Page 107 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

“You said we’d be done before he got back.” I’d been planning on following Pell out the door to avoid any accidental neighbor sightings while I’m figuring out my next move.

“Oops.” He lifts one hoodie-clad shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I did warn you this’d take longer than I thought.”

“Great.” I glance across the room to see Pell openly pawing through my jewelry box, examining the few pieces I own. “Knock that off! What are you, a raccoon?”

Pell grins at me. “Yes, ma’am, I am.” He selects a pair of gold hoop earrings, holding them against his own ear. His pinkie’s already starting to swell. “You should wear these more. They go great with your complexion.”

I growl and yank them out of his hand, tossing them back in the box. Then we both listen to the muffled sounds of Hugo’s homecoming: the door slam, the clatter of keys, his heavy footsteps alongside a lighter, faster tapping sound I don’t recognize.

“Shit, these walls really are thin.” He chuckles. “Your boy didn’t need cameras at all. Just his imagination.”

“You are not helping,” I say testily, cocking my head when Hugo’s back door opens and closes. Against my will, I drift to the window overlooking our two fenced yards and gasp. “You gave him Cosmo?”

Pell joins me at the window.

“Yep,” he says. “What I saw Thursday night, the only thing he loves more’n you in this world is that little guy.”

He leaves me alone at the window while Hugo lets the dog, more brown than white thanks to the muddy yard, use his stomach as a trampoline.

God, Hugo.

I rest my forehead against the glass. My body wants him. My heart wants me to have him. My brain’s too smart to let those two bitches call the shots. And all three want to cry as I watch him roll around in the yellowing grass with the happily barking little dog.

No. I’m not doing this.

I bolt from the room and down the stairs, shouting at Pell, “Let yourself out, and send the bill to him.”

“Already done,” he calls after me.

When I burst through the latched gate in Hugo’s fence, he and Cosmo both look up from the ground, startled.

“Why didn’t you just talk to me?” I demand.

“What do you mean?”

He rolls to his feet, the motion fluid and controlled, and how the hell did I ever think he was some harmless civilian under that cardigan?

“Why didn’t you just talk to me like a normal man talks to a normal woman?” I furiously point at my half of the property. “Why’d you have to do all this?”

His confusion collapses into anguish. “What did you want me to do?” he asks in a low voice. “Let you get close to me and risk hurting you? I thought you were… her. The girl next door with the normal job and the normal life.”

“How would you have hurt me if I was some innocent?” I fling my arms wide. “Would you have tried to kill me?”

“No!” He glances around, as if any of our rise-and-grind, out-before-dawn, back-after-dark commuter neighbors are around to hear or would care if they did. “No,” he says more quietly. “But it couldn’t ever be more than a one-sided crush. I’m not equipped to be a boyfriend. A partner. I’m missing the part of me that can do that. Not safely anyway.”

He picks up a stick and tosses it, but his attempt at distraction fails. Cosmo plops on his butt and smiles up at him, happy to be a witness to round two of this fight.

“Safely.” I take a step back. “You think any of this made me feel safe? You think I feel safe knowing you wrapped your hand around your dick while I masturbated?”

Unbidden, an image appears of Hugo silently stroking himself in time to my vibrator. I grit my teeth as heat trickles over my skin.

He’s flushed, too. “I knew it was wrong every time. But I thought it was the only way I could… I could be with you.”

My laugh’s more of a snarl. “Greg was a vile woman-hater, but at least he never hid like a scared little boy.”

That pulls him up short.

“Scared? Me?”