Page 88 of Grave Love

In a way, I feel intoxicated, like I have no control over anything. I’m back at the beginning where everything seemed hopeless.

Drug dealers must get their product stolen all the time. If Brody is a doctor, but he’s still giving out medications like this, then he can still potentially lose his product like the others.

It feels personal though. Like it’s an attack on me. I don’t know the doctor, and he doesn’t know me. But it hurts. My lips tremble.

“How?” I whisper.

“When was the last time you saw him?” he asks.

He doesn’t even have to say his name. When I think about it, I realize it’s only been hours.

“This morning,” I say.

“So you haven’t been with him since then?” he asks. “He must’ve stolen it—”

“Blaze?” My chest constricts, squeezing the last blood cells out of my heart. “Blaze stole your product?”

The phone line fills with emptiness. There’s no verbal confirmation; still, the answer is there, strung up between us.

I groan, resting my head against the exterior of the shop. I just want to be done.

I want it to be my choice.

I want to prove to myself that I know what I’m doing. That I have the power to do what I want.

“Can you get more?” I ask quietly.

A beat passes. “If you can take it without him knowing, then yes,” the doctor says. “But he can’t find out.”

It’s what I should’ve done a long time ago.

“Done,” I say.

After we make arrangements for a pickup tomorrow, I hang up, then block Blaze’s number. It’s a step.

Besides, I don’t need to avoid him for much longer.

Chapter33

Blaze

I don’t knowwho I hate more at that moment.

The first option is my brother. My onlylivingblood relative. The fucker who betrayed me because he claims he’s a righteous hero, here to save a lost soul from her terrifying fate.

He’s wrong. He’s not righteous. We’re the same. He sells prescription drugs under the table, even giving people ways to end their own lives. In the end, he’s just searching for that high that makes him feel good about himself, and for him, that’s the idea that he’s doing something positive for the world.

Me? I kill people until it makes me feel something. I don’t pretend to be anything else. I know who I am.

We’re both desperate to make sense of our lives, and we use the hunt as an answer to it all. I’m just not arrogant enough to think I’m better than anyone else.

And then there’sRen.

Ren, the woman who was supposed to be my fourth. My little corpse. My dead girl. An unpredictable force of nature. She gets into her car, completely unaware that I’ve followed her to Rosemary Beach. That while she was out, sitting in front of Last Spring, I drove to my brother’s condo. Stole his shit. Destroyed his perfect little home while I was at it. And while she was waiting for my brother to answer her calls, I fucked with her tires.

My throat is dry, sandpaper rubbing together each time I try to breathe. Ears pounding. Adrenaline rushes through my body. My knuckles are bleeding again, crusted over from the broken glass I left in Brody’s place. If I wasn’t sitting in my car, someone would be dead right now.

Instead, I’m caged in. Held back. Waiting forher.