Page 1 of Fuckboy Psychos (Scarlett Force 1)
Scarlett
It’s damn near impossible to dig a grave without fucking up your nails.
“Shit,” I growl, examining the utter waste of a manicure on my dirty fingers. I paid a fortune for my nails, and they’re already ruined. “Thanks a lot, dickhead.” I kick the body on the ground with a bare foot and then shiver as it rolls just a bit closer to the hole I’ve been digging for the better part of two hours.
Six feet deep is … seriously fucking deep.
“Did you really get half-naked to dig a grave?” a man asks from behind me. He’s cloaked in the shadows of night, just past the bright beams of my headlights. That’s a ‘72 Pantera there, by the way. And it’s allll mine.
“You call this half-naked?” I ask, shivering at the same time I’m sweating. Because that’s how he is, Kellin Bohnes. Like, what sort of a last name is that? Bones. He was born into the macabre the same way I was birthed into South Prescott. It’s the environment that shapes the monster sometimes, ain’t it? “A bikini top and no shoes?”
Bohnes—because why the hell would we call him Kellin?—pauses beside the hood of my car and reaches out with two fingers, lifting up a pair of strappy red heels that I rocked all day at school on Friday. Widow noticed, I know he did, I think, greedily licking the memory of Adrian Lawless aka Widow in my mind. For every part of him I hate, there are equal parts I lust after.
“Louboutins, really?” Bohnes asks me, his voice like dark chocolate and nighttime secrets. I know those aren’t sounds, but it’s the only way to describe his voice. He terrifies me. He also excites me. I’m pretty sure we’re equal, swing for swing. That’s what I like best about him.
“What do you take me for? Some vagrant pickpocket? I’m a professional, Bohnes.”
He moves over to stand beside me, and it’s impossible to think about much else besides how huge he is. How alone we are, how secretive this entire moment is. If I ever really trusted Bohnes, it happened in that instant because there are so many other ways this could’ve gone if he’d been anyone else.
I’m not exactly liked at Prescott High. Feared, maybe. Respected. But not liked.
There are plenty of people who’d like to see me dead. This guy included. Not Bohnes, the dead guy I mean. Music filters from my car, this distant beat that underlies the whistle of the wind in the trees. This wasn’t how my day was supposed to go. No, I was supposed to meet that rich (and excruciatingly handsome) weirdo—Alexei Grove—at the country club in Oak Park. He was going to treat me to dinner while I listened to his plea for help.
Instead … some asshole tried to kill me.
“Let me handle this, Scarlett,” Bohnes whispers, leaning down so close to my ear that I can feel the heat of his breath. When I flick my gaze his way, the wind pulls his hood down and I can see the empty-winter-sky blue of his eyes in the light from my idling car. “This is my specialty, not yours.”
“Don’t you want to know what happened?” I whisper back, because I’d expected something like that, some demand for information, an entitlement on his part that he had a right to know. Instead, he just shakes his head slowly and looks away from me, down to the body.
“Get out of here,” he says, taking the shovel from my fingers. He uncurls them one by one, and I let him, feeling a bead of sweat drip down my spine. Even with a dead goon on my hands, I’m thinking about Bohnes. The impossible boy. The one I most definitely cannot allow myself to truly have. “This is a terrible place to bury a body.”
“And how was I supposed to know that?” I snap, turning to leave when Bohnes drops the shovel and I pause, breathing hard as he steps up close behind me. I can feel his lips on my neck, warm and reassuring as his tongue trails down my skin … “Shit, would you stop doing that?” I choke out, but Bohnes just laughs at me.
The sound is low and full of introversion, and it’s just fucking terrifying. But I like it. Because he only ever laughs when he’s getting what he wants. In this case, that just so happens to be me.
“Why don’t you take my car? Yours has too much blood in it; it needs a full detail. Go meet with that rich developer’s son in a clean, crime-free ride.”
He snorts and his breath fans against my nape, making my entire body ache for more than just his tongue on my neck.
I don’t ask how he knows about that. Bohnes knows about everything that happens at Prescott High. He’s willing to clean up any mess—no matter how big—for the right price.
