Page 567 of Hell Hath No Fury
I told her I’d help her shower when she woke up and instead, I left her to do it alone.
The first life I took happened by accident. A stupid game played between boys too young to understand that there’s something more respectable than fronting up to your peers’ dares—having the bravery to walk away from a stupid situation. But accident or not, I still faced the torture that was having to wash the evidence off my body.
I’ll remember that goddamn afternoon for as long as I live.
A burden I never wanted for Beth.
She might not have been the one to take Heather’s life, but we all stood by and let that jackass abuse the fuck out of the woman until a shell of her remained. The benefit of hindsight, right? To look back on shit that’s as black and white as can be now and wonder how the fuck you passed over it at the time.
“Everything good?” Murphy steps into the room, gaze roaming over where I sit in the single stained armchair near the window, and Jo-Jo laid flat on his back with his phone held over his head.
A thumb in the air is the only response he gets from our dark horse. I give the old boy a nod, reaching for my pack of smokes on the side table beside me.
“How much further is this place?”
“Another couple hours I think?” Murphy scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. “I’d have to check the maps again.”
“Three hours, and twenty-five.”
Murphy and I both stall in our movement, heads turned toward Jo-Jo. The fucker speaks so rarely that sometimes I forget what his fucking voice sounds like.
“I stand corrected,” Murphy says with a smile.
I shake my head, tug a smoke from the pack, and lift it to my lips. “Pity we couldn’t burn into the night and get it over and done with.”
“Aye, I know. But showing up somewhere new in the dead of night sets us up for a fuckin’ disadvantage.”
“Yeah, I know.” I understood Hooch’s reasoning when he pulled us into this flea-ridden motel and stated we’d start again in the morning. Just didn’t like how happy it made Digits. The motherfucker was on his goddamn phone, tucked out of earshot of the rest of us before I could stretch out my fucking back.
“Anyway.” Murphy pats his gut. “I need a goddamn shit after bouncing my fuckin’ ass the whole way here.”
“Get a real fuckin’ bike and you wouldn’t have a problem,” I tease, much to JoJo’s apparent amusement.
“Custom is real, kid,” Murphy hollers as he shuts the bathroom door. “That factory standard bullshit you ride is what’s fake.”
“Fuck you, old man.” I lean back in the seat and laugh, then reach for my phone.
Motherfuckers won’t be finding it so funny when I have no trouble selling my ride in a couple of years to upgrade. Customs may look pretty, but the market ain’t so huge for an overpriced labor of love. I’ll have my machine tucked in some weekend warrior’s garage so I can walk into the dealership with a fat wad of cash to spend on my next obsession, and these old bastards will still be wrangling tire-kickers two at a time before breakfast.
Cigarette twirling between my fingers, I scroll my phone with the other hand, tapping through the social apps one at a time.It doesn’t take me long to cycle through—not when I’m after something specific: signs of her.
Beth hasn’t shared anything. No pics, no motivational quotes, not even one of her little quips about life.
She’s offline, which means she’s still in recovery mode.
I open the Messenger app and bring up her thread. Four months ago, I last sent her something. A benign little joke about fucking women and their weird habits.
What can I say? Are there any words I can flick through that won’t come off as desperate? Give her the idea we’re anything more than a good match in bed?
Fuck my life.I navigate out of her thread and flick down to a more recent one—Delilah. The little minx is always around, lapping up the gossip. If anyone can tell me how Beth is, it’ll be her. Easy enough to make it seem platonic when I ask howbothwomen have been since we left: Dagne and Beth. Fuck, I could pretend that it's Hooch who wants to know. Make out that I need something good to tell him.
I balance the cigarette between my lips and use both thumbs to smash out the message. Sent, and received, I stall with the screen still open after my eye catches on an ugly truth.
Two weeks.
It had been two weeks since I last sent Delilah a message. And it wasn’t some dumb joke I found on Facebook or a funny TikTok clip. Nope. I fucking sexted the little redhead.Motherfucker.I navigate to the next thread that belongs to one of the girls and find the same thing—five days. Followed by three weeks, and then a month for our newest property girl.
Every single fucking one of them gets more out of me than the woman I fuck the most.
