Page 60 of Grave Love
It’s fucking irritating.
I grab an old stash of sedatives that I coerced Brody into giving me. Need grows inside of me like a red tide blooming across the coast, the itch to kill driving me mad. I stare at the choke chain and leash on the nightstand, willing myself to picture strangling Ren to death with it. It’s what I’ve wanted since the beginning. It should feel right.
It doesn’t inspire me now. Not like that. My dick gets hard, but I’m not thinking of her corpse falling into me. I’m thinking about her cunt squeezing me in arousal. Coming for me. Her musk. That primal proof that she gives me every single time.
I can’t stop thinking about her.
Once I’m sure Denise is out on a house call, I visit Last Spring. The new part-time assistant helps a client in the showroom, barely noticing me as I enter the building. I stand outside of the crematory. Ren works, a fluttering energy in her shoulders. A long-sleeve turtleneck shirt—probably to cover up the bruises—clings to her body. A scratch dashes across her cheek, red and scabbed over. Probably from the sticks in the woods.
My dick twitchesimaginingthe deep purple bruises. Then I grunt in anger. These emotions are the problem. The reason why I’m slowly losing grip on what I want out of her.
Ren’s eyes light up as she sees me.
“I thought you called in,” she says, surprised. “What are you doing here?”
I search her face like I’ll find something there. Evidence. Fuck, I don’t know.Proof.
She smiles, and I know—whatever it is—it’s not there.
Ren is okay.
I grit my teeth. Her beautiful, toothy, fucking smile, like a child in a toy store—it grates on me. Fills me with relief and annoyance and fucking pride when I see her happy like that.
I’m not supposed to make her happy. I’m supposed to kill her.
Fuck.
“I can take the hint,” I mutter, forcing myself to seem offended, as if the rage will actually materialize inside of me and send me spiraling into some concrete action against her. “I’ll fuck off, then.”
“Blaze?” she asks. “What the—”
“Goddamn it, Ren. I’m talking to myself, all right? I just—”
I leave before I finish the sentence. The anger isreal,real as the blood pumping through my cold, fucked up heart. But the anger is notforRen.Shedid nothing. It’smewho fucked up. Me and my pathetic obsession with a woman who is more obsessed with death than I am.
It’s not fucking right, and I don’t know how to change it. To fix things so that they’re back in place.
But I know, without a doubt, that I have to kill soon.
Not soon.Now.
I could kill her grandmother. She’s an obvious choice. Then again, I get this stupid feeling that Ren would blame herself for her grandmother’s murder.
But Ren’s ex? Making her think she’s truly worthless? Forcing her to be ashamed of her desires? As far as I can tell, she hasn’t spoken to him in years.
I can work with that.
Panama City Beach is a small southern beach town, so it doesn’t take long to flip through the high school yearbooks at city hall and find who I’m looking for. I find her graduation year, and eventually, I find her name. Ren Kono. My little corpse. The deviant little slut who is supposed to be dead right now.
I check her club pictures. She was in a few: yearbook, leadership, an honor society, even track and field. I’m sure her grandmother forced her into all of them; it’s what a successful granddaughter would do. And repeating in all of those photos is one male face. The two of them stand together in every picture. Their names are even listed under the same university in the college announcements in the back of the book.
Arnold Weber.
Arnold, like Ren, still lives in Florida, thoughhe—the big, strong,successfulman that he is—moved to Tallahassee, the capital of the state. Apparently, after he got his doctorate, he switched gears and joined a startup social media marketing company, ditching his original plans to work in education. And because of the nature of his current business, he doesn’t keep his whereabouts private. No—the idiotlikesbragging on social media, checking in at every bar, every restaurant, every fuckingshopthat he visits, tagging anyone with him, using the line that he’s “promoting” the company, when it’s obvious that he’s anxious for the reassurance that he’sworthsomething. That people care about him.
Just like he bullied Ren into being his perfect, makeup-wearing fiancée, he’s backed himself into a corner where he subconsciously beats himself up for not being good enough every single day.
I don’t care about his battered ego. I don’t care if he’s changed. I don’t care if he’s a better man. If he’d apologize to Ren if he saw her now.
