Page 10 of Start A War (Saint View Psychos)

Bliss’s blood-curdling scream turned me to ice. And then on instinct, I was pushing out of my car and running.

Not toward my best friend who lay slumped on his porch with a bullet through his brain.

But to his little sister, screaming hysterically beside her car, her eyes trained on her brother’s still form and the slick pool of blood surrounding him.

I slammed into her, harder than I intended, cradling her to my chest and burying her face in my shirt.

“No! Let me go! We have to help him!” Her legs trembled, giving way now that I was there to catch her. But still, she fought me, slapping and shoving, trying to get around me to her brother, but she wasn’t strong enough to put up any sort of real fight. Her sobs echoed through the quiet night air, piercing straight through my soul.

I’d always hated when she cried. I couldn’t handle it at nineteen, and I found that now, even at thirty-nine, it was still my undoing.

Nothing had ever hurt me the way her tears did.

Except for the sight of my best friend, lying dead on his front step. The pain wrapped its way around every muscle, every organ, squeezing so tight. It was bloodied nails piercing every inch of me until I wanted to beg for mercy. Beg for it to stop.

Except I couldn’t. Because Bliss was there, and her needs had always come before mine.

“Don’t look,” I murmured into her hair, inhaling the honeysuckle scent of her shampoo. “Fuck, Bliss. Don’t look.”

I was speaking to myself as much as I was to her.

She didn’t respond, but she stopped trying to fight me. Her tears wet my shirt while I stared at an inky-black sky full of stars and cursed whatever fucking god was up there.

Axel was one of the good ones.

Dealt a shit hand in life that he had never deserved, and it had finally caught up with him.

I swallowed hard. I would be next. I was probably lucky to have lasted this long. This fucking shithole of a town and the people in it always won. There was no place for the good guys.

They just got chewed up, spat out, and left dead on their porches like it was any other Sunday.

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