She takes out a box from beneath her bed. “There’s a difference between a serial killer and what I am. It’s important to me that you know that.”
A framed photo sits on the television stand. I pick it up and run my thumb over the photo of a younger Gemma smiling with her parents.
She used to be so innocent.
I take the photo with me as I loop around the couch and head into her bedroom. She’s back in her closet, kneeling on the floor and going through what looks like a suitcase. I start to open my mouth and say something about her having a case full of weapons, except the moment I turn, I almost drop my gun.
“Holy shit.”
On the wall to the right of the doorway is six monitors, five of them displaying one to four different camera feeds.
“Holy shit,” I repeat, my eyes wide as I pour over them.
The music studio. My hallway. Her hallway. My…
“You have cameras in my apartment?” I ask, rounding on her.
Gemma is standing in the closet doorway and checking the ammunition in her gun—suppressor attached. “Yes,” she admits. “Three.”
“Three?!”
Gemma’s eyes drag over me. “Tell me what you need right now, Bonnie,” she says, her voice hard. “What do you need tohear? Do you want a recount of every day that I thought about you? Every outing when I followed you?”
I lift the gun. “I want to know why you left. Why… when I went to rehab, youleftme.”
She steps out of the closet, gaze shifting down and around like she’s gathering her thoughts. “I had decided a long time before that night that I’d be the villain in your story if it meant you survived,” she says deliberately. “I’d be your bedlam if it meant you took another breath. My life never mattered. All that ever mattered was you, and leaving you all those years ago was the hardest fucking thing I ever did. I don’t regret giving you that time to heal. You would never have healed as well as you did if I had still been in the picture.”
My weight moves foot-to-foot, jaw quaking. “Why do you have to say things like that?” I ask tiredly.
“Like what?”
“Like that… like…” I swallow, glaring at her as I collect my thoughts. “Like I’mworthany of this. All this fucking effort. All of this—” I gesture to the monitors in disbelief. “This is crazy.”
“I can’t tell if you’re upset or flattered,” Gemma says.
“Of course, I’m fucking flattered! You just snapped a guy’s neck because he touched me—”
“Okay, you have to stop saying that out loud,” she tells me.
“—and it was senselessly hot and terrifying. That you would risk everything for me just sounds insane to me, and I hate you for it.”
Gemma sets down her own gun. “Bonnie, the only thing I’m not willing to do when it comes to you is walk away,” she admits. “Not again. I can’t handle that again.”
I don’t speak, and Gemma sighs like she knows I’m waiting for her to continue.
“Earlier, when I was going to tell you who I was, I kept thinking I was going to lose you, and I didn’t see a future afterthat,” she confesses. “So, pull the trigger already if that’s what you’re eventually going to ask. Put me out of my misery because I don’t want to go back to before these last few weeks with you.”
I gulp, trying to stifle the rising emotion, the way my body wants to tremble.
Because I don’t want to go back to before this either.
Her phone buzzes on the bed, and I almost shoot it for interrupting us.
Gemma looks at me, then the phone. Her shoulders drop. “It’s Kade,” she says. “I have to…” She peers at me in a desperate way, and I nod.
“Quick,” I say. “I’m nowhere near done with you.”
Gemma nods before answering. “Hey, Kade. No, we’re… we’re okay…”
