Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Hugo
I’m going outside to talk to Rue, and I’m almost entirely sure I’m not going to throw up on her shoes when I do.
My headaches aren’t leaving me flat on my back anymore, and my nausea’s almost entirely gone, even without medication.
But it wouldn’t matter if none of that were true.
It’s Sunday afternoon, and Rue’s on her porch looking deliciously casual in denim.
I’m not wasting the chance to talk to deliciously casual Rue, hideous head injury be damned.
“Howdy, neighbor girl,” I call as I cautiously navigate the sidewalk in her direction. I still feel a little unsteady, and my voice is rusty from lack of use.
“Well, hello.” An unreadable smile touches her lips as she takes me in. “Dr. Hugo Mohr, in the flesh.”
Her cool greeting isn’t what I expected. Not after our mailbox conversations over the past few weeks, and certainly not after she sat with me on Friday night—which I still have trouble believing actually happened.
“Uh, yes,” I say. “In the flesh.”
She props the broom against the side of the house and tucks her hands into the back pockets of her overalls, her gaze traveling down my body.
“No cardigan today?”
“Oh.” I glance down at my half-zip fleece and joggers. “No, not today.”
“Huh.” She sounds almost disappointed. “And sunglasses too.”
“The light.” I adjust them out of habit, the way I would my normal camouflage. “Hurts my head.”
Shit, I shouldn’t be out here. Not because the bright afternoon light is sending a spike of pain right through my brain, but because of how much I’m not presenting as Dr. Mohr today.
Hell, I couldn’t if I wanted to; my glasses broke in the scuffle on Thursday.
The instant I can tolerate screens again, I’m ordering three identical replacements.
I see now this was not my best plan. I’m about to tell her I’ve overexerted myself by coming outside—not entirely untrue—when her gaze snags on my forehead.
“That looks awful.”
Her blunt observation pulls me up short, although she’s not wrong.
The swelling above my left eyebrow is mostly gone, but the bruise is now a vivid reddish purple in the middle and a sickly greenish yellow at the edges.
Also, I’m guessing I’m going to have a scar where the skin split, so fuck you very much, Ray Overton.
But that’s not what’s got me hunching my shoulders and shoving my hands into my pockets.
Her clinical observation throws me off balance.
I wasn’t expecting the soft looks and tender touches I remember from Friday, when she cradled my head and murmured soothing words that cut through the pain.
But it’s disorienting not to see a hint of that warmth on her face now.
I know Rue was there. I know she sat with me and whispered things I never imagined hearing from her.
I know she made tea and drank it with me; I independently verified with the used tea bags in the trash and the two mugs that were washed and returned to my cabinet in the slightly wrong position.
I know she touched me deliberately, checking my head for a fever and my wrist for a pulse—just like I know she also touched me when she thought I was asleep, gifting me with absent strokes of my brow, my jaw, my back that I’m not sure even she intended.
I just don’t know why she’s looking at me now like none of that happened.
I really did rest my head in her lap, and I really did wrap my arms around her waist. Hell, she invited me to do it.
But that same woman is standing far out of arm’s reach, studying me with an almost academic curiosity that makes no sense to my still-healing head.
“I’m feeling better,” I say, even though she didn’t ask. “How’s your weekend been?”
“Oh, you know. Working hard, hardly working.” She presses her lips together, almost like she’s fighting a smile.
Her right hand reaches up to play with the little gold pendant hanging around her neck.
I squint at it behind my sunglasses, absolutely certain I’ve never seen her wear that necklace before. Or any jewelry at all, really.
Pulling my gaze away from the pendant, I peer hard at her face through the dark lenses protecting my eyes, suddenly needing to confirm it’s really Rue.
Her blond hair is up in a bun, which isn’t her usual style, and I’ve never seen her in denim overalls or that long-sleeved red shirt.
But she seems to be cleaning up her porch for winter, so maybe these are just her chore clothes.
“So.” She tilts her head. “What does Dr. Mohr do for fun?”
The question catches me off guard. “You’re asking me this now?” After only five hundred and ninety-three days, I think but don’t say.
She shrugs. “Why not?”
Okay, maybe this is how she processes a night of physical and emotional closeness. Retreating, keeping her distance, cataloging details, similar to what she does at her job.
“Um. Well.” Of course I’m frozen, because “committing murder” and “drafting psychological profiles for my next murder” aren’t really things I can share with her. “I like keeping up with my field, so I do a lot of reading.”
“Oh my god.” She snorts. “Academic journals don’t count.”
“Some of them are popular press,” I object.
“Boooooring.” Her entire body wilts dramatically as she turns the usual subtext of our conversations into actual text.
“Guilty,” I say with a Dr. Mohr grin that hopefully hides how very much I’m guilty of and how very much I hate that she still hasn’t seen through the facade I put on around her. I thought she had. It was starting to feel like she had.
Wait, no. I don’t want that. That’s what the facade is for.
“C’mon, you have to be doing more than reading psychology research on the other side of the wall. What else?” she demands.
Rue demands; I comply. “Not just psychology.” I let myself rest against the porch railing so I can focus on talking, not remaining upright.
“I also read about scientific advancements. New medical techniques, current best practices in forensic science and surveillance technology, that kind of thing.” My voice trails off as I realize I’m sharing too many of my actual interests, most of which are bound to raise questions.
In fact, her brows are lifting in surprise right now. “Also movies,” I hastily add.
She grins up at me. “Now we’re getting somewhere. What kind?”
“Let’s see…” I drop my gaze to my shoes, not sure of the last time I shared this level of personal information with another human. “Action movies, old martial arts films, that kind of thing. Also boxing and MMA. Anything where the fights look like ballet.”
When I risk a glance, I find her smiling at me for real for the first time today. “Say more things about that.”
I shift uneasily. “I guess… really good combat is a dance. Attack and retreat. Strike and spin. Block and parry. Frank Sinatra does it with music. John Woo does it with fists.”
“And part of that dance is figuring out whether you or your opponent is going to be the one to lead,” she says almost reverently.
“Setting the pace. Controlling the rhythm and the timing. Precision, training, and chaos, all rolled into one.”
She beams at me. “Well, that’s downright poetic, Hugo.”
I lower my sunglasses so I can look into her eyes with my slightly bloodshot ones. “Admit it: that’s what keeps bringing you back, isn’t it? The poetry I weave when we discuss your workday and my hobbies.”
With a wink—where the fuck did that come from?—I push the shades back into place before the sun melts my eyeballs. Rue, meanwhile, is frozen in place, her lips slightly parted and her hand pressed to her chest.
“Oh,” she says quietly. “Okay. I see it now.”
My brows pull together, sending a pulse of pain ricocheting through my brain. “See what?”
“N-nothing.” Pink touches her cheeks as she straightens her spine. “I just didn’t expect you to be so good at… at poetry.”
My gaze snags on her nails when she starts fiddling with the pendant again. They’re longer than I remember and painted bubblegum pink.
“Those are new.”
“Oh.” She holds her hand out in front of her like she’s never seen it before. “Yeah. They’re press-ons. Just trying something.”
“Pretty,” I tell her.
“Thanks.” She shoves her hands in her pockets. “But back to you. We never talk about your family.”
“We don’t,” I agree.
She rolls her eyes, looking more like herself than she has at any other point in this conversation. “And? Do you have any?”
“Did you not do enough investigating at work last week?” I joke uneasily.
She rocks back on her heels and waits. And since I’ll do pretty much anything for this girl, I loosen my suddenly clenched jaw enough to say, “I’m not close to my family.”
Technically true. Not close implies physical or emotional distance, and I was emotionally distanced from my parents well before they died in that private plane crash when I was nineteen.
“Okay. How about friends?” she asks.
“You’re asking me all this now because…?”
“Because I’m interested.” But the interest in her expression doesn’t seem personal. It’s similar to the focus I saw when she processed the McEwan scene, and I don’t like having it turned on me.
“Yes, I have friends. Well, friend. Brady. Quinn. Quinn Brady.” I’m babbling like she’s going to get the wrong idea or would even care if she does. “She’s the one I told you about. She makes the fertilizer compound.”
Rue hums again, those shiny nails clicking against the pendant I can’t quite see. I wish I could take a closer look without invading her space the way I did on Friday. I don’t think this Sunday version of Rue would welcome it, though, so I invade her space in other ways.
“What about you? Hobbies, family, boyfriends, girlfriends? Somebody special who bought you that necklace? That guy you were meeting the other day, maybe?” Fuck. I didn’t mean to say that last part.
For a second, she almost looks surprised.
Then her hand tightens around the pendant, and she slips it inside her shirt, lifting her chin.
Now we’re back on familiar ground, with her looking at me like I’m a puzzle she can’t decide whether to solve or throw out.
It’s the way she looked at me until recently.
I hate it.
“There’s nobody in particular,” she says airily.
“Well, there’s your ladies’ night group, right?”
She blinks. “Oh. Right. Them, of course. The ladies.”
She doesn’t mention her parents, so I let the silence speak for itself. She may be holding back details just as fiercely as I did, which is… interesting.
“That’s it?” I ask, knowing it’s not.
Her mouth twists. “I dunno. I read a lot. I go to the gym. I like watching really good poker players so much that I subscribe to the GPA streaming service.” After a pause, she adds, “Oh, and garbage reality TV. There you go. All my guilty pleasures.”
I almost ask when on earth she watches the Global Poker Association live streams because I’ve never once heard them through our wall, but she looks so flustered by her hobby disclosures that Dr. Mohr leaps unbidden to the surface.
“You know, Rue, I always tell my clients that if something brings them joy, they shouldn’t apologize,” I say, managing a fussy nasal tone even without the sweater and glasses.
“There are some things worth feeling guilty about in the world, but watching Love Marooned isn’t one of them.
You should be honest about what you love. ”
“Be honest, huh?” She tilts her head in a challenge. “Like the way you’re being honest about why you mentioned Love Marooned specifically?”
Alarm ripples over my skin even though I know she’s referring to our thin walls, not the camera in her living room. Hell, maybe she’ll bring up the subject of rechargeable batteries again. Why not melt the last remaining healthy cells in my brain?
She’s waiting for my response, so I chuckle weakly
“You got me. Listening to your TV through the wall is one of the great joys in my life.”
I chuckle. It’s awkward as fuck.
“I genuinely don’t know if you’re being serious,” she says after a pause, that assessing gaze running over me again, although it’s more curious than cataloging this time.
“Okay, let’s keep doing the honesty thing.
” She crosses her arms over her chest. “Here are a few things about me, Rue, your neighbor, that you can’t pick up through our questionable duplex acoustics.
” She ticks the items off with her fingers.
“I’m a little too obsessed with my work.
I’m a little too closed off about my feelings.
I’m a little too loose about things that need firm plans.
I’m way too protective of my—” She slams her mouth shut.
“Of certain people in my life who don’t need protecting.
” Her voice goes harder on that last part. “Like protective to a stifling degree.”
I’m getting as confused as I was on Friday. Maybe those hours shifted our relationship in small, important ways that have her acting differently around me. Maybe she’s the one with the head injury, not me. And maybe I’m imagining sci-fi body swaps despite being a man of evidence and reason.
“Sounds frustrating for you and the people in your life. Is that overprotectiveness something you’d like to talk through sometime?”
“Something I’d like to…” Her laugh is light, amused, and not one I’ve heard from her before. “God, yes. Fix me, Dr. Mohr.” Then she takes a step toward me, her eyes glittering. “Would you like to unpack the way you slip into professional mode when something deeper than surface level comes up?”
“No, thanks.” I point to her necklace. “What animal is that?”
“A capybara.” She doesn’t even glance down at it. “Why do you always wear that cardigan?”
“Routines are important.” I narrow my eyes. “How come I’ve never heard you watching any GPA tournaments?”
“Guess you’re not listening hard enough.” She narrows her eyes right back. “How do you always know when I’m pulling into my driveway?”
“I don’t.” Shit. “What makes you think I do?”
We’re standing close enough now that I can smell her hair, the same as Friday night, and I wait for her to accuse me of taking up too much space. Instead, she stares at me with such intensity that I wonder if she’s trying to see through the dark lenses of my sunglasses.
Then her expression brightens, and she beams up at me.
“You know what? This was fun.” She stretches to pat my noninjured cheek. “Thanks for the good time, Dr. Mohr.”
She grabs the broom she was using to half-heartedly sweep her porch and saunters back inside, tossing a breezy “Ciao!” over her shoulder.
“Ciao?” I say to myself as I stand alone on her porch following the most baffling conversation of my life.