Ugh. He knew? I didn’t want to think about how, but I definitely never told him. Why did I even ask about this? Rewind! Cancel!
After a strained moment, I reconsidered what he’d just asked me and got a little angry.
“Are youblaming me?”
He held up both hands. “Not at all. It just... can be different the first time.”
“I’m not an idiot. I’m aware of women’s bodies. I have one.” I was most definitely aware of the pain and the smear of blood that haunted me until I got home, until I cried in the shower and later threw away my underwear—making sure it was well hidden, as if it were a piece of murder evidence. I think I halfway expected Grandma Eleanor to rise from the grave and tell me I was just like my mother. As much as I loved my mom, sometimes I felt I’d never be free of her mistakes... or free of Grandma judging me for them, because my mother wasn’t alive to carry the guilt anymore.
Daniel sighed. “This is coming out all wrong.”
“What are you trying to say, then?”
“That...” He drew in a fast breath and said, “We were racing like the world was burning down. Like we might get caught. It should have been somewhere else—somewhere private. In a bed, with candles. Or after a date at the top of the Space Needle,” he said, gesturing loosely toward the lit-up white tower in the distance.
“Space Needle?”
“Something more romantic. I don’t know,” he said, throwing up his arms.
“I don’t need all of that romantic stuff.”
“Well, maybe I do,” he said, a little indignant. “All I’m saying is that I feel awful about how everything played out, and I’m an idiot for not picking up on the clues, but I guess I’m a shitty detective. And I liked you too much. I was greedy and stupid and not thinking. But also, you wouldn’t talk to me.”
“You didn’t say anything! I thought, okay, he’s finished. I guess that’s that.”
He made a face and held up a finger. “Um, I didn’t finish. For the record. I stopped. There’s a difference.”
A renewed surge of embarrassment raced through my body. “Well, I’m sorry I didn’t realize that,” I said angrily. “Do you want some sort of good-guy prize?”
“What? No!” He growled in frustration, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I don’t want a prize. I’m trying to say that I’m sorry that it sucked, and I feel responsible. I wish you’d stayed and talked to me. I wish I’d had the sense to talk to you more before we started. I wish... I don’t know, Birdie. I feel like an asshole, and I wish I had a time machine so that I could go back and change everything. Because it could have been so much better. We could have gone to the movies that night. We could have gotten to know each other first.” He blew out a long breath through his nostrils. “All I’m saying is that I wish you had talked to me instead of leaving.”
“What do you want me to say about it now? That I wasn’t thinking when we got in your car and that I freaked out because I realized halfway through it all that you were a stranger, and it was just way too intense? That I’m not good at heart-to-heart talks because I’m terrified of getting too close to anyone—because everyone I care about always leaves me, so why bother?”
He stared at me, eyes wide, body rigid.
The underside of my eyelids prickled.Do not cry. Do not cry.I pushed myself off the bench and paced in front of the wall, just to clear my head and put some distance between us. He didn’t follow.
Everything he’d said replayed inside my head on a loop. And now that I was able to calm down a little, I wished I hadn’t said what I did. It wasn’t fair to him. See, this was why I didn’t do this kind of thing. I wanted to erase everything I’d just said and go back to the first part of Daniel’s game, when it was easy and breezy and my heart didn’t feel as if it were studded with broken glass.
Maybe it wasn’t too late to apologize.
But before I could rally the nerve to turn around and find out, I spotted someone walking two dogs. A husky man. With a baseball cap.
It was the man from the elevator. I’d bet my life on it. The clerk at the record store had been right. Bill Waddle, opera fan, walked his dogs at dawn.
Was it possible that right now I was looking at the actual Raymond Darke?
All the hairs on my arms lifted. My brain closed the door on our emotional talk and switched into investigation mode—something that was much more comfortable, frankly.
I spun around to signal Daniel, but he was right in front of me. Startled, I let out a little cry, which carried across the park. The photographer looked at us again. So did the man walking his dogs.
“Oh no,” I whispered. “I think that’s him. He sees us.”
“Shit,” Daniel murmured. “Move here. Okay, that’s good.”
Now my back was to the man. “Is he still looking?” I whispered. “Is it Darke?”
“It’s definitely him,” he whispered back. “I’m going to put my hand on your shoulder. Don’t freak. Just act casual. I don’t want him to recognize me.”
