Page 46 of Lovesick

The world has polished itself smooth with lies, but she still has edges, sharp enough to draw worship instead of blood. When she laughs, it sounds like a hymn sung out of time, when she looks at me, it’s as if she’s waiting for revelation.

Most would call her unbalanced, but I know her better. She moves like someone who’s seen behind the veil and refuses to look away. There’s holiness in her unravelling, a devotion in her defiance.

She isn’t broken.

She’s chosen.

And somewhere deep in me, something kneels when she smiles.

Most people flinch from that madness, that quiet, beautiful fracture, but I see the truth in it.

In her.

She’s a psychotic fucking monster.

So very perfect for me in every way.

“Penelope,” I speak her name with contempt on my tongue despite the smile on my mouth. “I already told you.”

“No, you didn’t,” she spits back, my smile falling, “we didn't talk about anything!”

She huffs, this overwhelming madness in her eyes as she starts to pace before me, going left to right, right to left, her focus on her feet, words slipping from her teeth I can’t quite hear.

“Penelope.”

“Don’t keep saying my name like that!” she screams at me, stopping still, her hands going to her hair, fisting in the roots, tearing at her scalp. “Shut up,” she breathes out on an exhale, squeezing her eyes closed. “She knows,” she says then, more to herself than me, smoothing her hair back down with her hands, taking in a smooth deep breath.

“Penelope,” I repeat again, her eyes opening, connecting with mine, I smile wide, “your crazy is showing.”

She laughs, raucous and dramatic, head thrown back, mouth open wide, a show, a display of pure insanity.

“You’re fucking her,” she rages.

A statement of words that from so many other women’s mouths were once accurate.

But that here, now, with her, they are the furthest thing from true.

She licks her lips, a smile slowly forming on her face, “You are a beautiful liar, Billy Blackwell.” She grins the last word, curling my name around her tongue like a chant meant to summon what should forever stay sleeping.

And it does.

I come undone, every boundary collapsing, as if she’s called me from the grave I didn’t know I’d dug.

One I am already long rotted in.

I laugh likeI’mthe mad one, lunacy is a strangle of smoke clogging my lungs, I’m closing the distance between us with barely any restraint at all. My hands go to her upper arms, squeezing her biceps so hard it feels like they could go pop. I shake her, her entire body like a ragdoll as I do, her teeth clacking together. Still holding onto her, I bend at the waist, our eyes level, noses so close they could touch, and I catch her scent, roses and earth, something that would normally soothe me, but instead, in this moment, it only fires me up more.

“If I am fucking her.” I’m still smiling and so is she, but neither one of us is happy. “What are you going to do about it, Nells?” The grin on my mouth tastes like battery acid, the words on my tongue poison. “You're gunna kill me, huh?”

I shake her again, so violently it rattles even my own teeth, and my fingers tighten more, pinching her flesh hard enough to bruise.

That's why it makes me pause.

Feeling the little hard tube beneath her skin.

I know what it is without asking, my stomach sinks, a cold wash of sickly heat explodes beneath my skin, goosebumps erupting all over.

I feel as though I can't catch my breath, the air too heavy to inhale, phantom fists tightening around my lungs.