Page 17 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

A manic laugh spills out of me, and I clap my hands over my mouth as if that’ll call it back. That’s also when Fi slips into the garage through the side door with a stack of towels.

“Hey,” she says, taking me in from head to toe as I step out of the car.

“Hey.” I reach for the towels, but she clutches them to her chest, her horrified gaze fixed on my neck.

Shit. I hold out my hands to pause her questions, which just makes things worse when she spots the traces of blood I failed to clean off my hands.

“Who?” She asks it calmly, but the rest of her screams ready. Her weight shifts to the balls of her feet, her chin’s tucked, and she’s even leading with her left hip, which is a surprisingly solid fight stance for someone who made it through half a self-defense lesson with me before she claimed boredom and went to raid her freezer’s ice cream drawer.

“Rue!” Her sharp voice cuts through my confused amusement. “What happened?”

I have to look away, curling my fingers around my palms and loving her so hard for being worried enough about me that she’d launch her unprepared self at my enemies.

“I’m fine,” I quickly assure her. “And I’ll tell you everything. Just let me clean up and get something to eat first, okay?”

Decision made. Looks like I’m coming clean about Gomez.

Fi’s still frowning as she hands over the towels, but that unexpected fierceness is nowhere to be found now that I’ve promised to fill her in.

“Fifteen minutes, or I’m dragging your ass to the house myself,” she warns me before she slips out the side door, leaving me to wash away all traces of where I’ve been before I set foot into her house.

I thought Fi was nuts three years ago when she bought six acres of unfarmable land fifty miles southwest of the city, but as in all things, she proved herself to be sneaky brilliant. The farmhouse is now her work-from-home fortress, and Pell helped us convert the tumbledown barn into the murder HQ of our dreams.

This includes the Chamber of Consequences, which I walk past to reach the small room where I’ll shower and maybe catch a few hours of sleep if I’m too tired to drive back to the duplex.

“I haven’t forgotten about you,” I tell my safety-first, soundproof, easy-clean murder room, which has been sadly neglected thanks to my slow kill schedule this year. I kiss the tips of my fingers and press them to the reinforced steel door before continuing to my utilitarian home away from home.

I flip on the water in the hopes that it’ll be semi-warm by the time I step under the spray and look through my backpack to make sure Gomez didn’t swipe anything. It’s all there: duct tape, zip ties, flashlight, lock picks, gloves, tarp, first aid supplies, change of clothes, evidence-collection kit.

So he’s a killer, not a thief. Good to know. I’d never fuck a thief.

Once I’ve confirmed my gear is in order, I strip and make the mistake of glancing in the mirror.

“What the…” I recoil, then lean forward to gape at the red patches Gomez hoovered onto both sides of my neck. No wonder Felicity looked ready to attack someone. “Vampire much, you psychopath?”

I should be pissed that I’ve been sentenced to turtlenecks for the foreseeable future, but I can’t stay mad, not with the memory of his tongue and his teeth and his controlling touch making me smile dreamily at my reflection. I lift a hand to press on one of the bruises, wanting to savor the memory of his rough attention, but I hesitate before my fingers make contact with the hot, red skin there.

“I shouldn’t,” I tell my reflection. “I promised him.”

Alas, my reflection doesn’t stop me when I grab my evidence collection kit and prep a swab.

“Here’s the thing,” I tell mirror-me as I stroke the cotton tip over the bite marks. “This doesn’t mean I’m going to use it. It’s just… insurance.”

Mirror-me looks judgmental, but I ignore her and seal the swab in a tube that I label “GOMEZ.” I do the same for the blood on my skin, then I throw myself into the shower to wash away everything I just did. After I’ve scrubbed every square inch of my body with the bergamot and berries body wash Fi knows I love, I dry off, bundle my wet hair on top of my head, and pull on leggings, a sweatshirt, and a battered pair of sneakers. Before I leave the garage, I wrap my ruined bodysuit and the tubes of sexy murderer DNA in my hoodie and shove it all into the bottom of my bag, which I leave in the barn for my short walk to the back door of the farmhouse.

I press my thumb to the center of the biometric lock that’s a twin to the one in the barn and let myself into the kitchen, where I’m greeted by the ding of the microwave and a crumpled Pluck and Fry bag sticking out of the trash. Felicity must’ve been watching for me on the outdoor cams.

“You’re a goddess.” I settle on the pink plaid couch in her war room, the warm plate of chicken and dumplings on my lap. “Have I ever told you that?”

“Yes, but not often enough.” Fi’s back is to me as she rolls her office chair down the line of monitors that run the length of the wall.

We don’t talk while I shovel dumplings into my mouth and she types, clicks, swipes, and does things with data. Once I set my empty plate on the floor, she spins to face me.

“Ready to tell me what happened tonight?”

Not really. “I met someone.”

“You met someone.”