Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Hugo
“Open it,” I tell the cursing, struggling woman as I set her down in front of her car’s back passenger side door.
Her answer is to twist in my grasp and bring her knee up, aiming for my balls. I shift so the blow lands on the outside of my thigh.
“I told you,” I say as I reach behind her and fumble the door open. “I know how to take a hit.”
I push her into the back seat, being careful not to hit her head on the doorframe and follow her down so she’s on her back with my body covering hers. I’ve fantasized about having Rue underneath me in the back seat of a car, but I never pictured anything this… this sad.
“You’re going to wear yourself out before we listen to your greatest hits,” I say as she strains to push me off.
“That’s mine. It’s private.”
The car’s dome light illuminates her bared teeth and wild eyes.
“Yet you were desperate to keep me from finding it,” I say tiredly. “So Gomez must make an appearance or two.”
Hatred spills across her face. “Here’s an idea: How about not acting like a psychopath, giving me the recorder, and letting me fucking go?”
Her voice lifts into a shout on the final words, but I harden my heart and hit play, needing to know what other evidence she’s been collecting on me.
When the device asks me for a PIN, I turn it to face her.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding,” she snarls.
That’s fine. I can make a few educated guesses.
“The date your mom died?” I click my tongue. “Disappointingly predictable, Ruby Lynn.”
When she tosses her head back and screams in rage, I really do think about letting it all go. Destroying the recorder and whatever’s on it. Doing the same to those tubes of DNA.
But I can’t. I have to know.
When I press play, a digital voice announces a date from just over two years ago.
“Felicity, my love,” Rue’s sunny recorded voice says. “If you’re listening to this, I’m probably dead. Guess I wasn’t immortal after all. Sorry about that.”
The real Rue meets my gaze defiantly, daring me to look away as I hold her down and unspool her innermost thoughts right next to her ear.
“I don’t want you risking your precious self getting revenge for me, but I also know you. So these are my notes on anybody worth a second look.”
That tone. I heard it in my kitchen over Quinn’s stew. I thought she was talking about car crashes. She was updating her will, and I was in it.
“Remember to work with Pell,” the recording continues. “I’ve threatened him with bodily harm from beyond the grave if he lets you go after anyone yourself. Okay, love youuuuuu.”
The recorder clicks off at the end of the track, and Rue says, “That’s all that’s on there. Just logistics. There’s no need to—”
I skip ahead a few tracks and hit play. When she hears the date, she gives a little moan that travels through her chest and into mine.
“Don’t,” she whispers. “Please don’t.”
It’s dated twenty-three days after she moved in and met me—Dr. Mohr me. I hate how much I need to hear whatever she has to say.
“I killed that drunk driver tonight,” recorder Rue says. “Pell’s chemist is a genius. The guy slept through the whole thing.”
Rue’s been using the compounds Quinn sells to Pell. Of course she has. What a fucked-up little web we’re all caught in.
“Fi-Fi,” the recording continues, “We have to talk about my neighbor. I have never met a more hopeless dork. He’s always around, and he’s, like, always smiling.”
Rue shakes her head so vehemently that her hair tangles on the upholstery. “Don’t listen to this, Hugo.”
I press my weight down on her harder and let the track play.
“He helped me set up my new bedroom set. He volunteered. Who does that? And he was so fucking nice when I cried about Greg.” Recorder Rue gives a little laugh.
“Then again, I’ve never seen him not in that hideous cardigan.
If I disappear, maybe check Dr. Huge-o Bore’s floorboards for my chopped-up body—if I don’t kill him first for the incessant early aughts girl pop.
How does somebody so… so… tall have such terrible taste in music? ”
“I mean, you do,” real Rue grumbles—and it’s a special kind of torture to listen to her insult me when she’s close enough that her breath brushes my cheek.
I bite back a soft curse as I lose the fight with my body, and a few seconds later, she tenses underneath me.
My dick deflates immediately.
“Rue. No,” I say in a low, broken voice. “You can’t really think I’d—”
Her eyes refuse to hold mine as she exhales a pained breath. “I don’t.”
My horror caused me to loosen my grip, and she takes advantage, bucking until one of her hands is free. She tries to knock the recorder away, but I extend my arm so it’s out of reach between the front seats.
Guess we’re still listening.
The next entry I land on is from the night Morticia met Gomez.
“Felicity, my love, I don’t know where to start,” recorder Rue says with a long sigh.
“I told you about the guy I met tonight, but I wasn’t totally honest. This guy is the hottest, scariest, most exciting person I’ve ever met.
” She laughs. “I know what you’re going to say.
‘Rue, you didn’t even see his face.’ Well, I’m here to tell you, he could be a hideous troll under the mask, or he could have Dr. Bore’s lickable jawline. I’d be into it either way.”
I can’t help it; I glance down and find Rue’s eyes squeezed shut, her face turned away from me.
“I keep thinking about how he fixed my back porch light without being asked. Hugo, not Gomez.” She sighs before continuing. “God, I wish I was going to see him again.”
There’s a creak of springs on the recording, like she’s shifting on a shitty bed frame.
“He’s just so boring. Hugo, obviously. Always asking me about my day and, like, picking up an extra pack of sparkling water for me when he finds it on sale.
” Recorder Rue groans. “God, why am I even talking about him and his boner-killer cardigans and his thoughtfulness? I met the man of my dreams tonight, and I’m lying here in the barn in the dark thinking about the dork who forced his way into my life. ”
The recording goes silent for so long I’m starting to think the track is over, but her recorded voice picks up again.
“I kept his DNA, Fi. I told him I wouldn’t, but I did.
Ten percent in case he finds me and murders me, and ninety percent because I want proof that the best night of my life actually happened.
” Recorder Rue laughs self-consciously. “If I do end up dead, the swabs are in the baking soda box in my fridge. No cops, though. Let Pell rule him in or out. And I know you’re going to say I can’t possibly know for sure, but my gut says Gomez won’t hurt me. ”
I risk a glance at the Rue I’m trapping in the back seat. Her eyes glint up at me, daring me to acknowledge that I’m hurting her right now.
I’m the one who averts my gaze this time.
“Anyway,” the recording continues, “I couldn’t tell eye or hair color, but he’s tall, well over six feet.
Broad shoulders. Amazing hands. No accent.
” She snorts. “I’ve basically just described Dr. Bore, haven’t I?
Maybe I was right all along. If I vanish someday, forget about Gomez. Start with the virgin next door.”
The track ends, and Rue’s the one to break the silence. “Hugo, I—”
“You only ever saw what I wanted you to see,” I say flatly.
I shouldn’t be hurt. Fuck, I shouldn’t still be listening.
But even though it’s clear nothing on this device could implicate me—in fact, it only implicates Rue, and I would never, never use that information against her—I press play on the last track.
That’s how starved I am for any hint of her unguarded thoughts about me.
It’s from Sunday. The day I met her fucking twin.
“Greg’s dead,” her flat, recorded voice says. “He’s in the tank, and Pell’s handling his car. So yeah. I guess that’s closure.”
Shock has me hitting pause. “You killed your ex-boyfriend?”
“Yes.” Even flat on her back and immobilized by a much larger opponent, she’s cold and unapologetic.
When I press play again, Rue holds my gaze. The tired rasp of her recorded voice fills the car.
“I’m… sad. Not that he’s dead or that I’m the one who killed him. Sad that I had to. I hate that I had to, just like I hate how many other awful guys like him are out there.”
Recorder Rue yawns and shifts on the same creaky bed, her voice slowing with what’s clearly emotional and physical exhaustion.
“Not Hugo, though. I’m pretty sure he’s…” She yawns again, her voice growing heavier. “He’s surprisingly…”
For a long moment, it’s just the soft, slow sound of her breathing. Just before the track ends, her drowsy voice says, “I wish he’d give me roses sometime.”
The recorder clicks off for the last time, and a muffled sob escapes the woman in my arms. The fight leaves my body, and I roll to the side, letting her scramble away. But to my surprise, she doesn’t fly out of the car. Instead, she pulls herself into a sitting position.
I do the same, and we turn toward one another, my stomach clenching at the traces of tears on her cheeks.
“I would’ve brought you roses every day,” I tell her. “If I’d known.”
Her eyes drop to her hands before she drags them back to me.
“It’s too late for that, Hugo.”
She’s right. It’s November first. Not even my roses can survive the winter.
“What did your ex do?” I ask after a short silence.
“You don’t get to ask me that,” she says, her eyes flicking dismissively down my body. “Especially not when you’re hiding behind your virgin-next-door costume.”
Having delivered her snide little insult, she snatches the recorder from my hand and climbs out of the car, striding toward the house.
I stalk after her.
“And? Do you still think that?” I ask when I’ve caught up with her in the living room.
She doesn’t respond, so I grab her loose blond hair and wrap the strands around my fist, turning her so her back is pressed against the wall.
I’m prepared to let her go if she gives any signs of not welcoming my touch, but her cheeks are flushed, and she sweeps her tongue across her lower lip, her gaze fixed on my mouth.
Good. We spent every day we had together lying to each other, but this heat between us is real.
“Answer me.” I tighten my grip on her hair. “Do you still think your neighbor doesn’t know how to fuck you the way you need to be fucked?”
I’ve been keeping my body far enough away from hers that she could easily slip out of my grasp. But she slides her fingers into my belt loops and tugs me forward, turning my hard cock and her hard nipples into another battlefield.
“What do you think?” she murmurs.
Using muscles she never noticed on Dr. Mohr, I slide my thigh between her legs and push her up the wall until her toes barely brush the ground.
“I think you want the man in the shadows wearing a mask,” I tell her, my fingers digging into her soft flesh. “You want the killer who smashed in the skull of the guy who held a gun to your head.”
When her head falls back on a breathy moan, I grip her jaw and force her mouth open with my thumb. “You want someone who fucks you next to that same guy’s corpse to remind you that you’re alive and you’re powerful.”
She drags her teeth over my knuckle before obediently sucking.
“Good girl,” I growl, lifting her knee with my free hand to spread her wide so I can grind against her while I fuck my thumb in and out of her mouth. She rocks her hot pussy against my dick, her eyes hazy with lust, and I stroke her tongue with my thumb one last time before slipping it free.
“Hugo, your body is so—” She sucks in a breath when I thrust against her, her fingers sliding down my chest to grip my hips and tug at my pants, pulling me even closer. “So fucking hot. Yes, I want all that, just like you want the girl next door and the bitch in black.”
“God, yes.”
But no. Something’s not right.
My eyes drop to the shirt she’s wearing.
“I pictured us together a million times.” My hand smooths down her throat. “Kissing. Touching. Fucking.”
She shudders when I free the top button of the too-large flannel and brush the pads of my fingers across her collarbones.
“But each time I pictured us together,” I say, opening the second button, “you sure as fuck weren’t wearing another man’s shirt.”
I rip it the rest of the way open to reveal her breasts, glorious in white lace.
“Did he see you like this?” I growl as I part the open halves of Pell’s shirt and run my thumbs across her nipples.
She responds with a whimper, so I pinch those two hard points and repeat myself. “Did he?”
“No. I… I changed in the car,” she gasps out. “I was in a hurry to come home to you.”
She blinks and looks away, like she’s surprised by this small confession.
I’m not. All I see is the girl who wanted roses.
“God, baby.” I slide my fingers into her hair. “Every time I listened to that little vibrator of yours through the wall, I thought about all the ways I could do it better.” I brush my lips along her throat. “How I could make you scream with my hands and my tongue and my cock.”
“You listened? When I…”
“Yes, neighbor girl,” I murmur, moving my mouth to the underside of her jaw. “Listened but never watched. I wouldn’t do that to you. I always closed the app when you…”
I hear it. Then I feel it.
My careless words. Her knife at my throat.
“What?” she says at the same time I pat my pocket and ask, “How did you—”
Ah. She was reaching for me, but she was also working her hand toward her knife. A killer reclaiming her tool as naturally as an artist picks up a dropped brush. I even felt it happen, felt her hand at my hip. I leaned into it because I’m still starved for her touch.
She might’ve just been planning to pocket it. Then I gave her a reason to use it.
“Hugo,” she says sharply. “What do you mean you never watched?”