Lover's Lane

They checked into another motel two towns over—one of those nameless roadside spots with flickering vacancy signs and no questions asked at the front desk. The room smelled like mildew and regret. The sheets were thin. The light buzzed overhead like a dying insect. It was perfect.

Sienna pulled her wet hair into a messy bun and sat cross-legged on the bed, scribbling in a notebook she’d taken from the glove box. Cameron sat across from her, barefoot, shirtless, cleaning the dirt from under his nails with the tip of a hotel pen.

They weren’t just partners anymore. They were building something now—something structured. Something sustainable.

A lifestyle.

"Rule number one," Sienna said, tapping the pen against her teeth. “No locals.”

Cameron nodded. “Too risky. Strangers only. People passing through. People nobody's waiting up for.”

"Rule number two," she continued, “no patterns.”

“No same cities. No same weapons. Nothing they can link.”

"Exactly." She scribbled. “We stay mobile. Hit once. Move on.”

He leaned forward, curious. “What about timing?”

“Random intervals. Three weeks here, two days there. Chaos is our camouflage.”

He smiled, liking the way she thought. “Rule number three?”

She hesitated before writing it down.

“No attachments... except to each other.”

Cameron read it, then looked at her for a long moment. “We break this one, we die.”

“I know.”

He reached for the notebook. “Let me add something.”

She handed it over. He wrote in bold, jagged letters:

“We never kill without both agreeing.”

She read it twice. “Trust?”

“Always.”

They sat in silence again. But this time, it was comfortable. Ritualistic. They were no longer two solo monsters wandering in the dark.

They were a unit.

The first time they killed together by design—with rules in place—was in Kentucky. A traveling salesman, mid-fifties, always picked up women at gas stations. Sienna played the bait. Cameron watched from a nearby bench, sipping a Coke like a bored husband.

The man invited her to his hotel room. She smiled, nodded, touched his arm.

By the time Cameron entered the room, the man was already half-naked and grinning.

They didn’t let him speak. Didn't let him beg.

It was clean. Controlled. Beautiful.

A rose on the chest. A headline two days later: “Mysterious Motel Murder Leaves No Trace.”

They celebrated at a diner three towns over. Sienna had pancakes. Cameron had black coffee and sausage links. They didn’t talk about what they’d done. They didn’t need to.

But they did toast—paper cups raised silently, smiles playing at their lips.

“To us,” she whispered.

“To the rules,” he answered.

And somewhere between the cold coffee and syrup-sticky hands, something real began to grow—beneath the blood, beneath the silence.

Love.

Twisted. Dark. Unforgiving.

But love all the same.