Page 51 of Vile Bastards
The suit itself is white with black buttons, a red pocket square, and a black dress shirt with a blue and gold striped tie tucked beneath the jacket. The shoes? Black loafers with silver crossbones trim on the front. If I didn’t think to squint at them, I might not realize they were bones.
Figures he’d find some way to incorporate his trademark into the look.
I lift my gaze back to his face at the same moment he drops his own from the stars. It’s hard to believe this is the same guy who helped me bury three bodies during sophomore year for a measly fifteen hundred bucks. The guy who used to pretend I didn’t exist as he smoked clove cigarettes in the wooded shadows near the racetrack.
The guy who walked up to me one day without a word and ended up popping my cherry against a tree.
“You’re relentless,” I tell him, and he smirks at me, swallowing me up with the darkness in his gaze. “You’re Prescott’s resident fixer.”
“You’re Prescott’s queen. What does that have to do with anything? We’re soulmates, Scarlett. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can accept it, and then we can move onto other, more interesting subjects.” He moves over to the passenger side door and opens it for me, like a proper gentleman.
I take a seat, still holding the dead rose and wondering if he really went through all the trouble to purchase and then dry it himself. That’s some forethought right there, but then, Bohnes has been like that for the entirety of the time I’ve known him.
“Suit’s nice. Shoes are even nicer. Where’d ya get ‘em?” He starts the car before looking over at me with an expression of bemusement. “What? I just want to know. Did you pinch ‘em from that place in Oak Park? The one where all the male mannequins have massive packages.”
“Dirty deeds done dirt cheap,” he says with a maniacal grin that then softens into a subtle smile. “Scarlett, I make my own money.” He stares at me as if it’s just occurred to him that I might not know that. I should though, shouldn’t I? I mean, he owns two warehouses (that I know of), a bulldozer, a Chevy Chevelle SS, and a whole truckload of clout. “I bought these things for you, so I could take you out.”
“You don’t have to prove yourself because of those rich boys,” I tell him, and then kick myself for even saying that. I enjoy the chase, the push and pull, and I can’t just let Bohnes know that he keeps doing things right even when he does them oh so very wrong.
I mean, a dead rose with thorns? That’s weird as shit. Also, amazing.
“Prove myself?” Bohnes throws his head back and offers up that crazed, wild laugh of his. Oh, good. He’s just wearing a different outfit; he hasn’t changed a bit. “I don’t give a single fuck about your rich boys. I only dressed up for you, Scarlett Force.”
He starts the car, and I hook my seat belt. You don’t drive with a Prescott brat sans seat belt unless you have a death wish. It isn’t cool to forgo it, just makes ya look kinda dumb to be honest.
Unless … well, some Prescott brats have cars that are so old they don’t have seat belts or else the family dog chewed it off before they inherited the car from their mom who inherited it from their neighbor for five hundred bucks and a year of lawn mowing. Even before all that, it was probably a clunker.
Swear to fuck, some of the cars driven by my peers are held together with a wing, a prayer, and a shitload of duct tape.
“You’re very Addams Family, you know that?” I state, and Bohnes pauses to think for a moment. Not sure if he’s seen the early nineties film or not, but it’s an appropriately morbid comparison.
“Morticia and Gomez have a beautiful romance, but the Addamses are far too fucking nice for their own good.” Bohnes hits the throttle, and I get that queasy, churning kick of adrenaline that almost immediately triggers another panic attack. Bohnes notices, but he doesn’t slow down which I appreciate.
Instead, he lets me work through it even as I know he’s watching from the corner of his eye, anticipating whether I might need him to pull over or take me somewhere. For as psychotic as he is, I know that he cares about me. He made that obvious when he showed up to bury the mayor’s hired gun without asking for anything in return. He made that obvious when he helped me bury Lemon and dispose of Aspen Kelly. And the look on his face when I climbed out of the car, and he fell to his knees?
