Page 100 of Anthem of Love and Loathing

She turns silent. Like she’s said too much. Pure agony flickers across her face, I almost miss it. She scratches the top of her head. “You know what... it doesn’t matter.”

But it does matter to me. “If it wasn’t about that, then what were you wanting to confess to me?”

Her facial muscles twitch. She licks her lips. And then her eyes turn harder than I’ve ever seen them. Her lips become a thin slash. “You have my journal. Why don’t you figure it out for yourself?”

She storms out of the room, barely squeezing past Rook who fills bunk alley. He doesn’t seem to notice the state she’s in. “I need to borrow you for a minute.”

“Can it wait?” I need a minute to reread that part of her journal I thought I had it figured out.

“Now,” he states.

“Fine.” I take out my tin and snag a joint before following him out of the bus. “What’s going on?”

“You remember the issue you were having two years ago with the stalker?” He leads the way through the parking garage.

“Yeah.” I’d been stressed as hell by the end of it. Worried sick about Kelsey. And then concerned for Sonatina when she seemed to have ended up in my stalker’s sights. That last attack had been the catalyst for my entire relationship with Sonatina but not actually related to my stalker. Who it turned out had gone quiet a few weeks earlier.

“It looks like they’ve started up again,” he says as the trucks come into sight. Coffey climbs out of the back of one of them, a grim expression on his face.

Catching sight of us, he waits for us to join him. “Nothing’s been touched since we saw it.”

I stride around the back of the truck. Please don’t be a dead bird like last time.

I let out a sudden breath. No poor dead animal, no damaged instruments this time. No photo of a woman who I shared one miserable moment with, her eyes scratched out. Just a letter written on the inside wall in deep, red paint.

I’ve waited for you. We’ll be together soon. No one is going to come between us ever again.

“Fucking hell.” I scrub a hand over my face. This is the last thing I need.

Cherry Kiss

L.A. Riot

Cherry flavored kisses in the sun

You were my only one

Sticky fingers

Filthy mouth

My perfect, dirty tart

Tell me how there’s no way back

How’d we get too far gone

Remind me again

With your lips around my cock

How you’re not the one

Filthy, sweet cherry bomb

Going rotten in the sun

Filthy, sweet cherry bomb