Chapter 7 #2
Even with the evidence of my crimes burned into my skin, I don’t let her go, and when her eyes lock on mine, she shivers. Shivers.
It’s the breeze. I mean, there’s no breeze to speak of right now, but Dr. Mohr—with his beige, forgettable clothes and his irritating personality and his smashed-flat hair—doesn’t make a woman like Rue shiver. I specifically created him to inspire zero shivers.
She’s just cold. As proof, consider her nipples.
Wait, don’t consider her nipples. Don’t consider her nipples.
I consider her nipples.
There they are. Hard little points pressed against her pale-pink sweater in the chilly, post-rain air. If I was a good guy, I’d offer her my cardigan.
But I’m not a good guy. I’m greedy. I want to see those nipples. I want to taste them, just like I want to taste Morticia’s. I want to wrap my lips around Rue’s tart sweetness and Morticia’s rich bitterness, licking and sucking and biting until they both come.
Shit, now I really can’t give Rue my cardigan.
I drop her hand and shove mine into my pockets, turning toward the street. “Mail and then head in?”
“S-sure,” she says as she falls into step next to me. A car cruises down the street, veering to avoid the worst of the puddles, as Rue clears her throat and picks up our conversational thread.
“Actually, I found out a little more about High-Heel Guy.” She worries her lower lip again, and I swear my dick whimpers. “He totally deserved it.”
That gets my attention. “Oh yeah?”
“Oh yeah.” Her voice hardens as she grabs her mail and slams the box shut. “He’s a vile little woman-hater. Super quick with the ‘your body, my choice’ bullshit on social media.”
“Let me guess. ‘Female’ is his noun of choice?”
“You know it is.” Her nose wrinkles like she’s smelling a six-day-old corpse. “I met him once. A couple of years ago, at a fundraiser for the West Side Women’s Shelter. Marcus Alan Navarro.”
Marcus Alan Navarro. The name’s new to me, but I know exactly what fundraiser she’s talking about.
As a member of the shelter’s advisory board, I was supposed to be there, too.
Sometimes I torture myself by thinking that if I hadn’t blown it off to kill an intake, I would’ve known Rue for years longer than I have.
“Quite the choice for his donation dollars,” I say.
“Indeed.” She scoffs. “He talked to my date all night but completely ignored me, which would’ve been fine if he hadn’t grazed my boob on purpose while reaching for the passed appetizers.
Twice. But even before that, the little voice in my head was screaming at me to never, ever, ever be alone with him. ”
Welp. Marcus Alan Navarro’s a dead man. And don’t think I haven’t thought about killing her ex, too. Fucking Greg. He may not fit my code, but I was there when she cried over him after their breakup, which was almost enough for me.
“Definitely listen to your lizard brain about things like that,” I say. “Sometimes the body knows before the brain does.”
“My lizard brain was right about Marcus Navarro,” she says, too caught up in her story to notice the car barreling down the street. “The police have gotten at least five complaints about him that never went anywhere.”
“Five?” I ask. “How?”
“Nothing he does is technically illegal, so they never go past the complaint stage.” She’s on a roll now, righteous fury in her eyes as she gestures and paces.
“Apparently his date got sick of his boundary-pushing,” she says, “and when she told him so, he started ranting about ‘low-quality females.’” She flings her arms up in disgust. “Who says that to a woman’s face?”
“Radicalized misogynists,” I reply, keeping one eye on a massive SUV headed our way.
“God, you’re so right,” she says vehemently. “I hate it here.”
“Uh, Rue—” I start, since she’s come to a stop close to the curb.
But she lifts her face to the heavens and squeezes her eyes shut in a dramatic, silent scream, blissfully unaware of the oncoming tsunami, so I slide between her and the Honda, my back and legs taking the full blast of cold, dirty street water.
She whips around to face me, waving her folded-up umbrella.
“And now she’s facing assault charges. But not Marcus Navarro, noooo,” she says. “He negs her and needles her and laughs when he tells her he’s in favor of repealing the Nineteenth Amendment, all with his hand on her thigh. All of it terrible, and none of it illegal.”
Her mouth twists into a frown.
“It makes me wonder how many of the men I see every day feel the same.” Before I can even open my mouth, she lifts a hand. “Not you, obviously.” Then her eyes harden. “I just wish his date had punctured his scrotum instead of going for his eyes.”
My ears perk up. Rue’s always sexy, but bloodthirsty Rue is a force.
“Scrotal trauma, neighbor girl? Sounds like your stance on crime and punishment’s changed a little since we last talked about it.”
I give her the full nasal delivery when I say it, but inside I’m burning with curiosity. She all but recoiled when I suggested last week that Navarro might deserve a high heel to the face.
Her mouth snaps shut, the fire draining from her face to be replaced by a carefully neutral expression. “Right. I’d wish for that if I didn’t believe in the rule of law.”
A gust of wind ruffles her hair, and I’m gently smoothing it back before my brain catches up with my hand. The blond strands are soft and cool, and I want to bury my face in them and breathe until my lungs are full of her honeysuckle scent.
Instead, I let my fingers fall away before she notices the burns. Not that she would. She hasn’t even noticed that her safe, friendly neighbor is soaked while she’s dry.
But that’s the whole fucking point, isn’t it?
“I’m always here,” I remind her. “Literally, I’m always here, yes. But I mean if you ever want to talk. Zero judgment.”
She arches one perfect eyebrow. “Anything? With zero judgment, Dr. Mohr?”
Anything. Everything. I can take it.
“Nothing you can say will shock me,” I tell her in my most authoritative the-doctor-is-in voice.
“Yeahhhhh. I doubt that.” But she’s smiling as she says it, and we stand like that, grinning at each other, for several heartbeats before she looks past me at another car rolling down our street.
“We should get inside,” she says. “If you keep standing near the curb, you’re going to get splashed.”
“Good idea,” I say as we walk up the driveway. I try not to favor my punctured leg while my mind races toward Marcus Alan Navarro.