CHAPTER 29
“You think I’m gorgeous, you want to kill me… You want to stab me… You want to murder me…”
—Not Miss Congeniality
I’m silent as we make our way to the janitor’s closet, exuding “don’t talk to me if you want to leave here with your balls on the outside of your body” vibes that Wes seems to respect by staying just as quiet and tense.
We still walk shoulder to shoulder, my side pressed against his as we navigate the corridors.
Running away from your ally or giving into the anger just leaves you primed for an attack.
I’m so mad I can’t recall any films where that’s happened, but still, I know it would be a bad idea to storm away from Wes and put the kind of distance between us that would allow a blade to find its mark.
Stu’s directions pay off, and when we find the closet, open the door to see it mercifully empty and the light still on, I move in ahead of Wes and make a beeline for the sink that comes into view as he locks the door.
I need to get John’s blood off me. It’s all over my hands and my legs, staining my skin.
It feels too sticky and there’s something in the way it’s mixed with my perfume that makes it smell sweet, so when the tap splutters on and water spills over my hands, I can’t help the audible sigh of relief as it turns red.
There’s a bottle of industrial-grade hand soap on the shelf closest to the sink and I pump it aggressively into my palm.
It advertises removing grease and paint and chemicals, but I’m sure if the makers knew it could handle washing away the blood of a guy you were flirting with before he got stabbed in the shoulder they’d add that to the label, too.
“Jamie…”
Wes’s voice is low, wary, as I scrub at the flakes of dried blood with my nails.
There’s a metallic tap of his knife landing on one of the shelves, the heavier thud of the flashlight, then he shifts into the space next to me and his hands delve into the water, brushing inadvertently against mine. I don’t look up from the pink suds.
Earlier, I’d thought it was interesting, admirable even, how he’d managed to carry all his tools. How he figured out his own system despite the stress of the evening. But he’s just been relying on memory. He’s just been compensating for his lack of a kit belt all night.
Wes’s sigh hits the top of my forehead as the water in the sink turns soapy and then clear. I already know what I’m going to say, but still I let him get his excuses out.
Well, almost.
“I know you’re pissed at me right now, and I’m sor—”
“Why didn’t you tell me who you are?” I reach across him and grab some of the paper towels stacked beside the sink, dipping them into the water and scrubbing the blood on my legs.
There’s a pause before he says, “I did. I just didn’t tell you what I do,” and that draws my gaze up to his. The incredulous look I give him at least garners the “I know that was a dumb thing to say” expression that crosses his face.
“I didn’t want to make myself a target.” His voice is low as I look back down, continuing to rub my skin even though the rosy stain of John’s blood has disappeared. “I didn’t want to make you—anyone a target. If I’d known something like this would happen, if I’d known he would escalate like this…”
He turns the tap off, the sound of the water dripping from our fingers plinking against the tub.
“We just wouldn’t be here. He’s gone entirely off script.
I know that’s not an excuse. I know it’s my job to be prepared.
But it’s also my job to protect. So, I’ll do anything—anything, Jamie—to make sure the rest of us get out of here.
Because you and I both know he’s not gonna stop. ”
I can’t argue with that. I mean, I want to, but as this night plays out, as I look back with hindsight, I know if Wes had told us he was a cop he’d be dead.
Heart Eyes would’ve made a beeline for him in the basement. He wouldn’t have loitered at the end of that hallway. It’s a sobering thought. One that takes some of the wind out of my sails, makes me meet his eye, and tempts the tiniest of pulls in my chest.
“I wanted to tell you.” His voice drops to a murmur as he passes me more paper towels, and it’s nice to see my hands—to see his hands—clean and free of blood… again. “I nearly did—”
“When?”
It’s not like he couldn’t have casually dropped it into conversation at any point tonight. “Hey, Jamie, we’re the same kind of crazy. Also, I’m a cop.”
It just falls right off the tongue.
“So many times.” He sighs, and being in his space, having that soft rasp close to my ear, there’s a good chance the only reason I haven’t gripped my rubbed-raw fingers into his collar and pulled his mouth down onto mine is pure stubbornness.
“But… Jamie, I didn’t come here tonight to—”
“To meet someone,” I say, finishing his sentence as I push away from the sink, and move back to the door.
Having some distance whips up that hot air again, but it’s still conflicted.
What I’m actually angry at is hazy. I should be concentrating on escaping a killer who is obsessed with me and the eventual truckload of therapy I’m going to have to go through to process all the carnage I’ve seen tonight if I survive.
Instead, I’m pissed off he lied. I’m pissed off that I’m even hurt in the first place, and then there’s the other thing.
“You came here to stop more people from dying, and I know we need to concentrate on the matter at hand, which is not adding to that count, but I can’t help but be a little pissed that you were pretending on our date.”
He squints across at me. “What do you mean ‘pretending’?”
The “what makes you happy?” question, the slow smiles, the fact any eye fucking I was doing was consensual and reciprocal.
“It was like you were trying.”
The drawn-out grazes of his thumb on my arm when he was patching up my cut, the way he slipped into teasing me with Laurie like it was second nature. We would’ve kissed had Stu been able to pick up his feet while walking.
How has any of that helped his investigation?
Wes pauses, processes, then shakes his head slowly, as if the word itself is foreign to him.
“I definitely wasn’t ‘trying.’ ”
He says it without a hint of smugness. He’s not even looking at me, but still—
“Oh, fuck off. I mean you didn’t have to act like it was a real date when it wasn’t. I actually li—”
I cut myself off before I can say it, but he is a detective, and the syllable makes him glance up from the floor.
He meets my eye, and the intensity I see makes me turn and start sifting through the shelves for anything with a “flammable” logo.
If not to set off the alarms, then to set myself on fire.
I’ve had enough experience with modern dating to know you hold your cards close to your chest until you’re all but forced to show them. Flirting, touching—any level of sexual touch—is fine, but admitting emotions and putting words to them that define how you feel about someone?
Borderline psychotic.
“Say what you were going to say.”
His voice sounds weighted as it travels across the small space. My hands graze more paper towels, unopened mop heads, jugs of hand soap, and a box of those napkins that were on the bar in the basement. Anything that might keep my hands busy and stop them from shaking.
“No.”
“Jamie…”
I don’t know why that makes me pause. He’s probably said my name hundreds of times tonight, but this time it grabs my heart in a chokehold.
I want to tell him.
I want to tell him, but I can’t look at him when I do.
“I… actually… like—” I switch to past tense at the last second. “—d you.”
The admission hangs in the air, and while the weight of saying it is off my shoulders, the anticipation of his response takes its place. I turn around, slower than when Heart Eyes found me in the bathroom, somehow just as scared, and our eyes meet. He stares.
For a long time.
Then his gaze drops to the door, checking that it’s still locked, before he glances up and straightens.
The energy shifts. There’s a momentary internal struggle where all the annoyance and hurt and frustration I feel tries to fight against the pull I have toward Wes, but it’s an uneven match.
My anger vanishes like the body of a villain at the end of a slasher.
All that’s left is eye contact, thick air, blood rising under my cheeks, and liquid warmth stirring up low in my belly.
“Can I say something?”
His voice is barely audible, but it sends something visceral down my spine, something that makes me shuffle on the spot when I nod. He takes a step back, props himself against the shelves four steps away from me, not breaking our eye contact for a second.
If we were in a rom-com, this is where he’d confess how he feels, or maybe he’d just do away with the whole speech, say “fuck it,” and cross the room to kiss me.
I wouldn’t mind either option. I wouldn’t mind anything that would progress the plot.
Anything, until he throws his hands up in the air and grits out, “I fucking forgot.”
Jesus, did he hit his head in the last five seconds?
“What you were about to say?” I ask incredulously.
“No. I forgot why I was here, tonight.”
I frown. Point to the door. “To catch the kil—”
“For an hour, I was able to keep an eye on what was happening in that room, and then I sat down at your table, and I saw you… and it was over. All I could concentrate on was you—I don’t do that. I’m trained not to do that, but you made me forget why I was here.”
Oh. My. God. It’s happening.
“And then you started talking about murder and—” His scoff is humorless. “I wasn’t forgetting anymore, and I also couldn’t help but notice that you fit the victim profile. You’re his type. But the thing is…”
He rubs a palm over his forehead in frustration, letting out a sharp exhale before he looks squarely at me and says, “You’re my type, Jamie. You are one of a kind and just my type.”
Oh no. That hits hard. Like a knockout punch. Like the first on-screen kill. Like the first on-screen kiss. Especially when he lets out a deep, helpless sigh and shakes his head.
“Even when I walked away, I still couldn’t get you out of my head, and because of that I wasn’t watching the room, and I missed who turned that light off. I missed something that could’ve stopped all of this before it happened.”
Pain crosses his face, the kind that comes from knowing something as harmless as a light switch would lead to devastating consequences, and that makes me take a step forward.
“Wes, that is not your f—”
“And now?”
He’s so far through his admission that I have no power to stop it. No desire to.
“I can’t stop myself from thinking that if this wasn’t happening, if this had been a normal night, if that psychotic asshole was terrorizing someone somewhere else… I would’ve tried to take you home.”
His eyes lock with mine again, and I’m reduced to sweaty palms and heavy breathing. I’d thought eating street food without any repercussions was my best-case scenario, but now that I know it wasn’t, that something better was within reach… I want it.
“I wouldn’t have waited until tomorrow to find out if we matched. I would’ve taken you out for a drink tonight and listened to anything you had to say about any fucking type of film, and I would’ve wanted to know what you thought.”
It plays out across my mind like an eighties montage. Complete with frosted edges and seasonal wardrobe.
“I would’ve kissed you in the middle of a rant about Ghostface or Dahmer or some Leading Lady, because I wouldn’t have been able to help myself, and when I got you home, when I had you laid out on my bed… Jamie…”
His voice drops even lower. It’s an admission I’m not supposed to hear, but I still catch it, and my blood flares up in my veins.
“God, I would’ve done anything just to hear you scream my name.”
The room falls silent again and all I can think is: Holy shit…
I’ve heard a lot of romantic speeches. I know all the elements. I’ve analyzed them at length. And as far as declarations go, that was pretty. Fucking. Spectacular.
Even though I’ve witnessed someone’s throat being slit tonight and discovered it was nothing like the movies.
Even though I watched a documentary on the pork industry and knew the process of gutting long before I’d seen it happen in real life.
Even though this whole thing is somehow happening because of me—I can’t deny that I will replay this moment in my head for the rest of my life.
Even if the rest of my life is reduced to a few hours.
That invisible thread that’s been woven into my chest since our date has turned into the hook from I Know What You Did Last Summer, lodged underneath my rib cage and pulling me toward him. Because this whole time, from the moment he sat down across from me, it’s been Wes.
“I would’ve liked that…” I stare at him, his gaze unblinking, dark and bright all at once. Then, so there’s no mistake about what part of his speech I’m referring to, I say, “All of it.”
He mustn’t have been expecting that, because a groan sounds from deep in his chest. His head drops back against the shelf of paper towels, eyes lifting to the ceiling as if he’s asking for divine intervention before he meets my stare again and shakes his head.
“Jamie, don’t…”
I’m about to ask what he doesn’t want me to do, what he wants me to stop, but then his eyes dart between mine and he sees something I can’t hide. Granted, I’m not trying hard to hide it. He lets out a sigh, and three counts later—
“Fuck it,” he mutters, pushing off the shelves and striding toward me. When he’s half a step away, he grabs the back of my neck and wrenches me forward.