Chapter 17 #2
Her only answer is an audible swallow.
“What else?” I repeat more sharply.
“You’re on the revenge-porn server.” She says it fast, pushing it out, then her voice breaks. “Greg… he used the videos as a kind of tutorial so other guys could make and upload their own—”
If she says anything else, it’s lost in the pounding of blood in my ears.
Greg. Greg recorded me. Shared it with strangers.
A man I trusted. A man I loved.
Greg put me on his disgusting forum, and I had no idea.
I slide down the fence until my ass hits the ground.
“Can you see my scars?”
The question slips out unbidden, interrupting Fi’s flow of words.
She falls silent, and my hand drifts up to grip my right shoulder, where the long-healed skin grafts suddenly feel too tight.
Those shiny pink flags have been unfurled in front of every sad little Philosopher King who hates me without knowing me, who’d happily pick apart my body, my flaws, my very right to exist, all without my knowledge or consent.
“I’m so sorry, love,” she says. “If it helps, your tattoo looks badass.”
I try to laugh, but it sounds more like a choked sob. “Good. That’s why I got it.”
My nineteen-year-old self had flipped for the idea of surrounding the scars with the image of a phoenix, flaming wings and all. A decade later, my twenty-nine-year-old self is still grateful for that teenager’s idea.
My head falls back against the fence, my eyes fixing on the nighttime sky. No stars tonight, only clouds.
“I broke up with him because he was too nice,” I say in a distant voice. “I didn’t want…”
I trail off because Fi knows all of this already.
Greg believes in due process and law and order, while I believe in DIY justice and letting the punishment fit the crime, including the time I engineered an “accident” that sent a serial drunk driver into a concrete overpass.
Greg was so upset about his missed chance at a guilty verdict that it shone a spotlight on our irreconcilable differences.
More than that, though, there’s a good chance I’ll get caught someday, and I didn’t want Greg to become tabloid fodder for being the assistant state’s attorney in love with a serial killer. I broke my own heart to protect him.
The irony makes me laugh and laugh and laugh, but when I lift my hands to my face, my fingers come away wet.
“Rue? Are you okay?” Fi’s distant voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts, and I realize I’ve dropped my phone.
“Shit,” I mutter, scooping it up and scrubbing away the tears with the edge of the blanket. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
Greg was smart and fun and good at sex. Couldn’t load a dishwasher to save his life and relied on me for things like changing the smoke detector batteries and booking his tee times for golf with his buddies, all of which became major annoyances by the end. But he loved me. He respected me.
He always acted like he loved and respected me, anyway.
“I knew I shouldn’t just spring this on you,” Fi says miserably. “Especially when you’re trapped there with Dr. Bore.”
“His name is Hugo,” I snap. “And he’s not the problem.”
I’m the problem. How did I not know? How did Greg hide all of this from me?
Just like Mom never saw any warning signs in the man who burned her alive and almost killed me and Felicity in the process, am I that oblivious when something’s not written down in a police report and confirmed by Fi’s research?
I pull my legs into my chest and drop my forehead to my knees.
As I do, I notice I’m sitting next to several clusters of ferny herbs growing near Hugo’s rosebushes.
It’s too dark to see what color they are, but they smell sharp, not floral.
I lean closer and inhale, enjoying the heavy, almost pungent odor of the rounded leaves.
“Greg belongs on our list,” I say quietly, reaching out to trace my finger over the curved tip of the closest plant.
“Yes.” She doesn’t even hesitate.
Greg Whitfield has to die. That new mission slots into place over the churning chasm in the center of my chest.
“Send me everything you’ve got.”
“Sweetie, I don’t th—”
“Send it.”
Her only response is a few key clicks. Then the chair squeaks start again.
“If this is too much for you, too personal, I can do it,” she says. “I’m ready to do it.”
Kill, she means. And that’s the only way this situation could get worse.
“I’m fine.” I pour steel into my voice to convince her almost as much as I’m working to convince myself. “I’ll review the files while Hugo sleeps, and then we’ll make plans.”
She’s quiet for a beat. “I almost didn’t tell you.”
“Come on,” I say with a shaky laugh. “We’re both stronger than that.”
“We really are.” Her voice is tight with the same emotion. “Love you.”
“Love you. Talk later.”
After we hang up, I tug the blanket even tighter around me and breathe in the cold night air.
Hugo’s yard is a thing of beauty, of course.
Pretty evergreens, more rosebushes, those lacy little ferns.
He’s got paving stones set in the grass to make a checkerboard pattern alongside a firepit.
It puts my grass-and-solo-tree backyard to shame.
I should ask if he wants to roast marshmallows sometime.
Actually, no. I’m not the person who roasts marshmallows with the nice, nerdy guy next door.
I’m the person who accidentally spends two years fucking a woman-hating sociopath who filmed me without my consent and shared it with his pack of woman-hating sociopathic friends.
So I’m going to stand up, walk back inside, and make sure things go back to the way they were between me and Hugo before we started… whatever this is.
High walls. Short conversations. Arm’s length. That’s what the fuck I need to do. Because clearly, my picker is broken. I can’t trust my judgment, and I certainly can’t trust men.
I walk back into Hugo’s cozy house, prepared to grab my stuff and run, but he greets me with bleary eyes and a loopy smile.
“Hiiiiii.” He sits up in another of those boneless, fluid motions that make my mouth go dry, and he pushes his hair off his forehead to look at me with wonder. “You’re still here.”
He’s so delighted to see me. So open, so full of affection and gratitude. And I’ve just been gutted and turned inside out.
I’m raw, and he’s soft. I’m battered, and so is he. So I sit down next to him. I let him put his head back in my lap when he stretches out again. I run a finger from the center of his forehead to the top of his upper lip.
“I’m glad you didn’t hurt your nose.”
He cracks an eye to look at me. “You like my nose?”
“I do.” So, so much.
My disobedient finger falls to the corner of his mouth, which lifts into a smile before he scoots closer to wrap himself around me like an octopus. “Even though I take up too much space?”
God, my heart.
“You were right,” I manage to say after clearing my throat. “I’m getting used to it.”
I wasn’t supposed to. I shouldn’t let myself. But when he makes a contented noise and sinks deeper into my lap, I don’t object. I let him. I let myself have more of him, just for tonight.
“Hey, Hugo? What are the plants in your backyard? The ones next to the roses.”
“Oh, that?” He glances up at me through slitted lids. “That’s just something I like watching grow.”
God, this man and his hobbies. “And as your tenant, I don’t get those little leafy boys too?”
Little leafy boys. Funny, that’s what I said about the plant cutting left next to Aaron McEwan’s body. I can’t believe I didn’t think to ask Hugo if he recognized it. Then again, if that’s Gomez’s calling card, the less I officially know, the better.
“Do you want me to plant some for you?”
Hugo looks up at me with a gorgeous, hopeful smile, and god, was there really a time I didn’t think this man was unbelievably attractive?
“I do.”
“Okay. I will.” He snuggles into my lap again, and I gently stroke his hair.
“Is this okay?” I ask.
“It’s heaven.” He’s quiet for so long that I assume he’s fallen asleep until he says, “Did I die in that accident?”
My laugh is soft, surprised. “I don’t think so.”
“You’re right,” he says in a thick voice, moments from sleep. “There’s no heaven for people like me.”
My fingers still. “Oh, Hugo. No. You’re not the one who—”
He lets out a soft snore, saving me from wandering into a confession I’d never make if I were talking to this man on our driveway instead of curled around him on his couch.
It turns out I lied to Felicity. I’m weak. I’m so weak that I allow myself this one night.
Tomorrow, I’ll figure out how to kill Greg and hopefully also kill the tender side of myself that can’t tell a good man from a bad one. The one that could ruin this good man if I keep letting him get close to me.
But that’s tomorrow. Tonight, I need to keep checking his pupils.
I brush a soft kiss across his forehead and drift to sleep with his red blanket around my shoulders and his arms around my waist.