Page 76 of Trigger Happy

Not me, though, I ate the whole damn cake, and then had to go for a ten-mile weighted run the next day. When I think about Sabrina coming on my fingers, I get that same all-consuming, I need to eat this entire cake feeling in my chest.

I’m staring at the route to Bozeman on my phone screen when it rings. Ma. I check to make sure Sabrina’s still in the shower before answering. Steam billows from the cracked bathroom door.

“Hey, Ma.”

“Hi, hon. Your dad wants to know if you used the last of his duct tape while you were here. We can’t find any in the cellar and—”

She pauses, listening. I hear a muffled scream on the line.

“Well then tighten the zip ties!” she shouts, then refocuses. “We really need it. This one’s loud.”

“There should be some in the knife cabinet left over from the slasher incident.”

“Thanks, hon.” She shouts that at my dad. “How’s the job been?”

Just made the daughter of your mortal enemy come apart on my fingers. “It’s been fine.”

She’s quiet.

“Has something happened with ‘that girl’?” she says.

The back of my neck sweats. Damn her and her instincts. I imagine Walker resurrecting himself from the grave to slice my throat. “Nothing’s happened with her, Ma. Don’t worry. It’s all fake.”

The bathroom door slams.

“I wouldn’t exactly say what just happened counts as ‘nothing,’ ” Sabrina blurts from behind me.

I jolt around to find her wrapped in a towel, hair damp from the shower, and all I’m thinking about is tugging that towel off and going for round two. Until I notice her furious eyes locked on me.

“Shit,” I mutter.

“What’s wrong, hon?”

“Nothing. Got to go, Ma. Love you.” I hang up and stand from the bed. “I didn’t mean that.”

Sabrina scoffs and starts digging through her duffel, giving all her attention to a pair of running shoes. “I’m going to change into workout clothes so I can run the perimeter and see if I can find that workshop. You should head out to Bozeman.”

All right, then.

That’s how this conversation’s going.

“Sabrina,” I repeat. “I didn’t mean it, but I didn’t want to deal with my mom’s threats of disownment.”

She yanks on a sports bra, then a wick-away T-shirt, and finally some yoga pants. I wish she would’ve stayed naked. “It’s not as if I want to be part of a family who thinks jalapeño poppers are an appropriate amuse-bouche, but disownment? That’s a bit much.”

I rub a hand down my face. “I mean, she already doesn’t like you—”

“What a nice way of saying she’d rather see you fake married to a cult leader than me,” she says, braiding her wet hair.

“Depends on the cult.” I scratch the back of my neck.

“Not the point, and you know it.”

My cheeks puff out on a slow breath. “Look, I just don’t want to deal with her judgment right now. Can’t we figure this out first on our own? Before we get our families involved?”

“Figure what out?” she says, wiggling a finger between us. “This is fake, as you pointed out.”

She still won’t look at me, so I stride across the living room and grip her chin, holding it gently but firmly, same way I wrapped my hand around her throat this morning.