Page 29 of Ambition

I laugh, the taste of alcohol still on my tongue. Her eyes flash in the darkness and she shoves me again, slamming her palms against my chest.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she snarls, her nostrils flared, her cheeks turning a deep red color, and I know it’s from anger and not embarrassment.

She lifts her hands like she might hit me for real, but then she spins, holding up her arms, like she’s trying to talk herself out of touching me. I glance at her packages and see a dark red umbrella too, scattered on the floor alongside a deep green lace bra spilled from the pale pink bag, and a red one as well, sheer.

The laughter leaves me, and I stay pressed to the door, my chest heaving as I stare at her back, the muscles around her low spine.

She drops her arms suddenly then turns to face me again. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she snaps once more, but this time lower.

It’s hot, how her voice is deep with her anger.

I place my hands on my thighs. “Preparing you for tomorrow.” I shrug. “I started part one on the couch earlier, you know?”

She puts her hands on her hips, narrowing her dark gaze. “Von,” she says, like a warning. “Are you drunk?”

And I’m not. Only slightly tipsy, but it makes my tongue loose. “Did you fuck my dad too?”

“Von.” It’s barely a word at all this time, a ghost coming from her mouth.

“Is that where you were? Is that what they’re doing tonight for Solemn?” I jerk my chin toward her. “Fucking the new whore?”

She clenches her jaw. I see the bones jump as her full, red lips press together.

“All of them? Or just him? Cosmo get a turn too? Did your dad—”

“Sometimes I think you grew with me that night. At the warehouse, you know?” She says everything so calmly.

Unease churns in my gut, and I just watch her, unspeaking.

“Sometimes I think it was a pivotal moment. I know my parents think my brain glitched, and your dad is a little scared of me. I know that’s why they took me off the violent assignments and fed them all to you. But the guard, he spoke about you. He said I was a setup to get toyou.I wasn’t bait for our parents. I was a lure for yours. That’s why I grabbed the pitchfork, Von. That’s why I swiped the tines through his abdomen, then twirled the handle, clawed out his insides. Do you know it took a lot of force to do that? The tines were sharp, but our skin wants to keep us alive, you know?”

I’m not breathing as she speaks.

I didn’t know about the guard, speaking ofme.She never explained why she attacked him and in the aftermath, I wasn’t sure I could handle finding out. In the end, we knew the assholes were trying to extort money from Dad, from Writhe, but… I thought she was the lure, being a girl.

“It didn’t matter, eventually, how much his flesh wanted him to survive. Becauseyouwere inside my head. If that man intended to hurt you, he had to die, naturally. And I thought when you found me, when you picked me up like I weighed nothing, when you saw the blood on my face from an artery I slashed through… I thought you grew with me. Maybe in a twisted way. Maybe even downward, like toward hell. But I thought you werewith me.”She rakes her eyes over my body in dismissive assessment. “Now, though, I’m not so sure. Asking me if I fucked my handler, treating me asless thanbecause I did a job same as you do?”

I grind my teeth, wanting to lash out. Physically, emotionally.

But I keep it in for once, with her.

I say nothing.

“Go fuck yourself, Von. No matter how much of a whore you think I am, God knows I won’t be doing it for you, but thanks for one last orgasm.” She glances down at her spilled things, then shakes her head like she doesn’t want to deal with it right now and predictably, she turns her back on me, leaving even the red umbrella on the floor.

“You think you’re the only one who changed that night?” I call out after her, staying by the door but unable to let her walk away yet.

Her shoulders tense, hands balled into fists at her side, but she doesn’t look at me.

I gaze over the lighter brunette shades of her hair, coiled in with the darker brown. Long and thick. Beautiful. The dimples on her spine are too, the curve of her hips.

I swallow hard, imagining all of that against me on Halloween, cradled in my arms.

“You think you’re the only one who thinks about it? You were worried about me, you say, but do you not remember why I found you in the first place?” I whisper the words, my voice hoarse, adrenaline pumping but I don’t move an inch.

She is frozen, too, and she doesn’t say anything.

“I was running through that warehouse for you as soon as Dad had your location, and sent it out to all of us. You know the fire caught when we ran out, when we got to Mom and Dad and Rig? But I saw the smoke when I parked outside. And I didn’t even think about it. Because all I thought of wasyou.”If I close my eyes now, I’ll be running through that warehouse with my mask on again, a precaution that didn’t matter but maybe I just wanted something routine to hold onto when I dove in that burning building after my best friend.

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