Something Wicked 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)

14: Love is like a motorcycle

123B MORENO DRIVE, November 18

Forty-five. "Grrgh." Forty-six. "Rargh."

An incoming call sent my phone dancing across the kitchen floor. Isis scampered away to the safety of the cat-flap.

"Rrgh." Forty-seven. "Nngh." Forty-eight.

The phone jiggled across the tiles with another call. Fuck it.

Push-ups abandoned, I snatched it up. Unknown number.

"Hi, Jay." Sweet voice. Familiar. Kinda like a little bird tweeting. "I got your number from Hamish."

Ya rab. I knew that voice.

"Leila?"

How did Hamish McCloud even have my number? Unless...of course, Sylvia Fucking Payne gave it to him.

"We didn't get to talk at Casper's fundraiser! You looked amazing! I thought you were working in Saudi. You back in María for good?"

Where to start? I had so much to tell Leila. But, sorting through the cobwebbed clutter at the bottom of my brain didn't bring up a single thing I'd wanna tell her. I was supposed to have gotten outta jail, gotten a motorcycle, gotten Leila back, and she'd have fixed my shitty spiraling life.

How fucking stupid that sounded three months later, now that Mamá was dead, and my whole world was Dante.

"Um...can I call you back, Leila? Kinda...in the middle of something right now."

"No problem. Do you want to get coffee sometime?"

"Sure. Bye."

I resumed my push-ups, Leila sinking back to the depths of my brain, my headspace refilling with its endless loop of fanboy reveries of Dante.

Forty. "Rrgh." Forty-one. "Nngh."

Stiletto heels clicking into my peripheral vision startled me. My palm slipped in a pool of my own sweat, sending me crashing to the kitchen floor in a panting heap. Isis took the opportunity to rub my nose in it, literally.

"Get your ass outta my face, cat!" I swatted Isis away only for Slinky to suddenly appear outta nowhere at the sound of clicking heels. She decided to leap onto my back for a little ride. Had it been forty or forty-one push-ups? Fucking cats.

The shiny black stilettos trotted over and stopped directly in front of my face. "Very healthy."

"It's a habit." One. "Nngh." Two. "Grrgh."

Sylvia tutted. "The cats, Jason, not the push-ups. They look well."

They were cats. Of course the fuzzball motherfuckers looked well. "What can I say? I'm good at weighing meat carefully into containers. Nngh." Three. "Nngh." Four. "Grrgh."

Heels clicked away as Diablo and Lover shot out from under furniture, razor-clawed minions greeting their demonic mistress. "Take a breather, Hercules. We need to talk."

Fuck.

I leaned back against the kitchen cupboards, Isis sniffing at me before skittering away in disgust. Seriously, fuck her.

How deep in shit was I? I'd cleared parole, so there was no way Sylvia could put me back in jail. I was officially not crazy because of the pills, so she couldn't threaten me with another Mercedes Asylum haircut. The best option was to come clean.

So, I decided to lie like my life depended on it.

"Look, I was nowhere near Sirius Labs when—"

"Shut up, Jason. Vincenzo Russo told me everything. You went rogue and took a bullet getting intel from Sirius Labs, then you followed Dante back there days later."