"Phoenix cockblocked…"
She wheezes.
"Get dressed, Bells."
She sits up, still giggling, and yanks her jeans back into place. Stuffs her hand down the front to rearrange whatever needs rearranging. The prosthetic is somewhere on the rooftop, I realize, launched into the fog at the start of this insanity.
"Shit." She looks around. "Where's my dick?"
"I'm not helping you find it."
"Rex, I can't go downstairs without?—"
"Over there." I nod toward a dark shape near the HVAC unit.
She scrambles over on hands and knees, scoops up the silicone cock, wipes it on her pants and smears a streak of dick-shaped dirt all over the white, and shoves it back into place, laughing her ass off again at how you can see the ball print on her outer thigh now.
I'm already at the fire door. Belt buckled. Shirt tucked. Performance mask seated firmly over the prosthetic, all three magnets engaged.
I straighten my jacket.
Bells's handprints are all over it.
She bounds over, still flushed, still grinning, radiating the chaotic energy of someone who just got knotted and practiced an unmasking stunt simultaneously and found both experiences equally thrilling.
"Don't worry," she says, leaning up on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek through the mask. What's fucking left of it anyway. "We still hate each other. I promise."
"Good," I mutter.
Yeah.
Hate.
That's what this fucking is.
Just hate and nothing unimaginably worse.
I push the fire door open and she ducks under my arm.
But on the way through, her hand catches mine. Her fingers slide naturally between my knuckles, finding the gaps, fitting there like they were designed for exactly this, and she tugs me toward the stairs.
I let her.
CHAPTER 27
PHOENIX
"So let me get this straight," Carmine says, pacing the length of the live room with the measured cadence of a man who has dealt withmanybands andmanycatastrophes but suspects this particular band might be the one that finally gives him an ulcer. "Cinnamon bark."
"Yep," I say.
"Turmeric root."
"Great for inflammation."
"Star anus."
Raf coughs behind me where I know he's sitting on his amp with his bass across his lap, his face a masterwork of neutrality. I can feel his gaze boring into the back of my skull. I refuse to turn around because if I see his expression right now, Iwilllose it.