Riot Act (Crooked Sinners)

by Callie Hart

As far as I’m concerned, people can be attracted to whoever the fuck they want. Guys. Girls. Sexually ambiguous individuals. Doors. Lamps. Fucking spaceships. Cacti, if they’re brave or weird enough. I, on the other hand, am attracted to girls, and I choose not to venture outside of that category.

He still looks pissed. He’s still coming straight for me. He’s still gonna hit me. But that razor sharp, furious edge in his eyes, the one that said he was going to tear my head right off my shoulders and dance around my bleeding corpse? That shit’s gone now. His girlfriend, Elodie Stillwater, has that effect on him.

Want something? Pax will take it from you. Love something? Pax will destroy it. Love him? Then Heaven help you. You’d have to be the stupidest person to walk the face of the earth.

There is no quiet, redeeming quality that saves Pax from the harsh inevitability that he’s simply a terrible person. So, why then, does my heart still ache for such a monster? Why does it bleed from not having him?

I’ve been bleeding out, one way or another, my entire fucking life. What’s another cut? What’s another drop?

“I’m not fucking kissing you. Why the hell would I do that?” She shrugs. “To see what it feels like to kiss a half-dead girl? To see what it feels like to kiss a girl who’s just as broken as you? Think of it as an experiment.”

But being destroyed by Pax is way better than being eaten alive by the dark memories that threaten to claim me whenever I’m not around him.

Make it clear to her that, when I tell her to do something, she’s supposed to do it. But now that I’m here and I’ve seen her bedroom, I’m beginning to suspect that she’s infiltrating my brain via fucking witchcraft, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to combat that

“She’s just…there. Every time I turn around, she’s there.” “And?” “And when she’s not there, she’s inside my head like some treacherous little worm, polluting my thoughts.”

“A bastard’s touch, the thought of you. Aye, a waking curse upon my days, I endure you like sun and rain, and both the heat and the cold you feel the same. I crawl atop the shattered panes that fell from the windows of the house you did destroy. And I relish the blood that seeps from me, even as I hate you, because it flows only through my wretched veins for you.”

I’m the one who’s embarrassed, in fact, as they trade a long look at each other, staring into each other’s eyes. A lot passes through them in that look. Whole civilizations rise and fall, and universes crumble to ash in the time that passes while they silently smile at each other. I feel wrong just witnessing the intensity of it.

It isn’t until I’m climbing into my own bed, deliciously sore, my muscles melting off my bones, that I realize something: At no point did he wash me off of him. And he was still wearing the friendship bracelet.

“The path of least resistance doesn’t always mean taking the easiest option. Sometimes…it means that your soul finds its way home, toward something it loves, after you’ve held it back for too fucking long. So…do with that what you will, I guess.”

“The path of least resistance doesn’t always mean taking the easiest option. Sometimes it means your soul finding its way home, toward something it loves, after you’ve held it back for too fucking long.”

I want to fight with you and get mad at you. I want to finish our fucking book together, and I want to fall out with you over it. And then I want to make up afterwards. I want to hold you. I want to protect you. I want to feel your head on my chest every night when we fall asleep.

“I welcome the day I lose my mind, Chase. At least then, when I’ve truly lost it, I’ll be oblivious to the fact. I’ll just be crazy. Nothing in the world will matter anymore. I want you to be mine. I—I’m fucking in love with you, Chase. I want to learn how to show you that. I want to make you fucking believe it. ”