Chapter 20 #2
“It’s always just us,” I immediately reply, feeling defensive and a little snappy. Amir tilts his head, something in his eyes that warns me to be careful with my tone.
I drop my gaze. “It’s just us,” I sigh at last. “But seriously. You understand I’m unwell, right? That I’m not really seeing ghosts? I don’t even know if I believe in ghosts. And these certainly aren’t the kind that exist outside of my own head.”
He reaches out again, fingers once more smoothing back my hair.
His thumb finds my jaw and I have to hide a little shiver as he traces along it.
“I know I don’t see what you see. That no one does,” he murmurs.
“But that doesn’t make it any less real for you.
I know it can be distracting. I’ve seen how they take your attention—how they scare you when you don’t expect it. ”
“They don’t scare—” I begin, but he swipes his thumb against my lower lip, easily convincing me to shut up.
“I’m not a therapist, Nell. I’m not going to send you to a hospital or tell anyone you’re a danger to yourself.
I’m only asking for you to be honest with me.
” He settles back when both dogs crowd us, and I take that moment to let Umbra examine me, her nose sniffing from my leggings up to my hands.
She pays careful attention to my fingers, and I wonder if she can smell the death that I work with almost every day.
“They don’t always scare me,” I relent at last, not looking at him as he throws the ball for Noctis again. “Sometimes they’re sort of welcome. I know rationally they aren’t really there. But I get lonely.” And I don’t know why I’m telling him this.
He doesn’t need to know, and I should be worried he’ll use the information against me instead of just absorbing it as a friend.
Which, I remind myself, he is not. Nor is he my partner. He’s…
He’s just Amir.
“Do you still see Andrew?”
“Yes.” The word comes out as a whisper and I turn to look at him from under my lashes. “Why did you kill him?”
The silence stretches out between us until the shadows from the trees are almost touching our feet in front of the bench. It lasts for three throws of Noctis’ ball, and long enough for Umbra to decide I should make myself useful by scratching her back and neck with all my might.
“That’s not the game we’re playing tonight,” he says at last, though I notice he chooses his words carefully. That’s something to file away for later. If there’s a chance he’ll tell me, I really want to know.
For research.
For the inevitable moment when I become an ace investigator and slap down all of my information on Adele’s desk so she can go arrest him before he does something to anyone else.
Except, when I think about my moment of triumph, it feels wrong. It makes something twist in my stomach that I don’t like, and I can’t help but immediately abandon the idea like it burns me.
“Then what’s the game we’re playing tonight?” I ask at last as the curiosity threatens to eat me alive. “Rummy?”
“Do you play Rummy?”
“Used to. Haven’t played since…” I trail off, not ready to talk about my stint in the mental hospital just yet. But the older patients there liked me, or just felt bad for me. “I’m actually sort of an expert in old person card games.”
“Then we’ll have to play sometime. But not tonight. I don’t have a deck of cards on me, unfortunately.” He settles back against the bench, the thick fiber of his coat brushing against me. Not that I mind. It’s like having a living radiator whenever we’re outdoors.
Especially with him between my thighs, his fingers deep inside—
“Would you rather.” He doesn’t go on, though I expect him to. Only sits there and looks at me until I relent.
“Would I rather what? You can’t just end with that.”
“That’s what we’re playing.” He chuckles as a grin spreads over his face. “You asked what we’re playing. I answered.”
Oh. Well, now I feel stupid. “Haven’t played that in…
a while,” I admit, trying to remember the last time someone wanted to start a game of Would You Rather with me.
“Oh, actually that’s not true. A year ago some of us in mortician school played but it was stupid.
‘Would you rather embalm a car accident victim or a gunshot victim?’ Just work related stuff like that. I suppose this will not be that.”
“Which one did you pick?”
“Gunshot victim.”
Amir turns to look at me, head tipped curiously, like an invitation to explain.
“I’ve seen some really messy car accidents.
And I don’t love having to attempt to put a body back together for identification when their face has been scraped off on the road.
” I just look at him, once I’ve given him that information.
Of course, Amir never looks like it bothers him. He opens his mouth again, but this time, I speak instead.
“Would you rather be buried or cremated?”
Time seems to snag as he stares at me like he’s contemplating my existence. He picks up the ball when Noctis nudges it towards him, throwing it off into the darkness. If I had to guess, he wasn’t expecting me to be an active part of this game and ask him things back.
“Cremated,” Amir says finally. His eyes narrow shrewdly, and I swear I see something close to approval in his gaze. “Would you rather have an open-casket funeral or forbid anyone from seeing you?”
This one makes me pause, though only for a second.
“No funeral at all. I have to see what goes into them every day. I participate in prepping bodies to be viewed by the living, stopping the natural decomposition and painting them to look like the version of themselves they’ll never be again.
” I blink. “So I guess I want to forbid anyone from seeing me so I can avoid it entirely. Burn me and get it over with.” I don’t give him a chance to do anything with that before I ask, “Would you rather tell me the worst thing you’ve ever done or the worst thing you’ve ever wanted to do? ”
For the very first time, I can tell that I’ve shocked him. The look fades as quickly as it appeared in his eyes, but his lips quirk in a small smile as he moves to shift closer to me on the bench. “You’re getting better at our games,” he murmurs.
“That’s not an answer.” The look he sends me says I should probably watch it.
“It’s not so much what I would rather do personally, I think,” Amir finally says, his words slow and thoughtful. “More so what I think you could handle. And by using that logic, I would rather tell you the worst thing I’ve ever done.”
The implication sends a shiver down my spine. What could be worse than murder? If he’d rather tell me something like that—or worse, I suppose—then what fucked up things float around his brain, never seeing the light of day?