Chapter 54
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Rue
Hugo and our dog are the only ones left in the duplex when I finally make it home. One’s asleep. One’s vibrating with anxiety.
“Not to jinx it, but it went about as well as it possibly could,” I say in place of a greeting, flopping onto the couch next to him.
“Good.” Hugo’s shoulders relax, and he runs a tired hand over his face, saying again, “Good.”
“Nobody raised a single red flag,” I say, leaning back against the cushion and closing my eyes. “Bart had no problem signing off on suicide.” And the only person who noticed the trace of Femme Fatale on Timms’s shirt was the one who’d been wearing it.
I peel my eyes open and grin at Hugo despite my exhaustion.
“Pretty sure everyone wants to wrap this up with as little paperwork as possible so we can all put Lester Timms behind us.”
We grin at each other. We fucking did it.
“Okay,” I say when a yawn attacks me. “I’m changing, and then I’m sitting back down on this couch and never moving again.”
Hugo helps boost me up and moves Cosmo into his lap. “We’ll be here.”
I come back downstairs a few minutes later dressed like a woman who’s extremely confident in her romantic relationship: no bra, Hugo’s button-down shirt, my Valentine heart leggings, fuzzy socks, and a Dr. Mohr cardigan. He raises his eyebrows at that last item.
“What?” I pull the ends around me. “I was cold.”
He’s stretched longways on the couch, and I nestle into him, my back against his front, his arms around me. “It looks better on you,” he says into my hair.
We sit like that while my nerves unwind and my heartbeat slows to match him. Then I reach into the sweater pocket and pull out the envelope from the nightstand.
His body goes rigid.
“Are you sure you—”
I rip it open.
Before I unfold the pages, I press my cheek to his chest. “I love you. Nothing changes that. Okay?”
His heart beats, strong and steady. “Okay.”
Then I start to read.
Rue,
I’ve written a dozen versions of this letter, and I’ve deleted them all. First they were desperate, then they were defensive. They made excuses and begged for your forgiveness.
This letter isn’t that. It’s a confession and a transfer of power.
I thought the cameras let me know you, but it turns out, I didn’t. At all. How arrogant to think that I did. But I’ll do my best to make sure you know me by the time you’re done with these pages.
He shifts, unease pouring off him.
“Rue—”
“Quiet. I’m reading.”
My confession: I thought if I didn’t watch you in sexual situations, that kept me noble. But you coming home from work, you eating breakfast, you on your laptop—all of it’s as valuable and vulnerable as your body. I had no right to any of the parts of you I took.
To be clear, I am sorry. I’m telling you that so you know, not to demand your forgiveness.
“I forgave you,” I remind him. “Before this. Before I watched you not watch Greg’s video.” I squeeze his fingers. “You should have, though. He would’ve killed you if he’d noticed.”
“No.” His voice grates out of him. “I shouldn’t have. I never will.”
I lift our hands to my mouth, kiss his knuckles, and continue.
You called me a scared little boy. I refused to hear it at the time, but you were right.
I told myself I wasn’t equipped to love someone safely.
The truth is, I was scared they wouldn’t love me, and I built this whole life so I’d never have to hear anyone tell me that.
Then I met you, and that fear tripled because how would I survive if I asked you to love me and you said no?
Five minutes after meeting you, I handed you a three-year lease to a space I built to stay empty, and then I hid on the other side of the wall and put in cameras so I could have you without asking.
I never gave you the chance to say yes, and god knows I never let you say no.
My fear hurt us both, but it hurt you more, and I’m so fucking sorry.
“Were you really never going to rent my half?”
It’s probably not the first question I should be asking, but I’m starting with the one my brain can grasp.
“Never. Then you pulled into the driveway, and I was just… gone.” His words are raw, but his eyes are guarded, and seeing that kills me after meeting the open, trusting version of this man.
When I pull away from him to stand up, he swings his feet to the floor, looking up at me in alarm.
“Are you leaving?”
“Hugo!” I exclaim, exasperated. “My leg was cramping.”
I climb onto his lap, straddling him.
“I’m staying forever, and I’m going to sit on you until you believe it.” I give him a quick kiss. “Now quit distracting me with your handsome face.”
So here it is. Everything about me. The things the cameras let me do. The safe houses. The fake identities. Every kill. Information no one else on earth has access to.
“What?” My gaze snaps to his face. “No, I—”
“Yes,” he says. But it’s not his words that convince me to keep reading. It’s his hands on my hips, gentle but possessive. He wants me to read this. I think he needs me to.
It’s yours to use however you want. None of it makes up for what I did. Nothing can. But it’s the only way I know how to offer you the trust I took.
“Is this seriously”—I count quickly—“sixteen more pages of everything you did when you were in helpful stalker mode?”
“No,” he says. “It’s nine pages of the things I did when I was in helpful stalker mode and seven pages of everyone I’ve killed.”
My mouth drops, and finally, finally, he smiles.
“Which are you surprised by: how long the stalker list is or how short the kill list is?”
“I don’t know, both?” I laugh. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
The list starts small. Salting my steps when there’s anything more than a five percent chance of snow in the forecast. Checking my tire pressure every month because my car’s make and model is notoriously finicky.
Replacing expired creamer in my fridge and pouring the new one out to match the level of the old one.
Others are bigger.
“That was you who DoorDashed me orange juice when I was sick last year? I assumed it was Fi!”
He shrugs, but he smiles as he does, and I keep reading.
“All of that for an umbrella, Hugo? An umbrella?”
“Yep.”
“And the three dozen donuts that appear in my office break room on the second day of my period every month? That’s…” I gape at him. “I thought I was just imagining the coincidence.” I shake my head. “I should be creeped out, but I fucking love those period donuts.”
“Good.” He tugs me forward the tiniest bit, and that’s when I discover that watching me read the details of his stalker love language is a big turn-on for my boyfriend.
My lips curl as I wiggle against that nice, hard dick and keep reading.
“You unplugged my hair straightener on seven different occasions, yet you let me go to Overton’s with a dead jammer?”
He gives my ass a light swat. “Don’t even fucking joke.”
“Do that again,” I purr.
He does, and I arch into him, letting my hand trail down his chest. “I considered blinding Fi when she told me she’d seen you in sweatpants.” I squeeze his cock through the soft material.
His thumb finds my clit and rubs it over the layers of fabric. “No blinding your sister.”
“Fine.” I whimper and push myself up on my knees. “Pants off.”
“Mine or yours?”
“Don’t be Dr. Bore about this,” I say, shoving his shoulder and laughing as we struggle to free me from my leggings and him from his sweatpants because we’re not willing to lose physical contact with one another long enough to undress like normal people.
But when you’re committed to a task, you make it work, and in the next breath, he’s pushing inside me.
“Keep reading,” he grits out.
“O-okay.” I force my eyes to focus on the pages in my hand. “I’m on your list of murders now, baby.”
His cock hardens even more, and he bites my shoulder, groaning, “God, yes.”
I plant a hand on his shoulder and ride my boyfriend while I read the full account of his crimes. Funny. Last time somebody’s secrets were aired in this relationship, they were mine.
He’s taking it a lot better.
“I love how much you hate abusers.” I rock my hips back and forth on his perfect cock. “Goals, honestly.”
He thrusts upward, hitting me someplace so good that I momentarily leave my body.
“It… it just makes sense.” Sweat beads on his forehead as he starts unfastening the buttons of my shirt. “To remove them. For the l-long-term health of the com… community.”
“Sure.” I lift up and impale myself again, making us both moan. “It’s not like you care about the actual people involved. That’s not why you funded a whole damn women’s shelter.”
His fingers still on the final button. “How did you…?”
“Did you forget what my sister can do?” I smirk at him. “Rub my clit. I’m still reading.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
After that, it gets harder to stay focused on the list, but I see cases I processed. Dead men I’d wondered about. One has me freezing mid-thrust.
“You killed that guy we thought got bit by his Puff Adder?”
“Yeah,” he grunts out. “And it was a pain in the ass making sure Stay Puft went to a snake sanctuary instead of being… ya know…” He drags a thumb across his throat and drops his mouth to my nipple, his voice falling an octave.
“Baby, do you know what it does to me, seeing you in my shirt? In my fucking cardigan?”
“What does it do to you?” I’m breathless, my pleasure starting to coil tight as Hugo works me over with his big dick and his blunt thumb and his hot tongue.
“It makes me want to keep fucking you forever.” He holds me in place and shifts his hips, and my spine bows so far back that I grip the coffee table behind me for balance.
“You’d better,” I tell him.
“Then you’d better finish the letter so you can keep fucking me.”
Right. The letter. I straighten and look for where I left off.
The last page. And what’s on there makes me stop moving entirely.
“Hugo.”
“What?” He freezes too. “What, baby?”
“The plant cuttings that you leave for me from your backyard.”
Understanding dawns, and his mouth softens. “You really don’t know your plants, do you?”
I shake my head, my eyes not leaving his face as I lift the now-crumpled pages. “Is this real?”
He nods. Shifts. Makes me shiver.
“Ruta graveolens.” His smile spreads into a full-blown grin. “Otherwise known as the rue plant.”
Fingers shaking, I reach into the breast pocket of my shirt and pull out the little cutting from Timms’s house, hit with its full significance for the first time.
“Are you telling me you’ve been leaving a rue plant at the scenes you think I might end up working?”
“No.” He plucks the sprig from my fingers and tucks it behind my ear. “I’m telling you I’ve been leaving a rue plant at every scene, just in case. Since the day I planted them.” He tilts his hips and slides deeper into me. I didn’t think it was possible, but he does. “The week you moved in.”
“That early?” My head falls forward, and I press my face into his neck as I let myself fully understand the extent of his devotion. “You planted the yellow flowers for me after knowing me for a week?”
His hand cups the back of my head. His cock throbs inside me. His lips find my ear. “Yes, baby. You just didn’t see them for a long time.”
I shatter. He does too. We cling to each other as that golden glow rushes through us.
“I see you now,” I whisper. “All of you.”
“All of me,” he whispers back. “And all of you.”