Page 26 of Deep Feelings & Shallow Graves

Jennifer

The spot’s quiet. Like nature knows I’m up to something and is politely fucking off so it doesn’t have to testify later.

I’m standing on this dirt patch in the middle of a godforsaken hiking trail like I’m about to propose to the forest. Which I might.

If it agrees to help me hide a body. There’s a nice dip in the soil by the thornbushes, nature’s shallow grave starter kit.

I’ve been pacing around it like it’s a crime scene re-enactment hosted by someone having a very public breakdown.

This is it. I should’ve brought trail mix. Or whiskey. Or a therapist. Instead, I brought six weapons and a protein bar. One of those choices was correct.

I check my phone again for the sixteenth time in ten minutes. Nothing from Carson. No “on my way,” no cryptic skull emoji, no sexy brooding selfie next to his cruiser with the caption “Murder me, mommy.”

I’ve been stood up. On Murder Day.

“Goddammit,” I say, yanking a blade out of my boot just to check if it still feels right. It doesn’t. It’s too stabby. Not enough fuck you.

I tuck it back and try the little gun from Carson I hid in my bra.

Hmm. Very climactic looking. Sleek. Cold.

Feels like it belongs in a dramatic revenge montage scored by Billie Eilish.

But maybe too clean? I don’t want Walter to just go quietly into that good night.

I want him to trip into it. Land on his face. Possibly be insulted on the way down.

I rummage in my bag for the meat tenderizer. It’s decorative. Chrome finished. Engraved with little flowers. Practically poetic. I give it a few test swings. It makes a very satisfying thunk against my palm.

“Hi Walter,” I coo to the trees, pacing like a lunatic in a bad one-woman play. “Remember me? The woman you tried to break? Surprise, bitch, it didn’t take.”

I spin. Rehearse the motion again. Almost trip over a root. Mutter obscenities at a squirrel. I’m losing it. Fully off the leash.

I check the phone again.

Still nothing.

Cool. Love that for me. Just a girl, on a murder cliff, with abandonment issues and an unregistered weapon collection.

If Carson doesn’t show, I will be dragging Walter’s corpse down this hill by myself like a demented pack mule with rage issues and a bad knee. I’ll do it. I’ll absolutely do it. But I’ll bitch about it the entire way.

And maybe cry.

God, I hope this doesn’t stain my new boots.

There’s a rustle of leaves behind me. Followed by the crunch of boots on dry dirt.

It’s not Carson’s boots. Carson walks like a cop, measured, heavy, full of judgement and unspoken boners.

This is cockier. Like someone who thinks the trail should applaud because he’s gracing it with his orthopedic mall shoes.

“Seriously?” a voice calls out, oozing arrogance like it’s a cologne note. “A business meeting in the woods? I should’ve known. This has your brand of crazy written all over it.”

I turn.

And there is Walter Fucking Lane. Wearing the same smug face he used to wear while explaining how I “just didn’t understand what real intimacy meant.” Except now he’s older. Puffier. His hairline is in retreat. But his ego is still bloated enough to block the sun.

My mouth goes dry.

He stops a few feet away, gives me a once-over like he’s appraising a dented car. “Wow,” he says. “You got old.”

I pause, processing the sheer, uncut dickhead he wears like a letterman jacket. “Still trying too hard, huh?” I shoot back, eyes dragging over his stupid button-down and the gold chain peeking through like a midlife crisis wormed its way out of his chest hair and made fashion decisions.

He laughs. Like I’m a joke he’s heard before and doesn’t mind recycling. “God, you’re still bitter. I guess nothing’s changed.”

“Actually,” I say sweetly, “I learned how to use a bone saw.”

He squints. Like I’m speaking in riddles instead of murder.

“Still dramatic as ever,” he says, stepping closer. “You said this was about a consultation? Where’s the client? Or is this just another one of your meltdowns in makeup?”

He goes in for a hug. A hug. Like we’re about to share a potluck casserole and forget the time he fractured my rib for talking back about gas bills.

I freeze. Body locked. Breathing shallow.

One hand clenched so tight around the handle of my meat tenderizer that I swear I hear the metal creak.

For a split second, one ugly, slippery second, I’m not here.

I’m back in that kitchen. Cold tile on my face.

His voice above me saying, “See what you made me do?”

I can’t move.

I can’t…

“You know,” he drawls, stepping back and looking me over with a smirk, “it makes sense now. Why none of them stick. All your little boyfriends disappear because you’re broken.

Always have been. Stop pretending you’ll ever find anyone else to put up with your shit and come home.

I’ll forgive, if you ask nicely. On your knees. ”

“Walter?” I say, voice calm.

“Yeah?”

“You just made the list.”

He doesn’t have time to ask what list. I snap like a twig underfoot. Like a bone.

I pull the knife. Then the gun. Then immediately second-guess both. This is why I should’ve brought the decorative axe. Always make a murder statement.

His smile fades as I step forward. He barely has time to register the switch. One second he’s smirking like the patron saint of smug divorcees, the next…

THWACK.

The meat tenderizer connects with his shoulder instead of his skull, because apparently I still crack under pressure and this thing is heavier than it looks.

“Jesus Christ, Jen!” he yelps, stumbling backward, clutching his arm. “What the hell are you doing? Assaulting me with a kitchen utensil?!”

“It’s for meat,” I say, advancing. “Which I now realize you barely qualify as.”

THWACK.

“God, your form is terrible,” he groans, ducking the next swing. “You’re leading with your elbow like you’re trying to paddle a canoe!”

“You’re bleeding on my shirt! You even die like an asshole. Just like the rest of the dumbasses I killed.” I shout, backing him toward a mossy rock. “Do you know how hard it is to get ex-husband out of cotton?!”

“You can’t even do this right,” he pants, tripping slightly. “How’d you manage to kill anyone? Sympathy aneurysms?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I sneer, hurling the meat tenderizer at his knee. He goes down with a yelp. “I left my Murder Choreography binder at home. Didn’t realize I was auditioning for the fucking Bolshoi Ballet!”

He tries to crawl away.

“Stop moving, Walter! You’re making it weird!” I snatch up the tenderizer.

THWACK. THWACK. SQUISH.

“You never finish anything,” he spits, bleeding and still somehow sanctimonious. “It’s always dramatics and tears and then…”

WHAM.

The tenderizer meets skull.

He gurgles something. Probably something smartass.

I pant.

My hair is in my face, sweat sticking my shirt to my back, and I have enough of Walter on me to look like approximately one third of a Costco meatloaf smeared down my left pant leg, and this motherfucker still had the nerve to try and condescend me through blunt force trauma.

I stand over him, blood on my shoes, rage humming through my ribs, and something loosens in my spine. I look down at this red, pathetic pile of ego and khakis.

“You don’t,” I whisper, “get to live in my story anymore.”

WHAM.

Then there’s silence.

Well, except for my heavy breathing. And maybe a few birds tweeting. Nature is a bitch for ambiance.

And suddenly I’m just tired. Deep, whole-body tired. Like my bones are exhaling and the adrenaline handed in its two weeks’ notice and left me to clean up the mess.

I stare down at my shirt. There’s too much blood to salvage it. Of course. This was my nice forest murder shirt.

“Asshole,” I say, toeing his corpse. “Always ruining shit.”

He has nothing to say anymore.

I stand there, blinking like I’ve just come out of a blackout, staring at the corpse of my ex-husband like it’s going to apologize for being heavy and inconvenient.

“Where the hell is my team?” I whisper. Carson said he’d be here. Edgar has the hearse. Blake’s got the muscles. Where the hell is my meat-moving entourage?

I do a frantic 360, hands on hips, breathing like a woman who just finished a very intense Zumba class that ended in homicide.

Nothing. No voices. No footfalls. Not even a squirrel offering me a congratulatory nut.

“Unbelievable. I just performed soul surgery with a kitchen utensil and not one of my boyfriends showed up for the curtain call.”

I glare at Walter’s stupid dead face.

“You couldn’t even die cleanly, could you? No, you had to go out like you lived, messy, dramatic, and leaking bodily fluids on shit that doesn’t belong to you.”

I try to lift him. I get maybe an inch off the ground before gravity kicks me in the tits.

“Oh my god,” I wheeze, dropping him. “You’ve been dead for five minutes and you’re already a burden.”

He flops like a sack of beefy regret. I stumble backward, huffing, hair stuck to my forehead with sweat and... oh no. Is that brain matter?

“This is exactly like our marriage. You make a mess. I clean it up. No help, no thanks, and not even a towel to wipe off with afterward.” I kick the corpse.

He doesn’t respond. Typical.

“I should’ve killed you during the marriage. Would’ve saved on legal fees. And therapy. And dry cleaning.”

My foot hits a rock. I nearly fall into his body. There’s a splatter. On my shoe. On my socks.

I start to cry. Then I start to laugh. Then both, at the same time, which is honestly just my brand now.

I sit down next to him in the dirt, mascara probably melting into war paint, and cackle through snot and tears like some unholy hybrid of Medea and a girl who didn’t eat enough protein this morning.

“This was supposed to be cathartic,” I sob-laugh. “A triumphant full-circle empowerment arc. But no. It’s just me, in the fucking woods, emotionally feral, covered in blood and failing to drag a corpse downhill like some murder-themed CrossFit exercise.”

I wipe my face with my sleeve. It smears.

Somewhere, in the trees, a bird sings a single chipper note.

I flip it off.

“Don’t start with me.”

Leaves shift behind me.

I freeze. Panic slams through my ribcage like a taser to the soul.

Oh no. Oh no. It’s a hiker. It’s a family. It’s a troop of junior scouts here to earn their “Trail Buddy” badge and instead they’re going to find me sitting in a pool of ex-husband juice like some banshee-themed PSA about women’s rights and red flags.

I whip around, ready to bolt or bite, and I see Carson, stepping through the trees like sin in flannel. Determined and built like the answer to every bad decision I’ve ever made. Eyes locked on me like I’m the crime scene. Like he’s already reading me my rights, and I am so, so ready to confess.

My knees give out before I even make it halfway to him. I stumble into his arms, shaking like a leaf on methadone, and he catches me. Warm and solid and growly, like a human safety blanket soaked in bourbon and repressed authority issues.

“You came,” I gasp, clinging to him like he’s the only stable surface in this whole fucked-up forest.

“Of course I did,” he says. His voice is low and furious, but it’s not at me. It never is. “You think I’d let you face that bastard alone?”

I sob into his chest, smearing a little blood onto his shirt, which feels like a reasonable trade.

Behind him, Edgar appears like a stylish hallucination.

Long coat, black gloves, and zero emotional disturbance.

He stops beside Walter’s mangled remains, peers down, and hums like he’s about to suggest a chianti and a small-batch relish.

“A little overdone,” he muses. “But emotionally satisfying. Like a well-roasted duck. Did you tenderize before cooking, or was that a freestyle approach?”

I’m too broken to laugh, so I wheeze instead.

Blake lumbers in next, wide-eyed and red-faced, carrying a cooler and looking like someone just invited him to an impromptu blood orgy and he’s trying to be polite about it.

“Uh,” he says, glancing between the corpse, the murder utensil still glistening in the dirt, and me clinging to Carson like a wet koala.

“Are we… touching the body? Is this a group activity? Should I… do I need gloves?”

“You will,” Edgar says, already rolling up his sleeves like this is a Tuesday afternoon garage clean-out.

“I brought the hearse. You’ll help with the removal.

” He turns to Carson, composed as ever. “You get her home. Fed. Held. Possibly made to climax. Multiple times. Beauty, restoration, et cetera.”

“Already planned on it,” Carson says, casually.

Blake, who has clearly short-circuited somewhere around climax, just nods and follows Edgar to the body like a good murder intern.

And I let myself be held.

For the first time since I laid eyes on Walter, I let my body go slack, let my pulse slow to something less feral. I look at these three beautiful, absurd men, my dark little harem of moral ambiguity and post-homicide grace, and I realize I’m not alone anymore.

I’m sweaty. I’m exhausted. I smell like rage and iron and probably a little pee. But I’m not alone.

And that’s fucking everything.

Carson lifts me like I don’t weigh regret and trauma and 180 pounds of vengeance-soaked catharsis. His arms are solid under me, warm and steady, and I let my head fall against his shoulder, breath catching on a sob that feels too big to swallow but too tired to release.

I should feel ruined. But instead… I feel clean. Hollowed out. Like someone finally scooped out the rot and left space for something else. Something terrifying. Something soft.

“I didn’t think I could do it,” I whisper. My voice sounds like it’s drifting down the mountain ahead of us.

“I never doubted you could,” Carson says.

And the thing is, he means it. Every word. Like it was a foregone conclusion that I’d kill the man who broke me. And he always knew I’d make it out the other side.

I let my fingers curl in his shirt. Blood’s still drying under my nails. My heart thuds steady now, more drumbeat than siren.

“I think,” I say, voice thick, “I’m gonna fuck you in the shower… then the bed… and you’re gonna wear your badge and gun belt.”

He huffs a laugh, low and hungry. “Looking forward to it, sweetheart. You can wear my hat. And finally sit on my face.”

I grin. It’s lopsided. Wet-cheeked. A little unhinged. But it’s real.

Carson carries me toward the car like I’m something precious.

Behind us, I hear Blake nervously asking if they need to bleach the soil and Edgar whistling like he’s rehoming a garden gnome.