Page 159 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

I’m moving before I can think better of it.

“Everything okay, brother?” I call, but I don’t make it out of the room before he returns, holding Rue by the back of the neck, his gun at her side.

We should’ve just killed him. I can’t bear this.

“Look what I found.” He’s beaming, the air of defeat from earlier gone as he peacocks in front of a captive woman. He shakes her roughly, showing her off like she’s a prize he’s captured. She’s dressed in her usual black gloves, running shoes, and mask. But unlike the high-necked shirt and hoodie I’m used to, she’s wearing what she laughingly referred to earlier as her slutty assassin gear: low-rise leggings and a tight, plunging V-neck shirt that show off her breasts and the curve of her waist. She said it’d be another weapon in her arsenal.

“Caught this one trying to come in through the back door.” Timms lets his flabby innuendo hang in the air as his gaze devours my girlfriend.

“Guess my gun guy was right,” I say hoarsely.

He thrusts her at me. “Hold her. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

I grab the woman I love and spin her to face the other man.

When Timms struts forward and yanks the mask off her head, his mouth flops open in shock. “Shut the fuck up. Rue fucking Bellamy?”

She tosses her head, sending her braid flying over her shoulder. “Surprise, asshole.”

“Uh, do you two know each other?” I ask.

Timms’s face flips through confusion, rage, and fear before settling on amused arrogance. “My friend says you’re here to kill me.”

She glances over her shoulder, hitting me with a poisonous glare I know is part of the con. It tears into me anyway.

“No.” She turns back to Timms and says coolly, “I’m here to tell you that I’m going to destroy you. Then I’m going to kill you.”

He laughs, cocky as ever. “The fuck does that even mean?”

She lunges for him, and I tighten my fingers, keeping her in place. I gripped her shoulders just like this as I slid my cock into her in the shower this morning.

I can’t bear this.

“Guess I’d better check you for weapons, huh, girlie?”

Timms tucks his gun in the elastic waistband of his shorts and runs his hands over my girlfriend’s body. It’s not a search. It’s an assault, and he takes his time squeezing her breasts, trailing his fingers up her inner thighs, reaching behind her to grope her ass. Rue is rigid under my touch the entire time, breathing fast and shallow, and I squeeze her upper arms.

We’re going to make him pay, baby.

“Interesting technique,” I say tightly as she quivers in my arms. I hope it’s rage and not fear. My brave fucking girl.

He laughs and holds up the knife from the pocket of her leggings. “It works, though.”

“That’s mine,” she spits out, and I know how much she hates seeing her weapon in his tattooed hands.

“It’s mine now.”

He goes to shove it into his pocket, then realizes the extra weight will be too much for his elastic waistband, which is already drooping where he stuck the gun.

“Hold this.” He hands me her knife, and I let Rue go long enough to pocket it. Apparently I’ve passed all the tests necessary for him to arm me, which is rich since I’m handing it back to her the instant I can do it safely.

Next, he checks the pockets at her hips, reaching the fingers tattooed with STAY into the left one and the fingers tattooed with HARD into the right. What he finds is a tube of lipstick and⁠—

“The fuck is this?”

Love and fear collide in my chest when he holds up the small, thin package, and it bursts out of me as a strangled laugh.

“Did you bring a heart Band-Aid to a murder, little girl?” I ask gruffly. I can’t bring myself to call her anything more demeaning.