Page 131 of Primal

My eyes burn behind the mask. Every breath scrapes.

I want to stop. Need to.

She drags me under.

A spasm wrings me out from spine to fingertips. My knees hit the altar. My jaw locks so tight I see stars.

Then it’s over.

No relief. Just a sick, hot surrender.

I choke on air. On everything I couldn’t fucking stop. On the ruin I left her in.

Even now—

I still finish.

The worst part?

When her body gave in—I felt like I won.

That’s how I know I’ve lost everything.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The basketball clangs off the rim.

Max groans, collapsing onto the driveway. “You’re watching wrong.”

I toss the ball back at him. “You’re breathing wrong.”

The air’s a wet fist in my lungs, and Max is sprinting suicide drills on the driveway like a kid who mainlined Mountain Dew. His basketball’s been dead for days, but he swears it’s just ‘broken in.’

He chucks it at the hoop. Misses. Again. “You suck at fun.”

“Fun’s overrated.”

I flick the ball at his ribs. It bounces off and rolls into Mom’s corpse of a flowerbed. Max groans louder.

I should care. I don’t. Mom’s been on a bender, slurring about Max’s ‘rat-faced genes’ and how the AC’s stealing her life savings. Fourth time this week I found her passed out on the couch—vodka bottle still in her hand.

Across the street, a moving truck’s parked in the driveway of that yellow house. Two of the movers are trying—and failing—to maneuver a loveseat through the front door. The third’s arguing with a twenty-something woman holding a clipboard, looking two seconds away from homicide.

Her red hair’s loose, straight with a lazy wave. Pale legs under cutoff shorts, tank top sticking to her skin. Her voice carries—yelling at them as if they just keyed her car.

Max shields his eyes. “Who’s that?”

“Trouble.”

“She seems tough. Think Mr. Petrovski’s gonna haunt her?”

I push my glasses up. “Doubt it. Ghosts have standards.”

The woman turns—spots us. And, like every other human on the planet, she immediately beams at Max.

“Should we tell her to stay away from his bathtub? What if—”

I hush Max as she marches over. Up close, her eyes are this insane green. Fuck knows how she can be this sunbright and furious at the same time.