“Vi, one more?”
“Sure, darlin’.”
I nodded when she set down the glass and walked toward another customer.
“I’m surprised you’re in here again,” I heard over my shoulder, and I tensed.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Finley.
“Lookin’ for your dumb ass.”
“Why?” I asked as she sat down beside me.
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because I’m an idiot? Maybe because I’m bored?” She sighed. “I don’t know.”
The bell above the door rang out and we both turned to see Spencer Blackwell and Cricket Hunt walk in holding hands as if they didn’t have a care in the world.
I narrowed my eyes and tried to steady my breathing. “What the fuck are they doing here?” I asked no one.
My eyes locked in on them as they moved to the opposite side of the large room. They had no idea I was there. They sat together, totally unaware that their mere existence in that moment bruised me more brutally than I’d felt in a long time. I studied Caroline, the palm of my hand absently rubbing at the knot in the center of my chest. My Caroline. She had no idea just how much she’d worn me out since we’d broken up, worn my body and my soul. I felt too heavy to carry around since she’d gone from me. Far too heavy. She’d been unintentionally cruel, but cruel nonetheless. So I swallowed back the lump in my throat, a lump she’d put there with our childhood memories, our laughs, our love. The ache. The awful ache she caused me.
I continued to watch her. She was laughing, so happy, and very much in the moment with him. And that’s when I saw it. Saw what Finley and everyone else saw. She had never looked at me the way she was looking at him, and I was suddenly sick with jealousy and a terrible, terrible hatred. His hand wrapped around the back of her neck and I snapped. My hands trembled on the surface of my glass and I breathed from my nose in seething anger.
Finley whipped her head my direction, her eyes wide. “Let’s go,” she pleaded.
“Get out of here,” I ordered her.
“No,” she whispered, placing her hand on my own.
I peered into her eyes. “Just. Go.”
I stood up and threaded my way through the bodies. There was nothing planned, no finite idea, but I knew I wanted to get to my truck, the passenger side, the glove box. I shoved through the bar door and into the summer night, my blood pumping through my veins. My truck was parked in the space closest to the street, and each footstep it took to get me there felt like an eternity. I clomped through the gravel lot and threw open the passenger door. I’d forgotten that the glove box had been locked. My hand found my pocket to dig out my keys but they were stuck at odd angles, making it difficult or maybe it was that I was too drunk to remove them with any kind of finesse. This made me pause, but my body couldn’t catch up with the thought and I pitched forward, my hand clumsily finding the edge of the roof of the cab. I swayed and the memory of his hand on her neck renewed my fury.
“I told you you’d feel my wrath, Spencer Blackwell,” I spoke to no one. “And I never break a promise.”
I took a deep breath as my fingers found their purchase and pulled out my keys. The key I needed somehow hit home and the lid sprang open, the knives staring at me, daring me. I watched them, waited for them to tell me what to do, but nothing came. They laid still, gleaming in the moonlight waiting for me too, it seemed. I sat in the passenger side seat, one boot still on the gravel, and made the first move. Raising a trembling hand toward the temptation, my fingers felt the cool length of each blade.
The rage still burned in my veins and I felt myself sobering, hesitating. No, I kept hearing. Pick them up, a voice said, so I did. Their weight felt good in my hands, comfortable. I breathed three breaths before gripping their handles and twirling them quickly in my palms. Even drunk, I could slaughter anything that moved. I was made to hunt. And hunt you shall, the voice urged.
I nodded and stood, shutting the passenger side door, tucking the blades into the back of my jeans, and camouflaging them with my shirt. My boots echoed with each step back toward the bar, heavy and dark like the night that surrounded me, like the thoughts in my head.
The adrenaline seared through my body, heightening every nerve, intensifying every sense. My heart pounded like a bass drum in my chest, pressing painfully against my ribs. My skin burned with anticipation.
I reached for the door handle.
“Where do you think you’re going?” a voice whispered, startling me.
I stopped, one hand on the handle. “Finley, go home,” I ordered her.
She stood from her leaning position against the outside wall of the bar, out of the shadows, and walked toward me. Her eyes seared through me. She came to me, stood closely, the heat from her body enveloping me.
“No, I don’t think I will,” she told me, looking up into my eyes. “At least not alone.”
She stood tenaciously, fearlessly. I noted how much taller she was than Cricket and it was a little bit intimidating to me, like what she said was going to happen whether or not I liked it. I respected her and I didn’t know why. I stared at her hard, but she didn’t budge. No, instead, she strengthened her own resolve, her jaw tightening with the decision and glared back even harder. She said and did things with such righteous authority, I felt powerless to her. I’d never felt that way before about a woman. It wasn’t pushy or irrational, it was simply as it was going to be.
My eyes and face relaxed the moment I acquiesced. “Fine.”