Page 117 of Darling Venom
I lifted it to my nose, sniffing.
Nothing.
“What’s in this?”
“Water.”
“I ordered Macallan.”
A whole bottle of it, in fact.
I heard the hard edge in my tone.
Had the decency to be embarrassed, too.
By the time I turned the legal drinking age, I’d watched Terrence Marchetti fall in love with seven different substances, bring down a tree while driving under the influence in Turtle Bay, and spend half his weekends in the drunk tanks of every precinct south of Lennox Hill.
He had one epic, life-altering, earth-shattering love.
Drugs.
Two, if you counted women.
Which was why I mostly stayed away from both.
But today, in the shower, I’d jerked off to the memory of Charlotte Richards coming on my fingers. I’d left the bathroom to find Terry sneaking into Kel’s room to search for Darling Venom again, then ended the evening by delivering stillborn IVF twins at work.
I needed booze, or I’d turn to something stronger.
“I’m cutting you off, man.” His sad, knowing smile might’ve bothered me if I cared what strangers thought of me.
As it was, I had other priorities.
Specifically, the Macallan I’d ordered.
An argument sat at the tip of my tongue, ready to launch at the bartender until he split in two, blurring around me. I’d graduated from drunk to plastered in the past half-hour, and I could go for another round or ten.
But then I spotted a flash of an oversized hair bow through the windows.
Charlie.
I blinked twice, and it was gone.
Possibly never there at all.
I slammed two hundred-dollar bills and the number from that woman earlier onto the counter and darted out of the bar, forgetting my coat. The night air nipped at my skin.
I stumbled down the block, half-convinced I’d hallucinated spotting Charlie. Until I caught a streak of red-and-white striped boots that screamed Charlotte Richards.
Definitely her.
“Charlie!”
She kept walking.
I struggled to keep up, hurling a palm against a crinkle-cut roll-down for support. And why the fuck were there so many people on this sidewalk? I bumped into a group of suits, muttered a half-assed apology, and trailed Charlie across the one-way street.
“Damn it, Charlie. Stop.”
