Page 183 of What We Burn

“I know. Okay.”

He pulls out. Gentle now, the switch so fast it gives me whiplash. He turns me around, cups my face, tilts it up to check my eyes the way he did when he first walked in. Looking for shock. For fracture. For the thing that breaks in people who do what I just did.

Whatever he sees, it satisfies him. He nods. Kisses me gently. Then he’s washing my hair, working the blood out of the strands with careful fingers, rinsing the suds until the water runs completely clear.

He steps out first. Towels both of us off. Hands me the clean clothes.

“Get dressed. We’re leaving.”

I look at what he’s put in my hands. It’s a figure-hugging dress. Black, long-sleeved, and short. “This isn’t mine.”

“I bought it for you last week,” he says, pulling on his jeans. “It was still in my trunk.”

“Thank you? I mean, I’m not trying to sound ungrateful because it’s beautiful. But a skin-tight dress doesn’t really scream ‘crime-scene cleanup’ to me.”

“You need it for where we’re going.” He finishes with the jeans and picks up his shirt.

“Where are we going?”

“The club.”

I freeze, one arm in the dress. “Unholy Desires?”

“Knox and Micah are there.” He finishes with his clothes and moves onto his shoes. “They went straight to the club after the football-cluster operation. Eli’s there too.”

“He is?” Jealousy slices through me at the thought of him with someone else.

Holden immediately touches my chin. “Not for that. I sent him to talk to Odin about getting us a proper crew for this.” He gestures at the room beyond the bathroom. “Because this is not a two-man job.”

“Is it going to be okay? The scene?” I ask, tugging the dress down over my hips.

Holden’s back is to me, standing in the bloody doorway, arms crossed.

“It’s going to be something. Now hurry.” He reaches into the duffel and hands me a pair of black heels.

I stare at them. “You had an entire outfit in your trunk?”

“I had plans.”

“Did they always involve bloodshed?”

“Not this much.”

A minute later, the dress is clinging to my bare skin because the underwear I arrived in is sealed inside a biohazard bag. Apparently murder cleanup has a strict commando dress code. I towel my hair until I don’t look like the star of a torture-porn film and step into the sky-high pumps. Milo’s duffel is propped against the dresser. The shrink-wrapped heap that was Dale Stine remains on the carpet where Milo rolled him, with a miniature plastic bow taped over his forehead. Milo’s wearing a set of painter’s overalls and his hands are gloved up to the elbows.

He sees me in the mirror and lets out a low whistle. “Wow, kitten. You look . . . ”

“Gorgeous,” Holden finishes, his warm gaze drinking me in.

I almost want to curtsy, but under the current circumstances I just say thank you.

“You’re so welcome,” Milo says. “And hey! I gift-wrapped your corpse for you.” He holds up his hands, blood-spattered, and gives me a double thumbs-up.

“Looks great.”

He beams. “And you two are okay? I heard grunting. I figured it was fucking, but I just want to be sure.”

I roll my eyes. “We’re fine.”