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If I could do the one thing even the famous Aaron Warner Anderson couldn’t do, maybe they’d finally respect me.
Instead, they’ve assigned me an elf who needs to stand on tiptoe to reach my neck. It feels like I’m being assaulted by a flower.
Doll Hands is a serial killer. My pants were getting tight over a serial killer. Kenji is going to love this.
Something stirs in my chest when she speaks, and mentally I punch myself in the crotch.
They’re aiming weapons in my direction I’ve never even seen. Huge, heavy, scary, neon shit. They look awesome. I want one.
I don’t believe they’re really this stupid, that they’d really let me walk out of a highly secured prison/laboratory with all their awesome guns.
I’d bet all my clothes plus the very excellent hair on my head that these things have trackers in them.
I should’ve known for sure it was a trap a few beats earlier, when they sent a gorgeous murderer into my prison cell to distract me with her gorgeousness.
“I thought you were annoying as a child. I was right. I thought you might grow out of it. I was wrong. Now you seem to think you’re a superhero. You walk through the world like nothing can touch you. I don’t know why you smile so much. Kent knew better than to smile so much. I certainly never taught you to smile. Shut up,” he said, when I tried to point out that he smiled all the time these days.
“One day that overzealous optimism is going to get you into trouble. You think I’m being hard on you. I am. It’s because I don’t want you to die, you idiot.” I smile at the memory. That’s as close as he ever comes to saying I love you, little brother.
What would Aaron Warner Anderson do? Because that’s the question I’m about to answer. And he taught me everything I know.”
“She’s getting married? The serial killer is getting married next week to some douchebag named Sebastian Alastair von Douchebag the Fourth?”
“I’m living Kenji’s dream right now,” I whisper, still petting the bird’s head. “Except for all the blood, I’m basically a fairy-tale prince. All I need is a musical number and a fairy godmother. Now get the fuck out of here.”
“I’ve never been on one of these things before.” My seatmate seems unimpressed, but he’s been dead for at least twenty minutes now, so no surprise there.
Before I raided the glove box for snacks, I made sure to check him for weapons.
A soldier slams the butt of his gun into her eye so hard I hear the crack of bone, and when her sister screams for the fourth time, it practically rewrites my DNA. “All right, fuck it,” I mutter, grabbing Jeff’s gun from the overturned trike. “Let’s do something stupid.”
“You’re worth more alive than dead.” “You know,” he says, squinting at me through the smoke, “beautiful girls are always saying things like that to me. It’s starting to go to my head.”
“You hurt my family,” he says, leaning in, “and you will meet a very different version of me, Rosabelle. I will take you apart. And then I’ll feed you, one piece at a time, to the vultures.”
Warner turns to look at me with a cool, inscrutable expression, and suddenly he’s not my oldest brother, my mentor, my role model, the guy I’ve been living with for ten years. Right now Warner embodies every inch of his reputation, and I swear my life flashes before my eyes.
“They’re for my wife,” Warner says sharply. “What? You have a wife?” Kenji throws his arm around Warner and squeezes. “You’re married? Congrats, man. I had no idea. You literally never mention it.” “Shut up.”
He’s the only guy I know who can wear a lavender crewneck and still be terrifying.
“You will apologize to Juliette. You will do it today. You will sit with her for as long as she likes, and you will not tell her stories about being exploded out of a tree or having your organs harvested. You will never do this to her again.” He stops suddenly, turns to face me. “Do you understand me? You will never, ever do something this stupid again or I swear to you, James, you will live to regret it.”
“Juliette spoiled you.” “You spoiled me,” I shoot back. “Shut up.”
Warner looks instantly disgusted. “Ten years of living with me—learning from me—and you still resort to profanity. I blame Kent. He raised you to think it was okay to speak like a criminal.”
She’s not expecting to be treated with humanity.” “Humanity?” I say with a smile. “You sound like Juliette right now.” He stops to look through the window. “I know you meant that as an insult, so consider yourself lucky I like you enough not to murder you for disrespecting my wife.”
“Because she’s been saying your name in her dreams.” A shock of pleasure moves through me. Automatic endorphin rush. “What? Really?” “No.” “Wow, okay, fuck you.”
“Living with you while you were going through puberty, for example, was a unique kind of hell. Sometimes I think you’re still going through puberty.” I scowl. “I don’t like hearing you say the word puberty. In fact, I don’t think I need to hear you say that word ever again—”
“Winston calls it depressing chic.”
“You don’t have to worry so much.” “That’s like telling water not to be wet,” Kenji mutters, crunching popcorn again. “This man lives to worry about you. It’s his favorite thing to do. Between worrying about you and talking about you and frolicking through fields aggressively shouting your name at wildlife, I’m surprised the man has any time left to fuck with the world.”
“She can murder whoever she wants,” Warner says flatly. “Don’t stifle her.”
“Write that down,” Kenji says. “Remember this moment. Hell, make it the title of your memoir: Being Human Makes You Weak, by Aaron Warner Anderson.”
“This is genuinely insulting,” I say to Warner. “You think I don’t know how to handle myself? I’m twenty-one years old. You were two years younger than me when you led a fucking revolution—” “Language!” Kenji says gleefully, grinning as he rips open a bag of potato chips. “—and everyone around here still treats me like I’m a child. I’m not a child. Maybe you didn’t notice, but I grew up a long time ago. Maybe it’s time you stopped treating me like I don’t know how to wipe my own ass—”
“Don’t mess this up today.” “What’s that?” I cup my hand to my ear. “You think I’m more handsome than you? Smarter than you? Taller than you?” Warner sits up in his chair, his eyes flashing. “You’re right,” I say, darting up the stairs. “I crossed a line. Won’t happen again—”
After so many years being dead inside, James makes me feel alive.
It’s more about the way she looks at me, like I’m brand-new, like each time she sees me it’s the first time, like it blows her mind.
“Like, just paying attention. I pay attention to you.” She turns pink. Almost all of her turns pink. It’s fucking adorable. I want to die.
I don’t like that I look forward to seeing him, that I’ve been waiting for him to come back, that I’ve almost finished counting the scatter of freckles across the bridge of his nose. Seven.
I accidentally brushed against her going through a doorway and the way my body reacted you’d think she’d pinned me to the wall and offered to unzip my pants.
She murmurs a thank-you to him, and he kisses her forehead, the tender exchange making me restless, like I need to exit my body. Growing up with these two has ruined me for regular relationships. I want what they have.
“I warned you,” he says softly, and I stiffen, my heart stopping. “I told you if you hurt my family you’d meet a very different version of me. Try anything with me tonight, and I will take you apart, Rosabelle. Do you understand? I will fucking destroy you. I don’t care who you report to back home. Right now, you take orders from me.”
“She’s not wearing any underwear, either, are you going to go around asking ladies to lend you their bras, too?” and I imagined, briefly, jumping off a bridge.
I hate that she’s everything I hoped she wouldn’t be.
