Page 78 of Carry Your Debt
“High? Um. Day before the Symposium.”Blunts in an abandoned lifeguard hut with a certain curly-haired trickster.
“Seriously?”
Am I?
Maybe I’ve thrown back a few Xannies here and there…but nothing even close to the usual amount.
The realization is like soft prickles across my scalp, and Ireallydon’t like scalp prickles. They usually precede either a need for self-preservation or a need for self-reflection, and right now?
A little of column A, a little of column B.
“Maybe I should pump the breaks then, especially if we’re going to all be working together,” I offer, half-heartedly.
That has D instantly slamming to a stop and choking out a laugh. “Did you seriously just imply you shouldn’t shit where you eat?!” His huge body bends at the waist with his mirth.
“Fuck.No,whatI meant was—”I start to grumble, and if I could still blush, I think my face would be hot enough to land me a bed in the burns ward.
Kill me now.
I pick up my pace.
“I think we’re a little past that, don’t you?” the shithead continues in the same teasing tone as he dogs my steps.“Because, I mean,I’vedefinitely eaten where y?—”
“Don’t even think about finishing that fucking sentence, Orbison,” I groan like I’ve been shot. “What Imeant, was: I’ve already got you and Zeus, right? I don’t needthatmuch free-range dick to get through the day.”
“Wow,” Dio murmurs, his steps stuttering for a moment.
I glance at him with a frown. “What? Youcanhave too much of a good thing, you know,” my stupid mouth says. “Haven’t you ever accidentally killed a plant by overwatering it before?”
“Wow,” he breathes again, massive shoulders pulling up around his neck as he looks away.
The oddly defensive posture is a completely foreign one, and it’s answered by a sharpcrack, deep within the core of my chest.
Suddenly, I can’t evenlookat the man I’ve let consensually violate me in a hundred different ways.
I surge forward, ignoring as Dio calls my name.
Can’t a girl just have a crisis of conscience in peace?
All he gets is my back as I push through the Underground’s heaving crowd. With the second round only just concluding, the place is packed to the brim with milling pundits, most of them now reeking of sweat and cheap booze.
The only way in or out of the hidden arena is through a decommissioned fire door that leads out onto a branch of subterranean tunnels beneath the Guardhouse.
Dio doesn’t call my name again as I push through it, just lets his heavy footsteps rattle the rusty metal catwalk as he shadows me.
As soon as I reach the central walkway, I plunge in the opposite direction to the way we came in, not exactly sure where I’m even headed. I’ve only been down here once before, and that was when I was half out of my mind, thanks to Sloane’s hotshot ofAsphodel.
I stomp along in silence until finally, I spot a familiar fire exit through the semi-darkness.
And when I shove through it, I find myself standing at the bottom of the same alley again. With the same putrid-smelling dumpster. The same fenced dead-end, still littered with cigarettes, and the same steep incline back to street level.
I let out a strangled wheeze at the irony.
Because it’s also the same place I first stepped across that invisible line with The Rox Boys.
I think it’s different, with them.You’redifferent.
The place the first of these cursed fucking dominos had begun to fall.