Mom: Have you been murdered? I’m calling the police.
I quickly responded to her, because she wasn’t the kind of person who bluffed about calling the cops.
Me: Mom, I’m fine. My phone was just out of battery. Caught Cade fucking my boss. Wouldn’t take his word as gospel. Love you xo
Then I read the ones from Cade and smiled. I’d changed his name on my phone last night while I was drunk.
Fucking Cheating Sack Of Shit: Frank says you have a guy at your house. That was quick.
Fucking Cheating Sack Of Shit: What, you aren’t talking to me now?
Fucking Cheating Sack Of Shit: Look, Elsie. I made a mistake, that’s all. I want you back.
Fucking Cheating Sack Of Shit: Fine, be a bitch and not talk to me.
It devolved from there, of course. The last message he sent was dripping in acid, created with the express desire to slay me.
Fucking Cheating Sack Of Shit: Fuck you, you whore. Your boss was a thousand fucking times better in bed than you. You were like fucking a beached whale. Have a shit life, bitch.
I let out a little sobbing noise. Even though my brain knew he was a asshole who felt threatened because I had another guy here while he thought I should be sobbing over losing him, my heart internalized his venom like a sponge. A tear dripped down my cheek, and I swallowed hard.
“I can flay him if you want. I think I would enjoy it even more now. Actually, dismembering should be back on the table.”
I peeked behind me to see that Uko had woken and was looking over my shoulder at my phone. I shook my head, taking a screenshot of Cade’s last few messages and sending them to his mother. Then I deleted the messages and blocked his number.
I swiped at my eyes with my palm. “He’s not worth wasting your time on,” I sniffed, sounding stronger than I felt. I slid out of the bed, suddenly more self-conscious in front of Uko.Damn Cade.
I grabbed a box from the top of my wardrobe and started stuffing all the things that belonged to him in there. His shirts from my drawers. His toothbrush. I opened his protein powder and spat in it, before packing that too.
Eventually, when I was sure I’d purged every last sign of Cade from my apartment, I turned to Uko. He was wearing a shirt again and was looking at me with a small crease between his brows.
“We should hit the road. Let me just throw together some stuff, and we’ll be out of here in five minutes.” I stuffed some spare clothes and toiletries into a backpack. On impulse, I put my camera in as well. It had been years since I’d last picked it up. It was probably horribly outdated now, but I kind of wanted to document our road trip.
Finally, I walked out into the living room to see Uko leaning on the kitchen counter. “Are you ready?” I asked. I was trying not to sound wounded, but I was. “Can you carry the box for me?”
He lifted the box like it weighed nothing, despite having one of Cade’s stupid dumbbells in it. Like he couldn’t go more than twenty minutes without doing a bicep curl. That should have been my first sign. It was tempting to just dump his stuff at Frank’s apartment, but I wanted Cade out of my life forever.
I lived on the outskirts of Chicago, and Cade lived with his parents a couple of suburbs over. Yeah, that should have been my second sign.
There was hardly any traffic at this time of day, so if this drop-off went quickly, we could be on our way to Dallas in under an hour.
Uko took up too much room in my little car, and not just with his body. His whole presence seeped into every nook and cranny, making breathing a little like swimming through a sea of lust and pheromones. I cracked a window, gave my libido a stern talking-to, and drove to Cade’s parents’ house.
I liked his parents; they were nice people. It wasn’t their fault their son was a roided-up penis head.
I pulled up to the curb in front of their nice double storey family home and got out. “Could you put the box on the driveway for me?” I asked Uko, and he nodded. While he was lugging the box, I went and knocked on the door.
It was opened by Cade’s mother, Martha. She looked at me with a combination of indignation and pity. Yeah, she’d gotten my message all right.
“Just wanted to warn you I’m going to light a little fire on your drive. I apologize in advance.”
“Oh, Elsie, dear. I don’t know if that’s a very good idea?—”
“Just let the girl do it, Martha. Cade can go clean it up with a toothbrush for all I care. Maybe he’ll get it through his thick skull that you don’t treat women that way,” Vernon grumbled from behind his wife. “Apologies, Elsie. We didn’t raise him that way, I promise you.”
I gave them a watery smile and a short nod, then turned away, wandering over to the box. “Uko, you’re a fire demon, right?” When he grinned, I couldn’t help but smile back. “On my word?”
He nodded, the mischief in his eyes making him look like the devil he was.
