Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Rue
What do you mean you never watched?
My question echoes through my head as Hugo’s fingers move toward the front pocket of his sweater.
But I notice—of fucking course I notice, it’s my job to notice—and I snatch his phone before he can.
He grabs my wrist, but I break his hold and back away.
“You’ll never get it unloc—”
“My birthday in reverse?” I look at him in exaggerated pity. “That’s fucking pathetic, Hugo.”
When he tries to make another grab for me, I put the couch between us so I can swipe through his phone.
Then my world collapses.
“Front door, back door, kitchen,” I say, my voice sounding flat and faraway to my disbelieving ears. “Oh look, there we are. Living room.”
I flip off the camera without pulling my eyes from his phone, where I see the action in real time on the live stream.
The live stream. Of my home.
The live stream of my home.
“Upstairs hallway, guest room. My bedroom.” My distance crumbles, and I look at Hugo in horror. “How many cameras do you have in there, you fucking pervert?”
He’s frozen, his face a mask of anguish. “Rue, no.”
“No?” I thrust the screen in his direction. “Are you telling me you don’t have multiple angles in the room where I sleep? Where I change clothes?”
“I always turn the cameras off.” He takes a step toward me, his eyes wide. “When you undress or come out of the shower or…”
He flushes as he tries not to say it, but I know. I fucking know.
“Masturbate?” I snap. “You’re saying you don’t watch me when I masturbate?”
“Never,” he says through tight lips.
“I don’t believe you,” I hiss. “And what about when I’m asleep, Hugo?
What about when I’m singing at the top of my lungs while I cook, or when I’m eating dinner over the sink?
” I’m hit with every ridiculous, mundane, embarrassing thing I’ve ever done in my home, in this room.
“What about when I come home from work and cry because I had a hard day?”
He doesn’t answer, but I see it on his face. He’s seen it. All of it.
“I’m going to…” I sink onto the couch, his phone thunking to the floor as I grip my knife and hang my head between my knees.
When the dizziness passes, I lift my head and ask, “How long?”
He hesitates, and I snap upright. He invaded my life, my secrets, my everything, and he wants to keep this information from me?
“How long?” I demand.
He doesn’t meet my eyes as he says, “Pell installed them when I bought the place. Long before you moved in.”
The confession draws a small, wounded sound from me. I faced down a man with a gun tonight, and I was less petrified than I am right now.
“You’ve been watching me in my home.” I look around the living room like I’m seeing it for the first time. This room was supposed to be my sanctuary, but it was actually his playground.
Like Greg.
Never ever would I have thought Hugo was like Greg.
I feel lightheaded again.
“Do you have any idea how this feels?” I blink, but it doesn’t stop the tear that escapes. “I can’t believe I’m dealing with this again. And from you this time, Hugo.”
My neighbor. My kind, goofy, harmless neighbor. Watching me. Recording me. Betraying m—
“Who?” He becomes Gomez in front of my eyes, calm and focused and lethal.
“Other than you, you mean?” The words claw their way out. “What other man did I stupidly trust?”
“Who is it?” He stalks forward and grips my shoulders. “I’ll fucking kill him.”
His eyes burn into me, the vein in his temple throbbing, and how fucking dare he. As if I can’t take care of myself. As if I haven’t been taking care of myself my whole life.
I jerk away from him and stand.
“Don’t worry. I already did.”
I make a small slicing motion with my knife, not that Hugo will understand what I’m reenacting. But he understands who I did it to.
“Your ex?” he grinds out.
Two hours ago, I would’ve loved his fury over what Greg did to me. Now it’s hypocrisy beyond belief.
And fuck, I have to know, even though I might never recover from knowing it.
“What disgusting forum did you upload my masturbation videos to?” I ask it in a controlled voice, but inside I’m in crash position, waiting for the destruction. Another loss of self at the hands of a man.
“Wait.” Hugo’s face blanks. “You’re saying he…”
He pales, and his feet stay planted while every cell in his body strains forward like he wants to comfort me. Comfort me.
“He did that to you?” he says hoarsely. “I’ll dig him up and kill him again. I’ll kill everyone who saw you like that without your permis—”
“You did the same thing, you lunatic!”
“No.”
“You did,” I hiss.
“It was different!” he shouts. “My cameras were for me, to keep you safe. Happy. I never shared you online. I never even watched you like that! I respected your boundaries.”
“Respected my… ?” I laugh. I might laugh forever. This is who I’ve been living next to, and I never saw it. “I’ve been fucking violated, Hugo.”
His rage falls away, leaving behind devastation.
“God. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” His expression is awful, hopeless and broken and lost. “It’s just that you’re… you’re mine, Rue.”
“What?”
“You’re mine.” He starts talking faster, so desperate to make me understand.
“You met me at the mailbox. You came looking for me when I had the concussion. You brought me tea and drank it in my kitchen.” He moves closer, and I let him.
“You were with me in Howard Marshall’s closet and Marcus Navarro’s bedroom. You killed that man with me tonight.”
I want to weep. I did do those things. I was with him. I liked him. I more than liked him.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he says, pressing his right hand to my cheek, mimicking the comforting gesture I gave him when he was concussed and hurting, “but I’ve been painfully, obviously in love with you for five hundred and ninety-eight days. You’re fucking mine, Rue.”
He catches my tear with his thumb, and I lean into his palm. Five hundred and ninety-seven, he said over Daniel Vartan’s body. It’s five hundred and ninety-eight now. He’s still counting. I jerk away with a cry, shoving him back and clamping down on the sob that’s been building in my throat.
“Oh, neighbor guy,” I force out with pure, cold fury. “How could I ever be yours? The whole time you’ve been watching me in secret, you kept me at a distance with your Dr. Mohr bullshit. The glasses and the cardigan and the hair. The fucking hair, Hugo! The smashed-down hair!”
I point my knife at his hair, furious that I know how silky it is when he’s not hiding it from me.
My eyes squeeze shut as I drop my arm to my side. When I open them again, the man in front of me is blurred by my tears.
“I meant what I said. I wanted to come home to you tonight.” With jerky motions, I flip my knife closed and tie the torn halves of Pell’s shirt together. “But wanting you and trusting you aren’t the same thing, Hugo. And I can’t trust you now.”
He lurches forward, reaching for me, but I dodge his hands.
“Get out.”
“No,” he says hoarsely, his eyes pleading. “I don’t want to leave things like this.”
My answering laugh is short and unkind. “You think I care what you want?” I lift my chin, and I find the girl inside of me who always survives. “How about I never want to speak to you again? How about that?”
“Rue—”
“Didn’t you hear me?” I scream. “We’re done. Get. Out.”
He wants to keep fighting. I see it, just like I see him make the decision to respect my boundaries.
He leaves. Sixty seconds later, I do too, roaring down the driveway, my headlights sweeping across the rosebushes in front of his duplex, heavy with dying blooms.