Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Rue
My knife’s in my hand before my eyes are all the way open. But the threat that had me reaching for my weapon isn’t a threat at all.
“Hi,” I say to the man standing in the doorway as I flip the knife closed and drop it on the nightstand.
Turning my head is painful, but so is every muscle in my body, maybe worse than when I arrived at the duplex—I check my phone—two hours ago.
Wincing, I pull myself into a sitting position, and something cold and wet nudges my hand.
It’s Cosmo, abandoning his spot against my side to climb on top of me with a gentle whuff.
His owner is less pleased.
Scratch that, his owner is pissed, his face stony and his brows pulled low over icy blue eyes.
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep in your bed,” I say, but my apology fires his fury as he stalks over to me.
“Where have you been?” he demands, those hard eyes falling to my neck, the blood on my shirt, the…
oh fuck, the blood on everything. His fluffy comforter, his sheets, his pillows.
God, his pillows were the crispest, coolest fabric I’ve ever rested my head on.
And all of it was white before I collapsed on it.
“I wasn’t thinking.” I swallow, my throat burning at the action. “I drove straight here after I…”
How am I supposed to confess to everything that happened tonight with him glowering down at me?
He looks so much like the furious man he was the night we learned the truth about each other, and my brain’s too scattered to mount any defense right now.
Hell, even if I were operating at one hundred percent, I don’t blame him for wanting me and my chaos out of his life forever. He should want that.
“I’m sorry,” I croak out. “I shouldn’t have come.”
With a whispered apology to Cosmo, I slide him gently onto a non-bloody section of comforter before I fling off the rest of the blankets and ease my legs to the side of the bed, bracing myself for the pain that moving will cause for my—well—everything.
Before I summon the courage to stand, Hugo drops to his knees and buries his face in my lap.
“I thought you were dead,” he says in a broken voice.
“Then it wasn’t you on the floor, but there was so much blood at the window, in the snow.
You weren’t at your sister’s. You weren’t at your new place.
I’ve got Pell checking hospitals and morgues.
I didn’t know where else to go, so I came home.
I never expected—” His voice collapses in on itself, and his arms are iron bands around my waist.
No, not iron bands. Those are hard and unyielding, unwelcome. Hugo’s arms are strong and safe. They’re the most welcome thing in the world.
“How did you know to look for me?” I’m trying to catch up with his story.
“Felicity called me.”
“But she wants to stab a knife through your eye.”
“Oh, I’m aware.” He rests his cheek on my thigh and looks up at me. “When she’s out of her mind with worry over the possibility that you’re dead, she’s willing to put that aside. She loves you so much.”
He swallows convulsively, his eyes falling shut.
“I went there with no idea what I would find, and the lights were on upstairs. The fucking lights. I knew what that meant for you.”
“You went to Overton’s?”
“I didn’t know how to save you. If you were trapped. If you’d escaped. If you were already—”
He presses his face into my lap again, and I rest my hands on his shoulders where his muscles bunch in hard knots.
“I was trapped,” I tell him. “I didn’t get out in time.
” His body tenses even more, but I want him to know.
“The cops were in the house, and I was starting to think about who my call from jail would be. But there was an argument downstairs. I couldn’t hear the words, just the voices.
And there was something about the cadence… ”
Those muscles start to relax as I rub gentle circles across his back.
“It snapped me out of it. I realized if there was even a tiny chance of seeing you again, I’d risk anything. Falling, dying, getting shot in the back in the middle of Ray Overton’s yard.”
A shudder rolls through his body. “Don’t make me picture it.”
“It was the only thing I could think of,” I admit. “But I held my breath, crawled out the window, and let myself fall.” I give him a gentle shake. “And I really, really hate heights, Hugo.”
He kisses the top of my leg, then stays there, breathing. Just breathing.
“It was me,” he eventually says. “I went full Dr. Mohr on them hoping to buy you time. I’m lucky I didn’t get shot.”
I’m shocked anything can make it through my confused, exhausted state, but this does.
“That was you?” I whisper. But of course it was. The voice that got me to my feet. The voice that called me here.
We both fall silent, letting Cosmo’s wheezy snores fill the room for several moments until I look down.
“I’m really sorry about your bed.”
He gives a laugh that’s part sob, or maybe a sob that’s half laugh as his eyes travel past me to take in the full extent of the linen massacre I’ve committed.
“How much of this blood is yours?” His expression darkens, and now I see furious Hugo.
“Almost none,” I assure him.
“What the fuck did he do to you?” he demands, running a full diagnostic on me as I stroke Cosmo’s ears.
I didn’t even glance at myself in the rearview mirror on the drive here, too out of it from fear and adrenaline to consider how I might look.
But I see it reflected in Hugo’s face now as he brushes his fingers over my cheek where Overton clipped me, then my painful neck—sides only, not the larynx, which is a tiny blessing because it means my voice is fine.
His brow furrows as he lifts my left eyelid, then my right one.
“Any petechiae?” I ask, aware that I’m cycling through emotional states. So long, exhaustion and anxiety. Time to move into investigative mode.
“No,” he says, and my shoulders ease. I didn’t think there would be since I stayed conscious despite Overton’s best efforts, but it’s good to have it confirmed. Broken capillaries would’ve been hard to explain at work on Monday.
“So that motherfucker punched you, strangled you,” he says roughly.
“Threw a marble vase at me.” I pull down the neck of my shirt, stiff with Overton’s blood, to show him the impact mark on my collarbone. “In his defense, I was trying to kill him.”
My joke might be funnier if I wasn’t already starting to bruise all over.
Sure enough, Hugo doesn’t laugh. “What else?”
I sigh. “My feet and knees are fucked from lowering myself out the window and dropping onto the concrete, and I probably sprained my ankle running like hell off the property. You were really there?”
“Trying not to lose my mind in front of two police officers.”
The terror of the last several hours hits me again. “I didn’t know if I was going to make it out.”
He digs his fingers into my hips, and at first I think he’s trying to shake some sense into me, but he’s the one who’s shaking.
“You can’t do that to me. You can’t do that ever again.
” His eyes are bottomless as he gazes up at me from his knees.
“I said goodbye to you once, and I told myself it was okay because I knew you’d be out there in the world.
” His shoulders lift when he sucks in a steadying breath.
“But if you ever leave this world, I don’t know what I’d do. Please, please don’t do that again.”
“Hugo.” I press my thumb to the moisture at the corner of his eye. “That was the man who hurt you.”
“And?”
“And I couldn’t let that go unanswered.”
“What?” He pulls away to look at me, baffled. “Why would you risk your life like that? You could’ve died tonight for nothing.”
“Nothing? Even if they catch me, even if I’d died, I’ll never be sorry I did it.”
He shakes his head, still not understanding. “Why?”
I slide my fingers into his hair to stop the movement. “Because nobody touches what’s mine.”
He stills immediately. “What’s… yours?”
My fingers tighten around those soft strands, fisting and pulling until his head’s tilted up to meet my gaze.
“That’s right. Mine.”
Time fractures as we stare at each other, Hugo’s pupils expanding, his lips parting.
Then he surges up and pushes me backward onto the bed.
His mouth lands on mine before his body does, and as much as I’m desperate for the weight and the heat of him, I almost died underneath another man tonight, and my muscles lock up at the memory.
My adrenaline-soaked brain does another swing—this time to panic.
Maybe he won’t notice how fast I’m breathing. Maybe we can keep going.
He notices, of course.
“Sweetheart, god.” He rolls off me with one of those fluid motions I must’ve been blind not to see back in the Dr. Bore days. “Did I hurt you? Is this not what you—”
I press my fingers to his lips to shush him, then yank them back when I see the bloodstains on them.
Look what I brought into his bed.
“I’m covered in him.” I scrub my fingers against my shirt. “He’s all over me, and I’m getting it all over you. And Cosmo!”
I glance around, finding the little dog midleap to the floor. At least he’s smart enough not to want any part of this.
“All I do is traumatize him,” I conclude miserably.
Hugo starts to reach for me, then lets his hands fall.
“Okay. Here’s what’s going to happen.” His eyes are calm and steady on mine, and his psychologist’s voice starts to slow my racing pulse.
“I’m going to start the shower, and you’re going to use every product in there to get yourself as clean as you need to be.
You’re also not going to ask why I have the brands of shampoo, conditioner, body wash, razor, and shaving cream you prefer. ”
My thoughts slow down in sync with my heart rate. I know that last part should upset me, but right now, all I feel is gratitude that he’s taking care of me.
“I need to call your sister, and I have some business with Pell to take care of,” he says. “So I’ll leave you alone to shower, and when you’re done, we can talk or you can sleep. If you want, I’ll even drive you home.”
He practically chokes on the last word, but all I can do is nod in slow motion. “Okay.”
“Okay.” He lifts my hands and presses a kiss to the backs of each one, then stands and leads me to the bathroom. He sits me down on a teak bench against the wall while he starts the water, adjusts the lights to a lower setting, and pulls at least a dozen fluffy towels from a cabinet.
I know I should be teasing him about the bench—Why, Dr. Mohr, what do you get up to in here that you need to be seated on this curved little number?—but I can’t push the words out.
He stretches his fingers under the spray to test the temperature, and that’s when I notice what he’s wearing: black murder pants, white T-shirt, tan cardigan. He’s every version of himself I’ve known all at once.
“There’s plenty of hot water.” He quirks a smile at me as steam starts to fill the room. “I upgraded to tankless when I realized my new tenant likes long showers.”
I nod solemnly back.
“I’ll leave you alone,” he says once he’s done fussing. “Where’d you leave your car?”
“My garage.” I close my eyes and lean my head against the wall despite the pain it causes in the muscles of my neck. “I kept the opener when I moved. Sorry.”
“Keep it forever,” he says immediately. “Keys?”
“Passenger seat.”
He kisses my forehead. “I’ll be back.”
I know he’s going to handle my mess, and I have every intention of rushing through cleanup and going to help him, but the shower runs and runs and the air gets so damp that my clothes start to stick to my body, and this bench is surprisingly comfortable, and my arms don’t seem to have the strength to lift this disgusting shirt over my head even though I should want to scrub off all the traces of red that soaked through the fabric and onto my skin, but I just can’t seem to do it, I can’t seem to…
Hugo’s knock pulls me back into my body.
“Rue?” he calls. “Everything good?”
When I don’t answer, he eases the door open and steps inside. He’s quiet for a moment when he sees me slouched against the wall. Then he asks, “Can I help you undress, baby?”