Page 63 of Ruining Him

This day just keeps getting more insane by the minute.

THIRTY-FIVE

COLE

Lana ignores me—because of course she does—and starts pulling shit out of her pockets. I use the flashlight on my phone to see what she’s doing more clearly and see her throwing some stuff on the ground. A few receipts, three knives, a condom, a mini first aid kit, a lighter and… lighter fluid?

“Are you fucking Mary Poppins or something? How much shit do you fit in your pockets?” I grunt.

She smirks. “Just the essentials.”

She sprays the bodies on the ground with the lighter fluid, and rather than being quick about it, she pauses on one of the guys who were a few feet away from the fight, staring down at him with a frown on her face.

“You know him?”

“I knew all of them, but he was someone I would have actually considered a friend.”

Okay… some friend he was.

She shakes herself out of whatever thought loop shewas stuck in and pours the rest of the fluid on him before grabbing the lighter.

She lights it up and throws it down on the guy she was fighting—Dominic, I think she called him—before taking a couple of steps back so she’s standing beside me. I didn’t notice it at the time, but she must have trailed the fluid between them because as soon as Dominic’s body goes up in flames, a line of fire reaches the other two guys, and they burn up too.

She crouches and begins picking up everything she dropped to the floor while searching her pockets. I grab the gun that was discarded on the floor and hand it to her.

“Now what?” I ask.

“Now we leave.”

“Leave? We just leave them here where anyone could find them?”

She sighs, and I know she’s got to be tired and in pain. “Look, Cole. I lit them up to get rid of any of our DNA. These guys are professionals, they don’t have fingerprints or dental records or anything that could ever identify them, so when they’re found, the cops will be running around like headless chickens trying to figure out who they are, and they’ll never be able to identify us as being here. There’s nothing to worry about, okay? Trust me. This isn’t my first time.”

That really isn’t as reassuring as she thinks it is.

“Come on. If we follow this trail by the river, it leads to the woods near your cottage,” she mutters, and that makes me pause.

It’s really that fucking easy, huh?

“How do you know that?” I ask as I follow her between the trees, still using my phone to light up the ground.

“Because I’ve walked it before,” she admits, and the pieces click into place.

“That night, when me and Logan found you in the trees near our place, it’s because you came this way, isn’t it?”

“Yup. Now stop your yapping and get walking. I need a shower.”

The walk back to campus is silent other than the snapping of twigs as we walk, and it doesn’t take as long as I thought it would to get back to the cottage. I’m about to cross over the backyard to enter my place when I realize that Lana is still walking.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“I’m going home.”

Not on my watch.

“The fuck you are. You’re going to get your ass into my place.”

A growl rumbles from her. “I’m not in the mood tonight, Cole.”