Page 102 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

He wants to keep fighting. I see it, just like I see him make the decision to respect my boundaries.

He leaves. Sixty seconds later, I do too, roaring down the driveway, my headlights sweeping across the rosebushes in front of his duplex, heavy with dying blooms.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Rue

Felicity’s wrapped in a blanket and waiting for me at the back door when I tear down her driveway close to six a.m. I throw my car into park, not bothering to pull into the barn. Let the whole world notice I’m here. I don’t care anymore.

“What’s wrong?” Fi’s face twists in concern when I step onto the crushed gravel, still wearing Pell’s torn flannel. “What happe⁠—”

The sobs I’ve been holding back since I put the duplex in my rearview burst out of me.

“Is my room still set up?” I gasp out.

Her answer is to wrap the blanket around me and squeeze me tight.

“Of course, love.” A gentle hand strokes down my back while my tears soak her shirt. “It’s been waiting.”

Then she takes my hand and leads me inside.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Rue

“So how are we killing him?” Fi asks as she pours us more coffee much later that morning. “Gas leak?”

“We share a house.”

“Right. Bad.” She thinks. “Cut his brakes?”

“He never leaves the house that we share.”

“Right. Sad.” She thinks some more. “I pretend to be you again, knock on his door, and stab him in the face?”

“Tempting, but my objection to you killing anybody remains in place. Also, he’s genuinely dangerous.”

Hawaiian Shirt’s flattened skull floats through my mind, and I shudder.

“Not to you.” Fi scoffs and jumps out of her chair when the toast pops out of the toaster. “Hey, do we even know if Hugo Mohr is his real name?”

“Of course it is,” I say with slightly more confidence than I feel.

While her back is turned, my mind flips to Hugo’s eyes during the worst of our fight this morning. Nobody’s ever looked at me like that, with loathing and longing all tangled together, and I don’t know how I’ll be able to walk through my door again with those memories hanging in the air. It makes me wish I could hide here forever. Just become a permanent fixture in the bedroom that’s been waiting for me, with the yellow quilt and the pretty curtains and the nightstand holding a charger that fits my phone.

“So when are you moving in here?”

No surprise that my twin was thinking in tandem.

“I can’t,” I say, regretting my negative answer for the first time in the history of her asking it.

She spins back to the table and slides a plate of buttered toast in front of me, giving me a sad smile. “Yeah.” Then she turns to pop two more slices of bread into the toaster.

We both know the farmhouse is too far from my job to be practical, although I’m planning to stay here for the next few days. I even called off work, although I made Bart promise to text if any major cases come in. I need to know if Timms’s house somehow does become a crime scene or if Hugo killed somebody after I left the duplex. Not sure how I feel about cleaning up his next crime scene, though.

Asshole. Stalking, voyeuristic asshole.

“Okay, so when are we looking at a new place for you to live?” Fi asks as she sets a brand-new Costco-sized jar of Nutella in front of me, pointedly not making eye contact as she does.