A Little More Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

away. “I’m sorry,” he
said, scrambling to his feet and zipping his jeans up. “But this is a bad
idea.”
    She stared at the throbbing bulge inside
his pants, chewing on a pinkie. “Sometimes the best things come from bad
ideas.”
    His eyes roamed the room, mind racing.
What had he done? He loved Sophia. Yet here he was with another woman,
desecrating everything in the blink of an eye. Turning from his wife’s wounded
gaze on the mantle, he pulled his cell phone from his jeans, desperate to go
back in time and never do this again. But it was too late for that. There was
no going back. There was only doing the right thing from here on out and it was
obvious what he had to do first. He had to come clean with Sophia. There was no
way around it because this dirty little secret would eat him alive from the
inside out and that was no way to go through life.
    Fuck!
    His subconscious screamed at him over
the rapid beating of his own heart.
    What
did you do? You idiot!
    Paul could smell Rebecca on him and it
turned his stomach. He needed to take a shower and burn his clothes but first
he pressed the cell phone to his ear, ignoring Rebecca’s nonplussed stare as
the phone took its sweet ass time starting to ring. Come on! He took a steadying breath, running endless combinations
of words through his head to ease Sophia’s fall, none of which made a damn bit
of sense. The phone kept ringing. She didn’t deserve this and things were about
to change. This would forever taint their beautiful relationship, if not kill
it completely. And for what? To boost his ego after
failing to produce offspring like all the other normal men he knew? To prove he
could still satisfy somebody in bed? A woman finally answered the goddamn phone
and Paul spoke way too fast. “Yeah, I need a cab.”

 
 
 
 
    Chapter Six

 
    DAY SEVEN

 
 
 
    Paul stood waiting for Sophia outside
the dressing room of another store where he was the only male figure while she
tried on a red negligee she swore would help get her pregnant. A pretty red head smiled at him as she restocked the clothing
people left behind in the dressing rooms. Paul smiled back, stealing a look
down her top when she bent over to retrieve a pair of jeans she dropped to the
floor. She smiled again and let him keep the look. He turned away, disgusted
with himself after what happened with Rebecca. It was easy to blame it on a
temporary moment of weakness because it was true, but that didn’t make it
right. It was also easy to scream when someone grabbed him from behind and bit into
his neck. Paul brought down a rack of mini-skirts on his way to the tiled floor,
everything moving in slow-motion. The heavyset mall cop landed on him with all of
his weight, driving the air from Paul’s lungs. The rotting thing in a black
uniform army crawled toward Paul’s face. Jaws snapped. Hands clawed. Blood
flowed.
    Paul woke up coughing with his hands wrapped
around the imaginary wrists of a decaying mall cop. When his lungs finally
opened, he drew in a sliver of breath and rubbed the nightmare from his eyes
with both hands, only to open them again to find another one waiting in the
wings. This one real. Sophia snuggled up closer to him
under the blanket as daylight bravely crept through the farmhouse windows. He
stared at the back of the couch, heart pounding in his chest. The thought of
Rebecca made him sick to his stomach so he pushed it down and thought about
something else. Exhaling a cold breath, he saw his mother’s bloodshot eyes pop
open and take a newborn look at the ceiling as something else. Something no longer human. When those eyes turned to find him
sitting in the rocking chair next to her bed, he wanted to run. These thoughts
would never leave him alone and this morning they were at the front of the line.
Paul could still see the anger wringing her face, smell the decay on her
breath, feel her knock him to the ground. At the time, he had no idea how close
he came to dying.