Page 46 of Grave Love
It’s a bunch of bullshit, and yet I picture Ren covered in mud.
My dick grows in my pants.
A wave of nausea fills me, dread pooling in my gut, my mind swirling with frustration. Anger. Goddamn irritation. It’s not the country song that pisses me off; it’s me. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking when it came to Ren’s grandmother. Family drama is the last thing I want, and exposing myself to her grandmother doesn’t make this “arrangement” any easier for me. There will be loose ends that I willneedto tie up now, and I’m not supposed to give a shit about Renorher family.
There was something inside of me though, a hunger that sought out her grandmother. That wanted to disrupt the very nature of the manipulative games her grandmother was playing. To show Ren that she doesn’t have to kneel down to anyoneunless she wants to.
“Where are we going?” Ren asks.
Home.I could say that. But just because you lived somewhere once doesn’t mean that you find comfort or safety there. It’s simply a memorial of the little boy I once was.
“Blountstown,” I say.
She lets out a sigh. Steadies herself. I quickly glance at her. Darkness covers her countenance, but the questions are palpable, drifting in the air between us.
Am I going to do it tonight?
Ren must think I’m finally going to kill her. Perhaps shewantsto die now that she’s finally stood up to her grandmother.
Pride burrows in my chest. I push it out. Ren doesn’t mean anything to me. She’s a vessel to fuck. A high Ineed.
Those two cases from my brother—the pills and the lozenges—are in my nightstand drawer. I don’t plan to give them to her anytime soon. It’s not her birthday yet, and I have other methods I can use right now.
An hour later, a junkyard shadows one side of the highway, a used car lot on the other. Another mile in, between the second-hand store and the family diner, a pizza shop blinks with anOpen!sign. Brent’s Italian Restaurant. It’s a small town—less than three thousand residents—and that detail is supposed to come with peace. Everyone knows everyone. My mother knew she could count on the sympathy of the men in this town, as long as they got to have their way with her. As long as they could use her youngest idiot child too. Me.
We drive down a dirt road, around one of the neighbor’s pastures, to a single-story house guarded by thick barriers of longleaf pine trees. The porch light is still bright from my visit this morning, a lighthouse warning others of the invisible danger waiting in the darkness. Moths mash into the stained walls, cobwebs matted into the siding. The lawn grows in knee-high blades and clusters around my mother’s old truck. I park in the weeds. Put on my black leather gloves, physically removing all evidence of humanity within me.
I walk to the front porch. Ren follows me.
In the foggy night air, the cicadas chirp and the frogs whine in chorus. Ren crosses her arms, holding herself, scanning the old truck for signs of life. As if a ghost will lurch out of the passenger seat. As if she can see the demon who used to drive it.
Our footsteps creak on the wooden porch. I gesture at the doorbell. Ren fidgets, hesitant to wake up the unknown occupants. I click my jaw. She can stand up to her grandmother, but she’s afraid of a few strangers?
I bare my teeth at her. She inhales, settling those nerves, then pushes the button.
It’s silent, though. The doorbell has been broken for years.
Ren turns to me, waiting for my next command. My lips peel back into a snarl, then I motion to the side of the house. She lifts her hand to stop me—this is a stranger’s property, after all—then she thinks better of it. The little corpse doesn’t say a word.
She doesn’t know that this is where I grew up. All she knows is that no one is home right now. And for now, I’ll keep her in that darkness.
Chapter17
Ren
The moths smackagainst the side of the house like hail. My heart beats in my throat. I can’t move. I can’t do anything. I stare at the door like it’ll tell me something real.
Is this where I die?
Blaze grabs my elbow, forcing me around the house. My breath hitches, the gravity of the situation suddenly bearing down on me. If Blaze really is a killer, what if it’s not me that he’s after? What if we’re here so he can murder someone else?
I stumble behind him in the shadows, the overgrown grass scratching through my leggings.
Eventually, my eyes adjust. A heavy, warm fog hangs over the yard. Woods surround us in almost every direction, except for the area that leads back to the road. I think I remember seeing a farmhouse on the way here; I don’t know how far away it is.
We’re isolated out here.
Blaze stops in front of a hole in the ground. No, it’s not a hole. It’s hip deep—shallow compared to the graves at Last Spring. And when I look down, I lose my breath.
