Color Me Pretty

by Celeste, B.

  That time when I kissed her, it was with a purpose. It was slow and needy and hungry and tortured. Every graze told her how much I cared, every nip how much I wanted her, and every suckle how much I didn’t give a fuck what anybody else thought.

  The spell of her hips rising and grinding and riding me was broken when my cell went off on the nightstand. Nobody bothered me early unless it was necessary, but I couldn’t make myself care. Not when I had Della’s pussy squeezing me so tight it felt like she was trying to milk me of cum every time she lowered down in frantic movements.

  It rang again.

  Gripping her hip, I kept her moving against me, our skin slapping, the wet sounds between us loud and telling, as I lifted the phone to my ear and pistoling inside of her. “Somebody better be fucking dead, Flamell.”

  Della didn’t stop like I thought she would. If anything, the hand I kept on her only made her wilder for more as we worked each other’s bodies to the brink. She started circling her hips and biting her lip to be quiet, but she rode me harder, faster, until sweat covered both of us.

  “That’s it, baby,” I cooed, “just like that.”

  “It’s Katrina Murphy,” he told me.

  I let out a breathy groan as Della changed position and took me deeper. I jackknifed upward, filling her the same time she moved down, causing her to tighten around me again and I knew she was close. “What about her?”

  There was no doubt in my mind he knew what I was doing right now, and with who because I was all but grunting as Della fucked herself with my dick at the pace she set. But I didn’t give a shit. I needed Della to come, to let me drive into her until I couldn’t hold back and come so fucking deep inside her cunt that she’d never get rid of me.

  Della was so lost in the moment I don’t think she even registered the phone. “Theo,” she cried out. “I need you to come inside of me. Please.”

  The same moment Flamell opened his mouth, Della threw her head back and came like she knew my thoughts, her mouth parted in a silent scream as she gripped me so hard I couldn’t help but follow behind her, holding her down while I emptied myself in spurts inside of her. “She was found dead over on the south side. Overdosed. Police were called an hour ago. Coroner just took her body away.”

  I was coming down from my high with Della tucked close into my sweaty body when I tensed under her. Her arms tightened around my shoulders, seemingly unknowing of what Flamell had told me.

  “West?” he asked.

  “I’m here,” I murmured, words thick.

  “Tell Della that I’m sorry,” was what he ended it with before hanging up.

  I dropped the phone onto the bed beside me and wrapped my arms around Della, keeping her close to me. My softening dick was still inside her as we caught our breath.

  “Baby,” I whispered into the crook of her neck where I kissed her softly.

  She hummed.

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Della

  Dead. There was no way that could be true. It’d been hours since he told me, and I still didn’t believe him. It hadn’t sunk in until I asked Dallas to drop me off at my apartment. I knew Theo had things he needed to do, even though he offered to stay with me. I didn’t want him to.

  How could she be dead?

  Rationally, I knew how. I knew why. I’d told myself if she didn’t get help that overdosing was a likely possibility. I didn’t want it to be true. I didn’t want…

  Throat thick, I stared at the fluffball Theo sent home with me, his gentle licks on my shins not as comforting as I was sure he’d hoped for. I picked up Ramsay and cuddled him on the couch, in a daze as I repeated those words in my head.

  “I’m so sorry, Della. So sorry.”

  Exhaling roughly, I squeezed my eyes shut to fight off the onslaught of tears that burned them. Theo might not have liked Kat, Sam, or Gina, but he’d meant what he said. Whether he’d been sorry for me or for her, I wasn’t sure. Maybe both. All I knew was that I’d been sorrier than he could have known.

  Kat had overdosed.

  Overdosed after I’d given her…

  Ramsay barked when I made a choking noise and curled into myself. He jumped off my lap and onto the floor, head cocked, and eyes focused on me. The tears poured down my cheeks over the guilt that surfaced hard and heavy in my chest.

  Reaching for my phone, I dialed the first person I could think of that wouldn’t look differently at me if I admitted what I’d done with details I’d held back. “I need you to come over.”

  Instantly, my best friend said, “On my way, Del.”

  I wasn’t sure how long it took, but the knock on my door had me shakily walk over and look through the peephole to see my best friend’s short hair and worried eyes. I opened the door and was instantly wrapped in two arms and the lemon drop scent that was all Lawrence McKinley.

  Blowing out a breath into his chest, he guided us inside and kicked the door shut behind him. As soon as he asked those three little words, I broke all over again. “Are you okay?”

  I wasn’t. I was far from it. I couldn’t get those words out as I cried into him. He shushed me, rubbing my back, brushing a hand through my hair as he walked us over to the couch and held me close to his side when I drowned his cotton tee with my tears.

  It felt like forever had passed before I was able to collect myself enough to speak. I spoke the words into his chest, feeling his arm tighten around me in comfort. “It’s my fault.”

  He brushed hair out of my face. “What’s your fault?” Gently, he moved me away to look me in the eyes, examining my puffy, red face with a frown before swiping his thumbs over my cheeks. “Hey. Talk to me.”

  Trying to swallow the emotion rising in me, I blinked away the tears until I was able to see him clearer. “Kat is dead, Ren. She was…” His eyes widened as I drew in a breath. “She overdosed sometime this morning.”

  “Holy sh—” He shook his head and hugged me again, letting us stay like that for a few long beats. From over my shoulder, he murmured, “I don’t see how that’s your fault. Just because you saw her and argued doesn’t mean anything. Okay?”

  My hands fell from where they rested on his back. “I gave her the drugs.”

  His entire body jerked away from me, surprise flickering all over his face. Lips parting, he blinked once, twice, a third time. “Come again?”

  I palmed my eyes, drawing my knees up to my chest and burying my face into them. Taking a deep breath, I did my best to explain. He’d understand. He wouldn’t judge me or bullshit me if he knew I messed up. “Kat called me crying, so I went to Divers where she was at the bar. The bartender kept looking at her weird and I could see why. Her eyes, Ren, they were so red and puffy and off, she wasn’t acting right.”

  “She was high.”

  “Or withdrawing.”

  Ren frowned.

  Daring to look at him again, I sat back on the cushion and squeezed my legs. “A while back, she’d invited me to her place. Sam and Gina were there too. They’d all been drinking. Then one of them pulled out something from their purse and it was pretty obvious what it was. Gina made a line on the coffee table and started…snorting it, and Sam and Kat were trying to get me to let loose.” His jaw ticked before he opened his mouth to ask the obvious question on his mind, but I shook my head. “I didn’t do it. I told them I was leaving because I didn’t want to be part of that. Kat wasn’t herself then, saying she’d done it a few times before and that I’d like it. That I’d…lose weight if I did it.

  “She gave me some and I kept it. I don’t know why I did it, Ren, but I did. Maybe even thought about using it a few times. Until I forgot. Until I found other ways to cope when I was having bad days and wanted to… It doesn’t matter. Anyway, she kept asking me about it when I met her at Divers and that was when I realized it was still in my purse. I didn’t have to give it back to her, but I did.”

  Ren swore again. Something he didn’t do often
unless it was justified. If now wasn’t one of the times I wasn’t sure what was. “You can’t think that giving her that led to—”

  “How can I not? She’s dead.”

  Ren scrubbed his palms over his face, his silence thickening the tension in the room. I stood and started pacing, Ramsay near me with each anxious step I took. “I practically killed her! I handed her the weapon that took her life.”

  Ren stood too, face red and eyes full of exasperation. “You didn’t kill her. Jesus, Della. I get that this must be hard for you, I really can’t imagine. But you didn’t hand her a gun or anything else that prompted her to end her life. That was her choice. She killed herself. And you don’t even know if she overdosed using the shit you gave her. If she was using before, it could have been anybody’s supply. Feel me?”

  I didn’t feel him. I felt too much. Her death was a weight dropping on me from the Empire State Building. It crushed me. It’d end me. And maybe it should have because I’d never know for sure if I handed her the final dose that took her or not.

  Stopping in the middle of the room, I hastily scrubbed the tears from my face. “I told her to get help. That was what I wanted. She s-said she wouldn’t use it. I wanted to believe she meant it.”

  Ren walked over and gently grabbed my upper arms, squeezing them. “Thinking about what happened isn’t going to help anybody. You can’t go back and fix it.”

  What he said sent chills through my body as I thought of Kat’s words to me. “I messed up, Della, but I’m trying to fix it.”

  Sniffling back tears, I moved out of Ren’s hold. I wanted him here, but I wasn’t sure what I needed from him. He wasn’t wrong. There was no way I could blame myself solely for what happened to her, but that didn’t make it any easier knowing Katrina Murphy, one of my oldest friends, had died today.

  Died.

  Vanished from existence.

  “I’m going to be sick,” I groaned, bolting to the bathroom. I heard Ren close behind me as I bent over the toilet and emptied my stomach and what little was inside it. He was at the sink, running water, and came over when I sat back against the wall behind me.

  “Here.” He squatted down and handed me a wet washcloth, watching as I cleaned off my face and then flushing the toilet while I stared off at nothing in particular. “I don’t know what to say to make you feel better. But I’ll do whatever you need. Call somebody. Have you talked to your guard—Theo about this?”

  His correction should have made me warm and fuzzy, but those feelings were buried under grief and mourning. “No. I didn’t tell him about any of it.”

  “Della…”

  “I don’t want him to look at me differently or be put into the middle of it if something goes wrong.”

  His nose scrunched. “What could possibly go wrong?”

  “I gave her drugs,” I reminded him dryly, not bothering to look at his face which I’m sure was staring at me with an argumentative look. “If she had it on her, my fingerprints would be on them. People would say they saw us together and she was acting strange. I could be—”

  “Stop. Stop right there. If you think that anything is going to happen to you, then you’re an idiot. Not when you’ve got somebody like Theo in your life who’d rip the head off anybody who came close to trying to hurt you. I’d know, I was on the receiving end a time or two. He’s protected you for this long. He’ll do it for as long as it takes.”

  I parted my lips to disagree, but…didn’t.

  “You know I’m right,” he whispered, sitting beside me on the floor. He draped an arm over one of his knees and bumped my closest knee with his. “I may not like the guy all that much, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think he’s good for you. I’d just like to think you’re too good for him.”

  I wanted to smile, the temptation was there, but I couldn’t. Instead, I stood up and felt his eyes on me as I dropped the dirty washcloth into the hamper and walked over to the sink to splash cold water onto my warm face and brush my teeth. Hands gripping the edge of the counter, I stared at my reflection, at the deep frown and the pale skin and the distant eyes.

  The longer I stared, the more I felt the resemblance of hate growing in my chest. I swore the girl staring back grinned like she knew it was happening, like she was beckoning the negative feelings as if I deserved them.

  I didn’t.

  I didn’t deserve it.

  I raised my hand.

  And punched the glass.

  “Holy fucking—” Instantly, I was being jerked away from the shards of sharp glass everywhere, my fist aching and bleeding and my bare feet being stabbed by the little pieces that strayed from the mess I’d made—from the reflection of the girl who’d tormented me for so many years.

  “Are you insane?” Ren barked, quickly lifting my hand and examining the damage I’d done. I didn’t even look to see what was there, just felt the blood dripping down my wrist and arm until it dropped to the floor. “Goddamn, motherfucking shit. Your feet.” Flustered, Ren told me to stay there as he went back into the bathroom and opened the cabinet the first aid kit was in.

  When he didn’t come back right away, I stared down at the droplets of blood next to me on the light hardwood and I heard, “You need to get to Della’s. Now. Yeah, yeah. I’m not your number one fan either, buddy. Just do it.” There was murmured grumbling before he was back by my side. “You’re crazy. Absolutely nuts. But I’ve also decided that I never want to fight you because that was one mean right hook and would probably hurt if it’d been a human on the other side of the blow.”

  He shook his head and rambled on as he cleaned me up. The sting of the spray and wipes he used had me hissing, but he ignored them. I deserved it, I realized. The pain.

  But I found myself smiling slightly knowing I couldn’t see that girl again. Not for a long time. And when Theo arrived…I was crying for an entirely new reason.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Theo

  She was lucky she didn’t need stitches. She was even luckier that I wasn’t around when she decided to put her fist through a mirror because I would have lost it. I wasn’t planning on braiding best friend bracelets with Pretty Boy, or even use his name like she continued to ask of me, but I was grateful for him—that he’d been there for her.

  Which begged the question, “Why didn’t you tell me, Della?” Her friend had left hours ago after helping me clean up her bathroom. The dog was fed and curled in a ball on Della’s lap as they sat on the couch, not willing to leave her side when I stepped away to do something. Her hand was wrapped with gauze, her feet bandaged and socked because of the small cuts she’d gotten, but it was her spirit that was burdened. And I understood it. In a way.

  “I would have been there,” I continued, setting a plate of food in front of her. Pancakes, eggs, and three pieces of bacon, so she could feed one to the dog despite me scolding her for it. “I told you I would have stayed.” I put the syrup, the real kind, beside the plate to let her put as much as she wanted onto the stack.

  “I know you would have,” was the only reply I got in a quiet tone as she stared at the food in front of her.

  “Then why didn’t you tell me?” I didn’t expect much from her. Honesty was never hard to come by when it came to Della because she’d lived too long in the dark from her father’s lies. Which was why hearing about Katrina from Pretty Boy made the sting of not being told firsthand from her feel like a punch to the gut. And the little frat fucker knew by the smile on his face when he delivered the news.

  Her hand reached for Ramsay, stroking his fur until he dropped to his side for her to scratch his stomach like he loved. “I was afraid to admit I’d done something stupid. I was hoping Ren would…I don’t know. Tell me I did? Tell me I made a mistake?”

  “Like punching a mirror wasn’t stupid?”

  Her lips twitched upward. “That wasn’t the dumbest thing I’ve done lately, but it wasn’t the best choice.” She gazed at her hand. “I could have stopped her, Theo. If Flamell o
r somebody finds out—”

  “Flamell isn’t going after you,” I told her with the kind of hardness in my tone that drowned the room. Even if he suggested using her in any way to bear witness to Murphy’s actions, I wouldn’t allow it. I told him as much.

  “Whatever the fuck happens, keep Adele out of it. I don’t want her facing any of the assholes her father got caught up in.”

  “And if she’d be key to stopping those assholes from inflicting more damage?” he’d countered with a brow raised.

  My retort was quick. “She’s been through enough, don’t you think?”

  Thankfully, he agreed. Reluctantly.

  “The things you’ve had to deal with in your lifetime have been unfair and unjust, but you’ve survived. We’ve been through this. I won’t let you suffer anymore.” The frown I was met with had me sitting beside her, brushing her arm. “Hey. What’d I tell you before? It’s not going to be easy, but we’ll get through it.”

  “Not easy,” she repeated dully. “My childhood best friend overdosed on drugs that I may or may not have given her. When you said things wouldn’t be easy, I thought you meant between us. With people’s opinions. Not…this. Not Kat. None of it.”

  “Flamell is going to take care of it.” When she met me with a doubtful stare, I had to come clean fully. About everything—every detail I’d held back, every picture Flamell had against Richard Pratt, and the shit that Henry Murphy was caught up in because of him. And now, according to Flamell’s talk with the officers investigating Katrina Murphy’s tragic death, there was little doubt about who was responsible. It wasn’t Della. It all came back to the same man.