Page 20 of The Final Deal

If the devil’s cheated me, then I’ll hunt his ass down, tear his rib cage apart, and fucking devour him from the inside out.

I stare at the blade for a few seconds, wondering if I’m really going to do something so stupid, crazy, and risky just to prove a point to myself.

Yes, I think as I press the sharp edge against a finger on my right hand—a digit not so important as to hurt for the next few days when I pick up a guitar for practice.

I’m going to make goddamn sure the devil is keeping his bargain.

So I drag the knife across my flesh.

“Ah!” It clatters to the bottom of the sink, and a thin trail of crimson winds around my finger. “Damn it.”

“You okay?”

I pause. Can’t he smell it?

Looking over my shoulder, Zak takes a cup out of the cabinet—totally oblivious to the fact that I’m bleeding.

There’s only one way to be sure.

“Yeah, just nicked myself, is all,” I reply, turning to show him.

He focuses on the cut, and his brows pull together in confusion as he tilts his head slightly. Realization strikes himover the head like a baseball bat when his eyes widen. “Shit, babe.”

He immediately rushes out of the kitchen, empty cup and all.

I cradle my soapy, wet hands against my sternum, watching as he runs off until I hear his door slam shut. It takes a minute of listening to water rushing in the sink behind me before I rinse my hands and scrounge around for a bandage.

Chapter 8

Change

–Thousand Thoughts ft. Daigo Jax

Raysof sunshine light up the kitchen with a bright orange glow, giving the chopped tomatoes on the island a slight iridescent sheen. A particular ray highlights a stained index card with cursive scribbled in black: Lupe Ramos’ signature salsa roja recipe.

Maybe I can’t make it with Andrea, but I can make it for the twins to give them a real taste of home.

I beam at the card as if I were smiling at Lupe, herself, and scrape up the tomatoes and toss them into a food processor with onions, jalapeños, serranos, garlic, and cilantro. The high-powered appliance drowns out the music blasting through the stereo system, but I hum along to Avenged Sevenfold’s “Bat Country” anyway as the salsa comes together. When the processor stops, I push away from the island and loudly wail out the solo, fingers flying across an air guitar fretboard.

I grab the freshly-blended, green-bespeckled red purée and dump it into a piping hot Dutch oven. The oil at the bottom sizzles, and the salsa sputters from the heat.

I hope the familiar smell of their mama’s cooking makes the twins happy. Making them happy will make me happy, and I need all the smiles and sunshine I can get right now.

Especially after Mom’s phone call earlier.

Her name flashed across my screen, and it took every bit of strength I could muster to tamp down the urge to throw my phone across the room, to smash it into hundreds of little pieces so my mother can never find me and fuck up my life ever again. I shoved it into the couch instead, hoping the leather thing would swallow up that connection and the void would take care of the rest.

Eventually, though, I dug it out and found she left a voicemail. Though the sound of her voice boils my blood, I listened anyway.

“I’m so sorry,” she whined. “I’m so,sosorry, honey. You have to know I didn’t?—”

I deleted the voicemail after that.

A figure leaning against a wall at the threshold of the kitchen startles me so badly that I jump a foot into the air. “Goddamn it!”

Adrian snorts, a gorgeous smirk lightening his features. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt the show.”

I grab my phone and turn down the volume so I can hear him better. I’m not sure what has me more startled: him showing up out of nowhere, or the fact that he’s wearing a shirt—though it’s sleeveless with the arm holes dropped so low that it’s hardly hanging on by a thread.

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