Pretty Perfect Toy - Angel Payne Page 0,35

frozen in the graveyard of my heart, so afraid of disturbing the ghosts that I’m unable to move…to live.

I just need to tell that to the ghosts.

Especially the most tenacious one.

“All right.” Ella finally pushes it out on a resigned sigh. “Do what you must.” Mutters something under her breath mentioning stars and faith and terrified saints. The little monologue becomes sexy with shocking speed, forcing me to step back before everyone in the hallway gets to take a camping trip courtesy of the tent in my jogging pants.

“I won’t be long.”

“I shall burn your feet with that.”

“Huh?” Doyle mutters.

“Hold my feet to the fire?” I circle her waist, yanking her close once more. Pain pinballs up my arm because of it, but I’m beyond caring. My woman. The more it rides over the repeat button in my mind, the more incredible it sounds—and the more I wonder if it wasn’t in there all the time, from the moment I met her.

The more right it sounds…

The faster I need to get myself right—

For her.

When our lips ease away from each other’s, I keep her close, needing to capture every facet of sapphire life from those huge eyes. Needing all the fortitude her nearness can bring, before I have to let it go for one of the shittiest mornings of my life.

*

I arrive at the cemetery a good hour before dawn. Wait in the truck, getting used to returning emails on my phone with my left thumb instead of my right, while waiting on the groundskeepers to arrive. That goes well for a while, until it’s clear that Singapore has gotten wise to the fact that I’m awake and on line, and messages start flooding in.

And the photo album on my phone beckons like fun new candy.

No. Even better—now that the folder is filled with pictures of a certain Arcadian sorceress.

The throb in my body eases.

The weight on my mind feels lighter.

The smile on my lips is huge.

Suddenly, the morning becomes a tribute to her. The sunrise streams through the trees in textures of gold and umber, like her incredible hair. Birds call to each other, pure and free, like the music of her laughter. And the brightening blue in the sky is always, always the magic of her eyes. Eyes that always give me so much. Believe so completely in me.

Giving me the guts to finally rev the Ford’s engine and follow the groundskeepers through the cemetery’s wooden gates.

It’s a small and unassuming place, though my belly would be just as tight a knot if driving into fucking Woodlawn, past Jay Gould and Joseph Pulitzer. No bullshit like any of this for me. In the “personal affairs” I’ve been ordered by an army of lawyers to have in order, I’ve dictated specific instructions about where to put my carcass when the world decides it’s done with me—and in the ground is not it. I’ve already served enough years in a dark, dirty box. It was called a New Jersey tenement.

But that’s not the piece of the past I’m here to visit.

Today, it’s all about the asshole buried in the knoll ahead.

Though his plot is marked by a simple stone plate in the ground, I’ve long since memorized its location. No surprise, since I’ve been visiting the fucking thing for nearly the last fifteen years.

The words on the plaque are simple.

Damon Matthew Marcus Court

Beloved Son – Cherished Brother

The dates beneath aren’t worth getting into. They mean nothing, since my brother’s spirit was gone long before his body.

Since he let the drugs take it.

My stomach matches my arm for pain. My throat convulses, battling the heat of the sick, the surge of the anger.

Always the goddamn anger.

“Shit.” It escapes me in a slow, burning hiss. I long to let my body drop the same way, just giving in to the weariness in my spirit, but I dig deep to keep my legs locked. You don’t get my surrender today, brother. You don’t get my tears.

“You shouldn’t have even gotten the house call, asshole. You don’t deserve it.”

The wind picks up, giving brief reprieve from the muggy slush calling itself air.

My core remains ice, congealed by pure fury.

Just before the heat ambushes the backs of my eyes.

“Goddamn you, Damon.”

I huff hard. Stab a foot into the grass, deep enough to reach the muck of mud beneath, and lob a small heap of it over. Watching the stuff ooze like shit over my brother’s name.

And instantly want to do it again.

“Mom isn’t here to