Page 126 of X's and O's

I’d spent my entire childhood and teenage years swinging around monkey bars, running track, and rock climbing. Then there’d been gymnastics, a year on the cheerleading squad, hockey, and I’d taken a whole semester of ballet one year when I’d turned fifteen and realized I could spend an hour surrounded by girls in leotards.

I could probably still do a mean pirouette if I put my mind to it.

I’d changed sports and after-school activities about as often as I’d changed jobs as an adult. I got bored easily. So sue me. I knew my parents worried about me. They were old-school boomer mentality. Go to college. Get a job. Work in it until you die, and my siblings had mostly followed down that path as well.

They were all very…stable.

The only time anyone had mentioned stable and me in the same sentence was my therapist when she’d labeled me mentallyunstable.

I’d taken that as a compliment.

Stable was boring. Stable couldn’t hold my interest. Stable made me feel like I was in a white room with the walls shrinking down on me until they closed aroundme like a vise. One where I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

If I changed jobs and hobbies as often as I changed my underwear, what did it matter? All I wanted was to be free.

Which was kind of at direct odds with certain other urges I had. Like that pesky one that had taken great delight in slitting a man’s throat tonight. That, combined with my lack of focus, wasn’t always the best duo. I logically knew it was a recipe for getting caught.

And that I wasn’t Levi.

I couldn’t do six years in a box. But of course, if I got caught, my sentence wouldn’t be six years, would it? It would be life. Or worse. If they could tie me back to all the lives I’d taken, I’d be looking at a lethal dose of whatever the hell it was they gave death row prisoners.

I’d be labelled a serial killer.

A monster.

I didn’t feel like one. Not when I went to dinner at my parents’ house and played with my niece and nephew. Not when I was pulling ice cream cones for kids who came running up to my van.

Not when I was with Violet, her pretty blond hair falling down her back in waves, her blue-eyed gaze permanently etched into my brain.

The two sides of my life didn’t mesh. They were night and day. A daily war that battled inside me, and I never knew which side was going to win.

Which scared even me.

“Just climb the fucking balcony, Knox. This is not the place to have an existential crisis.”

The ground-floor apartment had a tall, concreteflowerpot that was home to a really sad-looking plant but also doubled as the perfect step stool. Moving silently, I used it to boost myself up, so I could grasp the bottom of the railing protecting the balcony above. From there, it was easy enough to pull myself up, going higher and higher until I landed quietly on Violet and Toby’s balcony. A row of old Christmas lights weaved their way along the railing, and a bristled doormat that read:Slay! But like, not literally.

I wondered if it had been Violet or Toby who’d picked that one out.

I wiped my shoes on the mat politely, because I knew Violet liked things clean, then changed my mind and took them off completely. Violet probably wouldn’t be thrilled if I left bloody footprints through her apartment.

I was already leaving George’s penis remnants on her door handle.

I screwed up my nose at the thought, trying to push away the urge to gag again.

Men were fucking disgusting. Present company excluded, because I was delightful.

I gave their balcony door a quick, sharp, upward tug, and just like it had last time, it lifted out of the flimsy lock and slid open. I really needed to have a word with her about the lack of security here. It was much too easy for me to get in. If she just wanted to give me a key to her apartment, then I could fix this one for her.

I grinned at the thought of waltzing in through her front door and announcing loudly, “Honey, I’m home!” like my father had every evening for his entire working life, my mother always there with a smile and a kiss.

They were sickeningly sweet, really. But they werecute and still stupidly in love, even after forty years together. Just like Violet and I would be one day.

After I’d gotten rid of Levi and Whip, of course. But they were just a temporary bump in the road.

Violet wasn’t going to choose them over me.

I snuck inside the apartment and padded down the hallway silently in my socks. Toby and Violet both had their bedroom doors closed, and I slipped around Violet’s, quietly closing it behind me.