Renna Rose Lancaster never searched for love.
She stumbled into it long before she was old enough to know what to call it.
It lived inside flower crowns that barely survived a minute on his head. Pebbles he slipped into her pockets because every tre...
"Everybody wants to be rich, & I just want to know how many fingers I can fit in you on a Friday night after you have stretched out on the floor."
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I blinked.
Then blinked again.
The figure didn't disappear.
Which was deeply inconvenient because hallucinations were supposed to have the decency to vanish after the second blink.
...No.
No, no, no.
Perched on the metal rungs of a ladder, two storeys up in the pitch black, was Renna. She had a rucksack strapped to her front and was standing there smirking like she hadn't just shaved ten years off my life expectancy.
"Hi!" She chirped, her breath forming a little cloud. "Finally! I thought my tits were going to fall off out here before you lot decided to open up."
"Hi?" The word tasted stupid in my mouth. "You—what the actual fuck?"
Before I could even assemble a proper sentence, Cameron charged past me with the knife hoisted above his head. He had his eyes squeezed tight, which was an interesting strategy for committing a felony.
"GO BACK TO HELL, YOU WINDOW DEMON!" he roared.
"Cameron, drop the fucking knife!"
I lunged forward, hitting him hard. My hand clamped around his wrist right in the middle of his downward arc, stopping him from turning my girl into a true-crime podcast episode.
Renna gasped, her boots slipping on the icy rung. The ladder wobbled, her weight tilting backward into the dark abyss of the courtyard.
Oh, absolutely fucking not.
I ditched Cameron into the wall, leaned halfway out the window, and grabbed a fistful of her top. I hauled her toward me, every muscle in my back straining.
"It's Renna, you brainless dick!" I barked at Cameron, keeping my grip locked tight on her clothes so she wouldn't drop dead.
Cameron blinked, his hand shaking as he lowered the knife. "You're joking."
Renna gripped the stone sill, glare fixing on him like a laser. "Do I look like a joke? Lower the weapon, you psychotic muppet, before I climb in there and murder you properly."
"You nearly gave me a cardiac arrest!" Cameron shouted, pressing a hand to his chest. "Who the hell scales a brick wall in the dead of night?"
"A girl whose boyfriend won't answer his phone," she countered, kicking the brickwork for emphasis.
I stared down at the pint-sized menace who had apparently decided to audition for Peter Pan just to terrorise my sanity. "You climbed a whole building because of a missed call?"
