brings her finger to her face and taps her cheek in mock consideration. The pause is for dramatic effect, and I grit my teeth, preparing for the ax she’s about to bring down on my fucking neck.
“Oh, that’s right.” She gasps dramatically. “And then you got kicked out of the Marines.” She cocks her head to the side. “What happened, Macon? Get caught with drugs in your dress blues? You get high and screw a general’s daughter?”
She waits as if she expects an answer, and it takes every ounce of strength in my body to grin like she hasn’t gutted me with a rusty knife.
“Why are you so concerned with where I’m sticking my dick,Astraea?”
Her eyes flare for half a second and her lips part on an almost imperceptible gasp. The reaction kicks my heart up. The nickname. I try to read the emotions flashing through her eyes, but my attention catches on her mouth, and the way her teeth sink into her plush lower lip. On instinct, I reach up and free her lip from the bite with my thumb.
She doesn’t flinch away. She doesn’t step back. She doesn’t even breathe until a horn honks from the curb, yanking us back to reality and cutting the connection.
We spring apart and look toward the sound.
I laugh. I can’t help it.
The BMW that idles in front of my mom’s house has tinted windows, but I know who’s behind the wheel. I push past Lennon and walk toward my own car.
“I’ll be at the hospital around noon,” I say over my shoulder. It’s a warning, so she has ample time to be in and out before I get there. I open my car door and look back at her. She’s standing in the spot where I left her, her head cocked to the side as she studies me with a scowl on her face.
“What happened to nice, polite Lennon Washington?” I scan my eyes over her body like she’s a stranger. She raises a brow and props her hand on her hip.
“She’s dead,” she says flatly.
I nod, trying my hardest not to show her my disappointment. My guilt. I let my eyes scan her once more, force a smirk to my lips, then climb in my car.
“Tell Senator Harper’s daughter I saidhey,” I call out before slamming my door, cranking the engine, and peeling out of the drive.
My hands are tight on the steering wheel as I drive away, my heart pounding in my chest. My breath comes in pants and my forehead prickles with sweat.
