Page 74 of Craving Venom (The Venomous Beauty Trilogy #1)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

THE BEAUTY

I should be thinking about school. My project. The life I’m supposed to give a shit about. But all I’ve been doing for the past six hours is reading Reddit threads and dark net leaks that aren’t even verified.

My laptop’s overheating against my thigh, but it’s a good distraction. My brain finally latched onto something that isn’t cock and the way Zane made me fucking beg for him like I didn’t know better.

I’m neck-deep in a Reddit thread titled: The Nighthawk – Facial Mapping Breakdown Theory v12.6.

Fifty-seven comments. Forty-seven of them unhinged. One asshole swears he’s pieced together the jawline behind the mask using dream interpretation. Another posted a sketch that looks like Batman fucked a scarecrow and forgot the condom. I scroll through every last one.

My phone buzzes beside me.

Tria’s name lights up the screen.

It’s the fourth time today. The forty-eighth since I stopped answering. She’s trying. I know she is. But every time I hear her name, my stomach knots and my face burns because I know the second she looks at me, she’ll know something’s off.

I groan and roll over, smashing my face into my pillow.

If I see her, I’ll crack. I’ll blurt out the truth in one breathless, fucked-up confession.

Tria wouldn’t scream. She’d just go quiet.

That’s worse.

So I ignore the call. Just like I’ve ignored all the others.

It stops ringing.

My thumb slides over the screen.

The Criminal Archives screen lights up, the last chat thread I opened glowing at the top with Zane’s name still sitting there.

Harmless. That’s what I thought when we first started talking. When he typed like he had too much time and not enough humanity. When I’d ask him about blood patterns and he’d answer like it was poetry.

“The veins in the thighs pop first. It’s almost beautiful.”

I thought he was full of shit.

Thought it was bravado. Persona. A caged wolf pretending to be something bigger.

But that’s just bullshit, right?

You can’t ever label someone like Zane as harmless.

I scroll through the chat history.

My messages are so naive I want to delete them just to stop feeling secondhand embarrassment. Asking him if he believes in redemption. Telling him how people can be changed. Laughing when he told me not to test him.

I tested him.

And now I know.

Zane doesn’t just carry violence.

He is violence.

I drop the phone onto the sheets and roll onto my back.

My thighs rub and I feel that familiar ache again, right between my legs, the one that makes my breath stutter and my shame spike.

I could touch myself. It wouldn’t take much.

Just one memory. Just the image of his mouth against my breast or the way he gripped my hair when I tried to pull away.

But I don’t.

Because if I come thinking about him again, I won’t be able to pretend it was not my choice.

I don’t register the front door opening until I hear the scream.

“Jesus, Faith—!”

I jolt upright as my heart slams into my ribs. My blanket tangles around my legs as I scramble halfway off the bed.

A pissed Tria stands in the doorway, holding her phone in one hand and the fake key she swore she’d never use in the other.

My throat locks up. “What the fuck—how did you—?”

She tosses the key on the desk as if it’s proof I’m the criminal. “You’ve ignored forty-eight calls. I thought you were dead. Turns out you’re just hiding in a fucking cave.”

I rub a hand over my face, trying to will the blood back into my veins. “I’m not... I’m just not feeling myself, okay?”

“No shit you’re not,” Tria snaps, pacing like she’s trying not to throw something. “You haven’t been yourself since Halloween.”

“Tria, I swear—”

She cuts me off. “Is it because of that shadowy figure?”

My stomach flips.

“What?” I blink. “What shadowy figure?”

“Don’t play dumb. You think I don’t see things? I’ve been coming by almost every night. Trying to catch you in person since you won’t answer shit.”

I open my mouth to form a question, but nothing comes out except the sound of my sanity caving in on itself.

“I know you’re seeing someone,” she throws over her shoulder. “I’m not stupid, Faith.”

“I’m not—”

“You’re glowing like someone railed you against a wall and made you see God.”

My face burns so fast I nearly combust on the spot. “Okay. Wow.”

“Am I wrong?” She stops, crosses her arms, and leans one hip against the dresser.

“I’m not seeing anyone,” I flounder.

Her expression dies in real time.

Tria’s face goes from smug to horror-movie-reveal in less than a second. “Then who the fuck have I been seeing in your room?”

“I just found out about this ghost, okay? Don’t look at me like I scheduled it on my Google calendar!”

“You’re telling me someone’s been standing in your room at night, and you don’t know who the hell it is?”

“No one is in my room,” I bark, because saying anything else makes my skin crawl. “I’m here. I’d notice if some creep jerked off on my pillow.”

“Would you, though?” Tria snaps, spinning my face to the room. “Look around, Faith. Just—look.”

I do.

At first, nothing clicks. It’s just my dorm.

But then my eyes land on the desk. The papers are stacked. My mug is rinsed and resting on a coaster. My jacket’s hanging on the back of the chair, not draped on the floor where I usually let it die.

The books are shelved.

The bed is made, or, was, before I unmade it with a night full of anxiety and not-masturbating.

And the garbage bin is empty.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” Tria mutters. “Holy fucking shit. Your place hasn’t been this clean since freshman year, and you didn’t even live here freshman year.”

I step forward slowly, scanning everything like I’ve just realized I woke up in the wrong dimension.

She points at my desk. “You don’t line your pens like that.”

I glance down.

They’re color-coded.

I don’t color-code for God’s sake.

“Maybe I… cleaned without noticing?”

Tria deadpans at me.

“Faith. You don’t clean. You call your mess ‘personality.’”

I run a hand through my hair and laugh. “Okay, maybe I do have a ghost boyfriend.”

Tria narrows her eyes. “No, see, now I think you’re being serious and I want to vomit.”

“I don’t know who it is,” I say again, but my stomach’s turning and I know I’m lying—not to her. To myself.

Because some part of me does know.

Or suspects.

Or wants to pretend I don’t know that someone could slip in and out without a trace. Someone who already had his hands around my throat. Someone who watched me sleep and didn’t kill me because he didn’t want to.

“Are you scared?” Tria asks quietly.

I hesitate.

Then nod.

“Yeah. But I think the worst part is… I’m scared of how not scared I am.”

“What does that even mean, Faith?”

I drop onto the bed as if my legs forgot how to hold guilt. My mouth opens, then closes. My fingers twist in the blanket as if that’s going to keep the shame down.

“You remember Zane Valehart?” I ask quietly.

“You fucked him?”

I cover my face with both hands and groan like I can actually fold myself out of existence. “Yes. Okay. Yes. I fucked him. I fucking fucked him. And it was… really fucking good and now I think he’s maybe watching me while I sleep and possibly color-coding my pens, I don’t know.”

The silence that follows is somehow worse than judgment. I peek through my fingers.

Tria’s staring, but not with horror.

More like she’s buffering.

“Okay,” she says slowly.

I stare.

That’s it?

No gasping? No “Oh my God, Faith, he’s a murderer?”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.” She sits on the edge of the bed. “I mean, he’s hot. Intense. Terrifying. But hot.”

“Tria.”

“What?”

“I literally fucked a convict.”

She shrugs. “You’re not a child. He’s not your teacher. You didn’t break the law, you broke your back.”

“Tria!”

She laughs.

I cover my face again. “Why aren’t you disgusted?”

She leans back on her palms and shrugs. “Because you’re not. And because we both know your vagina’s never had good taste in men. At least this one didn’t fake his death.”

“That’s… fair. So, you’re not judging me?”

“No,” she says softly. “I’m worried about you. But not because you got dicked down by a guy with a record. I’m worried because you’re scared and you won’t talk to anyone about it. You think you have to deal with this shit alone.”

I stare down at the floor. “I thought I’d be embarrassed.”

“You should be.”

My head snaps up.

She grins. “Not about him . About lying to me.”

My guilty expression does all the talking.

Tria sees it immediately. Her smirk drops, replaced by a look that borders on dread.

“You’re hiding more,” she says, and it’s not a question. It’s a statement.

“I knew Zane before the prison visit.”

“What?”

“That whole field trip bullshit? I pushed for it. Suggested it. Hyped it up like I wanted to get extra credit when really… I just wanted to see him. I found him on this site. Criminal Archives. You know that database where you can message convicts? It started as research. He had a weird psychological profile. So I messaged him.”

Tria’s blinking like I just said I’ve been pen-pals with Ted Bundy.

“It was harmless at first,” I say quickly. “Just… messages. He answered as though he was bored, maybe curious. I thought it was just some locked-up guy flexing for attention.”

She doesn’t interrupt. Which is worse.

“Then Halloween happened,” I whisper. “He came to see me.”

Tria’s face goes slack.

“Don’t tell me—” she starts, already paling. “Don’t fucking tell me the lucky girl in the shadow room was you.”

I look away.

She doesn’t need the confirmation.

“Jesus Christ, Faith.”

“I didn’t want it,” I blurt. “Not at first. I was scared.”

“But then you did want it.”

I nod slowly.

“And he kept coming back,” I add. “Bolder every time. He told Harrington he was my boyfriend, then laid out a display of my exes’ eyes just because I wouldn’t give him the time of day.”

I don’t tell her about the snakes.