better or for worse.
Something moved in the back of Eric’s eyes. Something that noted the emptiness in her voice. The killer there. “Duly noted.”
She nodded, then opened the door and closed it without goodbyes.
She waited until it had been long enough for Eric to walk down to the car, maybe have an argument with April for not locking it, then leave.
Then she waited a little longer. Then she slipped out the door.
Something had become clear tonight.
She did not know about love, and she never really would. Same with romance. But something as primal as sex, she needed to take it back. She needed to be able to do it on her own terms before she continued on her path.
Orion drove to the bar.
Whether it was a good idea or not, it didn’t matter. She felt in control enough that she wouldn’t crash the car into some family of churchgoers. And she wasn’t exactly worried about being arrested for a DUI, considering she’d killed a man and got away with it.
The bar wasn’t far.
She had intended on continuing to avoid most hard liquors. She needed a clear head for things to come. But what she had planned tonight did not require a clear head. It required a mixture of bravery and stupidity, which conveniently was the side effect of a twenty-dollar cocktail.
She looked good. These days, she always did. Orion had become sort of addicted to clothes and online shopping. April was a bad influence. The small second bedroom in her apartment now served as her closet.
She had an affinity for heels and wore them everywhere. The ones she had on tonight were blood-red, six inches high, and designed by Manolo Blahnik.
She had on a silk, bias-cut skirt that brushed her knees and a loose-fitting sheer shirt that showed the lace of her bra underneath. Orion looked sexy. She didn’t feel it, and she never would. But she was playing a part.
“What’s a girl like you doing drinking alone this late at night?” a voice asked.
Orion rolled her eyes. She had never, not once, been to a bar on her own with the sole purpose of picking up a guy. Then again, she’d never had the opportunity to do such things. But even she knew that was a line.
The owner of the voice and the cliché line was older than her, but not by much. He wore a pink T-shirt and chinos, ugly sneakers that she knew cost three hundred dollars. A haircut she suspected came with the same price tag. She wouldn’t have looked like money when she was younger, but she’d learned quickly the hipsters of today wore clothes similar to her cheap Walmart crap and somehow paid ten times as much for it.
Other than that, he wasn’t terrible to look at. A beard that was groomed within an inch of its life. Nice eyes. Good bone structure.
Orion hated everything about him, including how close he was standing to her. But she held fast. If she could watch a man die, surely she could do this.
She didn’t smile. She didn’t have that in her.
“Hi, I’m Brad,” he said when she didn’t respond, not seeming at all fazed by her silence. “You are an absolute smoke show, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
She gritted her teeth.
She downed the last of her drink and pushed off the sticky bar. Standing, she said, “Hi, Brad. I, in fact, do mind, and my name is simple. You ready for it?” She smirked, cupping a hand to her mouth. “It’s ‘fuck off, I’m leaving,’” she said, and walked toward the door.
Orion wasn’t entirely sure why she didn’t drive home after the bar—she could’ve used the sleep, after all. She also wasn’t sure why she continued on toward Maddox’s house.
She knew where he lived because she’d dropped April off a couple of times but had never gone in. April had stopped trying to convince her.
April had also texted her to let her know she was in the middle of eating the most bomb ass mac and cheese on the planet that Eric had cooked for her—probably trying to sober her up. So, Orion was safe on that front.
They lived in a nice townhouse in a good part of town. That didn’t surprise her. Their parents probably paid for it.
Maddox opened the door not long after she knocked. He was still awake, T-shirt slightly wrinkled. Hair rumpled, eyes bloodshot.
“Orion, what the—?”
“I need you to have sex with me,” she blurted. Not the most graceful of