Chapter 33 #3
He rolls to his feet, the motion fluid and controlled, and how the hell did I ever think he was some harmless civilian under that cardigan?
“Why didn’t you just talk to me like a normal man talks to a normal woman?” I furiously point at my half of the property. “Why’d you have to do all this?”
His confusion collapses into anguish. “What did you want me to do?” he asks in a low voice. “Let you get close to me and risk hurting you? I thought you were… her. The girl next door with the normal job and the normal life.”
“How would you have hurt me if I was some innocent?” I fling my arms wide. “Would you have tried to kill me?”
“No!” He glances around, as if any of our rise-and-grind, out-before-dawn, back-after-dark commuter neighbors are around to hear or would care if they did.
“No,” he says more quietly. “But it couldn’t ever be more than a one-sided crush.
I’m not equipped to be a boyfriend. A partner.
I’m missing the part of me that can do that. Not safely anyway.”
He picks up a stick and tosses it, but his attempt at distraction fails. Cosmo plops on his butt and smiles up at him, happy to be a witness to round two of this fight.
“Safely.” I take a step back. “You think any of this made me feel safe? You think I feel safe knowing you wrapped your hand around your dick while I masturbated?”
Unbidden, an image appears of Hugo silently stroking himself in time to my vibrator. I grit my teeth as heat trickles over my skin.
He’s flushed, too. “I knew it was wrong every time. But I thought it was the only way I could… I could be with you.”
My laugh’s more of a snarl. “Greg was a vile woman-hater, but at least he never hid like a scared little boy.”
That pulls him up short.
“Scared? Me?”
“Yes, you,” I snap. “You put on this costume, this show”—I wave a hand over his cardigan and glasses, hating that his hair’s smashed down with gel again—“and for what? To keep all of womankind safe from falling in love with you?” I curl my lip. “Sure, Hugo. Keep telling yourself that.”
He steps a little too close, intentionally using his height against me. “How safe did you feel when I pinned you in Howard Marshall’s closet?”
My mind flashes to the warm, comfortable, smoky-sweet smell of that stranger.
Oh my god. Hugo’s tea.
Grief threatens to drown me, and I respond the way I always do: attack.
“Let’s talk about that, Dr. I-Only-Kill-The-Bad-Ones. Did you show up at Howard Marshall’s that night because you truly believed he was guilty? Or did you want to do something nice for the neighbor girl who barely tolerated you?”
“Goddammit!” he shouts, jamming his fingers in his flat hair. “Yes, okay? I killed for you before you gave me a second glance. Five stars, no notes, would kill for you again.”
His eyes bore into mine, full of hopeless longing.
“Do you remember how thrilled you were that day you told me about Howard Marshall?” He lifts his hand like he wants to brush back the hair that’s fallen across my forehead, but one look at my expression and he lets it drop.
“The way you smiled at me under the umbrella you’d lost months ago and that I replaced without you ever noticing? ”
“I… you…” My mouth falls open. “Christ, Hugo, I don’t even know what to do with that. What umbrella?”
“Of course you didn’t notice.” His expression dims. “The point was for you not to notice. I can’t be disappointed about it now.”
I can’t let it be harder to hate him. I can’t soften to him like I did on his couch, in his kitchen. So I take what I know about him and throw it in his face.
“Dead parents, a string of nannies, one unfriendly friend,” I say. “None of that makes you some noble loner, you know.”
His face darkens. “Oh? Then what am I?”
“You’re hunger wearing a cardigan, Hugo. You’re loneliness masquerading as a surveillance kink. And you’re too fucking cowardly to name it so you can try to be something else. Maybe if you had, we’d have been able to—”
I press my lips together and look away, blinking too rapidly. Why does it hurt to spell it out for him like this? I should be enjoying the piece-by-piece dismantling of the lies he’s been telling himself.
But his tense jaw and miserable eyes are too much, so I bend to run my hands over Cosmo’s head, lavishing attention on his velvety ears while his stubby tail thumps the ground.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I say once I’m under control again. “You’re going to remove the geofencing you have set up on my phone.”
“Already done.” His voice is flat as he holds out his phone, showing me he’s deleted an app I never knew he had.
“And you’re going to let me out of my lease on whatever time frame I decide.”
A noise gets trapped in his throat, but after a beat, he nods jerkily.
“I’ll only be here long enough to look for a new place. Until then, stay out of my way.”
His throat moves before he grinds out, “Okay.”
“Oh, I wasn’t asking. I was telling.” I give Cosmo one last scratch under his chin before I stand. “After that, we never have to see each other again.”
I pretend I don’t feel his eyes on me as I turn and latch the fence gate quietly behind me.