Tomorrow, I just might have to try that.
* * *
My plan with Death Mob needs some rethinking. So Rookie and Carrie are coming over for what Diem thinks is a barbeque. She’s been here over a week, and even though she tries to hide it, she looks a little excited at the thought of company. I’m excited about not having to eat her cooking. I think the bitch is trying to kill me.
“I have a problem,” she announces, busting through the bathroom door while I’m in the shower.
“No shit you have problems, but which one are you talking about.”
She ignores my comment, and I hear her flip the lid down on the toilet and take a seat. “I don’t have any shoes.”
“And?” I ask, washing the soap from my hair.
“And I don’t want to look like a hillbilly.” I smile. Even with overalls and a piece of straw hanging out of her mouth, there was no way Diem could look like a hillbilly.
“You look fine.”
“I need you to go shoe shopping.”
My hands still in my hair. She did not just tell me to go shoe shopping. “Yeah, that shit’s gonna happen.”
There’s a long silence before she speaks. “If I don’t have shoes, then you don’t have shoes.”
Even as I say the words, I begin to doubt them. “But I do have shoes. Lots of ’em.”
“Yes, you do. But you’ll never find them unless you get me some.” That sneaky, conniving, bitch.
“Diem,” I growl in warning.
“Zeke,” she says, in a terrible attempt to mock me.
I turn the water off and jerk the curtain open. She looks up at me innocently. Glaring at her, I snatch my towel from the rack, wrapping it around my waist as I go look in my closet. They’re gone. All of them. Even the ones I never wear. I walk to the living room and even my tennis shoes are gone. I open the front door, and my boots that usually sit covered in mud on the porch are gone.
I slam the door, stomping through the house to find her still sitting on the toilet with a pleased smile on her face. “So, do we have a deal?” she asks, raising her eyebrows in question.
Any man who has ever owned a decent pair of riding boots knows how long it takes to break them in. I could buy a hundred more pairs, but none will fit as well as my favorite ones do. That goes for my running shoes, my rain boots, and even my fucking flip-flops that I wear on really rare occasions.
“Diem,” I start, moving closer to her. My eyes narrow on hers as the rage inside me begins to build. It’s not just about the shoes—it’s the whole fucking situation. And because she’d just come all over my fingers less than twenty-four hours ago and I couldn’t beat my dick enough to get the memory out of my head.
“I will torture you. I will make you wish you left a long time ago. You’ve played your little games long enough. If you don’t have my shit waiting for me, in the exact condition you found them in, by the time I get dressed, I’m going to put your ass in the trunk of my car and drive you so far into the middle of nowhere that you’ll never find your way back home.”
When I’m finished talking, or shouting, or growling, her head is shoved back against the wall. Fear dances in her eyes. It’s something I’ve never seen from her, and I sure as fuck hope she heeds my warning. Because just like her, I’m a man of my word.
When I emerge from my bedroom minutes later, my shoes are laid out in a perfect line down the wall. At the end of them is a note.
Sorry –D.
10
I DON’T SEE Diem for the rest of the day. And every minute that passes without her presence, I feel shittier. I shouldn’t; she brought this on herself. But all she wanted was some shoes. I was the one who brought her here. I was the one who packed her bag. And she knew what I would say, so she did what she had to do to try and convince me to do what she asked.
By the time Rookie and Carrie show up, I feel like I’ve hit my all-time low. What kind of fucked-up monster was I that I felt more remorse over not buying shoes than I did when I took someone’s life? I needed some serious help. I was losing my mind.
“Where’s Diem?” Carrie asks, holding a department store bag. “I brought her something.” You’ve got to be shitting me.
“I don’t know. She’s somewhere around here,” I say, noticing Rookie narrowing his eyes on me. Just then, Diem appears in the doorway of the house, looking like someone who’d been drug behind a truck.
Her shirt is torn and hangs off her shoulder. Her shorts are big and baggy, nearly falling off her waist. And because I’m an asshole, she’s barefooted. Then I notice that it’s my clothes she’s wearing. I hadn’t seen her in anything but my T-shirt. Could she not have found anything in that bag of hers to wear?