Page 44 of Darling Venom
His mouth dropped open, but I was already gone. Running in Miss Richards’ direction. Hoping the fact that I’d seen her boss earlier this morning—albeit after Reagan had waited an hour and a half while I performed a C-section—had been reported back to her.
My little showdown with the driver had caught her attention, along with half the street’s. She stood in the entrance of the subway, staring at me with a mixture of shock and disgust.
Join the club, kid. I’m not my number-one fan, either.
“What are you doing here?” She scowled. A beauty spot sat between her nose and lip. Very film noir. Artistic Kellan must’ve had a hard-on for this girl.
“I didn’t know you owned Manhattan. Mind giving me a map of streets I can walk on?”
My answer defied all logic. I needed her to warm up to me, not reach atomic levels of resentment.
It was hard to be nice once you fell into the habit of being a dick.
Her hate-o-meter dinged as her eyes narrowed at me. She pivoted, resuming her journey toward the subway. When she descended the stairs, I followed her.
I’d started feeling like a creep about an hour ago after I’d showed up in front of her workplace, challenging my inner Joe Goldberg. But now the feeling bled into full-blown pervert territory, thrusting me deep into the Jeffrey Dahmer zone.
I couldn’t follow her home.
Correction: I preferred not to.
It appeared to be exactly what I was doing.
“Fine,” I said as she breezed through the turnstile.
I hopped over the one next to her, committing my second misdemeanor in the last ten minutes. The first was jaywalking.
I’d lost my damn mind.
I should be pinning a photo of my brain with cutouts of my number on trees around my neighborhood right about now.
And still, I continued, “My behavior yesterday might have been uncalled for.”
“Your existence is uncalled for.”
She hopped on the escalators. I stood beside her. She shook her head, scrolling through her phone.
People grunted behind us.
I dropped my voice. “Look, I have questions.”
“The answer to all of them is no.”
“Then one of them is, ‘Would you mind it very much if we talked about Kellan for a few minutes?’”
“Ha. Ha,” she deadpanned, but I wasn’t laughing. “Go. Away.”
The grunting behind me intensified.
I never took the subway, and now I remembered why. Other than the fact that it smelled like a public toilet, BO, and clinical depression, it was also a hostile environment.
“Not until you give me some answers after the bomb you dropped in my office yesterday.”
A guy in a hoodie tapped my shoulder. “Hey, can you hit on this fine ass standing on the right side of the escalator like a goddamn New Yorker? People are trying to pass through.”
I shifted to the right side, two steps below Miss Richards. Which reminded me…
“What’s your name, anyway?”
