Page 174 of Darling Venom
“And Charlotte?” Helen asked when my hand hit the door.
I turned back. “Yes?”
Her eyes gravitated to the bag slung over my shoulder, which held the manuscript and nothing else. She wore a look full of questions. Ones I couldn’t decipher.
But then her shoulders dropped, and she offered a soft grin. “Great job today.”
But not great enough.
I skimmed Helen’s notes on the subway ride home. They filled the margins, written in militant script. She had big critiques for the parts I paid the most attention to, loving the passages I kept despite everything in my body protesting the way Kellan portrayed himself—scared, alone, broken.
Hopeless.
What if you can’t do the book justice?
The question haunted me until my boots hit the familiar carpet of my complex’s hallway, and I forced myself to admit the answer.
“Then you’ll have to ask Terry.”
I entered the living room to find Leah making a graveyard of mismatched knit scarves. The television blared before her. A Fear Factor rerun where bikini-clad women take turns lying in a bathtub with a gazillion leeches. Her favorite show.
Meanwhile, for the past eight and a half years, Leah had never once faced her fear.
Textbook irony.
She paused mid-loop, knitting needles suspended in the air.
I held my breath and waited for her to say something.
She didn’t.
My shoulders dropped. I grabbed a glass of water just to be near her, in case she decided I was worth talking to.
Nope.
After an hour of force-feeding myself a second meal to be near my sister, I retreated to my room. Sharing a roof with a perfect stranger I couldn’t help but miss terribly.
Charlotte Richards unsettled me.
I spent the past several months convincing myself that if we swapped Kellan stories, if we cleared his room, if I gave her his Wizard of Oz books, if I passed on Darling Venom—if, if, fucking if—I could sever ties with her once and for all.
I was wrong.
Full stop.
How wrong?
She still bombarded my place every day, ignoring me when I asked whether she’d finished the manuscript.
The food in my fridge?
Hers.
The perfume in the air?
Hers.
The corpse-sized duffel bag I discovered in my hallway this morning?
