Page 71 of Rule the Night

None.

Men didn’t have to worry about “staying safe.” They didn’t even have to think about it.

I stared at my computer. Ethan Todd’s next video was queued up for viewing, but honestly, I just couldn’t. I was tired.

So, so tired.

I just wanted to crawl into bed, replay my time with Poe in the studio, remember what it felt like to be consumed by him.

Because the truth was, the whole world had felt dangerous since June’s murder. But for that hour with Poe in his studio? I’d felt safe.

And that might have been the most dangerous thing of all.

43

REMY

“I can’t believethis stupid motherfucker,” I muttered on our way out of town.

Bram drove the Hummer while I stared out the window, sulking about the fact that I had to spend my Saturday doing such a dumb fucking errand.

“He’ll learn,” Bram said, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses. “Or he won’t, in which case he’ll find a nice resting spot up on the mountain.”

“At least the interns brought him in.”

The term was a running joke, our name for the shiftless street toughs who had potential, the ones we paid to do the grunt work in our operation.

“True.”

It was bad enough we had to go to the warehouse on a Saturday. At least Brick was already waiting.

“You try any of that peach thing Maeve made last night?” I guess it was off topic, but the truth was, Maeve never felt off topic, owing to the fact that I spent almost every waking moment — and more than a few of my sleeping ones — thinking about her.

“No.” Bram’s voice was tight, like it always was when one of us mentioned Maeve.

After almost a month, he was still a total dick to her, which shouldn’t have been a surprise since Bram was a total dick to everyone.

But Maeve was different, and I knew she was different because instead of being an outright asshole, Bram’s dickishness toward her came in the form of pretending she didn’t exist.

Bram was usually more assertive when he didn’t like someone, which was how I knew that wasn’t the problem.

“Me neither,” I said, thinking about the golden crust surrounding a bed of glittering peaches, like a pie but without the pan. “But man, I wanted to.”

I wasn’t often tempted by desserts, but Maeve worked a hell of a lot of magic in the kitchen. The meals she made to my macro specs were plenty delicious, but I could hardly ever justify a taste of her desserts, and I’d gotten used to drooling over rich chocolate cakes, pastries that looked lighter than air, and pies that made me want to grab a fork and go to town without even bothering with a plate.

“Don’t get used to it,” Bram said, turning onto the main highway leading away from Blackwell Falls.

“That why you never eat her desserts?”

He flipped me off without a word, which was how I knew I’d hit pay dirt. If my question hadn’t landed, he would have had some kind of quippy response. His wordless middle finger meant he didn’t trust himself to speak.

I knew him though. Like I knew Poe. Like they both knew me.

Bram would have given his left nut for some of Maeve’s homemade desserts. The fact that he refused to eat them spoke volumes. Fucker was probably beating off with a Snickers in one hand while Poe single-handedly devoured every treat Maeve took out of the oven.

We took the second exit off the highway and entered a long stretch of flat land touched with gold. There were fields of sunflowers, corn, and lots of things I couldn’t make out from the road, industrial sprinklers dropping water on the crops.

These were the small towns outside of Blackwell Falls where generational farming was still a thing and the farmers hauled their crops to the Blackwell Farmers Market every Saturday until the first snowfall.