Page 57 of You Were Warned: Part One

“I liked how things were before—I had my spiders, work, and you.” His eyebrows lift slightly at my words. “I mean, I like what we have.”

“So do I.”

That catches me off-guard, and I glance at him, but he doesn’t look as uncomfortable as I do with the admission. I like how he knows what he wants and isn’t afraid to say it. There is something fundamentally broken inside me, and I blame my mother—somehow this is all her fault. “Now I don’t know what the fuck is happening.”

“With Jester?”

“With anything.”

Rue waits, and that is apparently an invitation for my mouth to betray me.

“How the fuck did my life go from being simple to whatever the fuck this is now? I had you—not had you like owned you, but you know what I mean. We had our thing, and it worked. We fuck, and it’s good. You don’t expect me to sleep beside you and cuddle or talk about my feelings afterwards. I don’t expect you to buy me flowers or remember any stupid anniversary. Sometimes you feed me, and sometimes I threaten to murder your bird. It just works.”

“Pretty Boy likes you.”

“Pretty Boy can eat my ass.”

“Eat ass,” the bird calls from the other room.

I close my eyes and rub my temples. “Your bird is a pervert.”

Rue smiles as I push the plate away. “You taught him that one.”

“I did not.”

He makes an mmhm sound. “You say it enough.”

“That’s beside the point.”

“What is the point?”

I shrug. “I don’t know anymore. Actually, I do. The musical idiot followed me around telling me he loved me, and somehow that was fine because I hated him.”

Rue makes a sound that resembles a cough hiding a laugh.

“I fucking did,” I insist.

“I believe you,” he says, but his smile says otherwise.

“Asshole.”

Rue is anything but an asshole, and somehow he has gotten me to open up. Not even the therapists my mother hired could do that prior to my exile, despite what they were paid to make us fall in line.

“And then he had to go be . . .” I wave my hand because there is no word for what the Jester is. “Him.”

Rue huffs out a laugh. “That clears it up.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I really don’t.”

“He’s so fucking annoying, but then sometimes he isn’t. Then every time I think I know what he’s going to do, he does something completely different. He was supposed to be easy to hate.”

“But?”

I glare at Rue. “He makes it difficult.”

“By?”