Page 55 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

He shrugs, and it’s the most can’t-blame-a-guy-for-trying thing I’ve ever seen him do.

“By the way, did you hear?” I ask, eager to stop thinking about his bedroom.

“I hear a lot of things.”

“Yes, yes, and they’re all confidential.” I huff, but it’s amused, not annoyed. “Stiletto Guy? Marcus Navarro? Got drunk and crashed headfirst into his china cabinet last night. Died almost instantly.”

His eyes narrow. “Almost?”

A laugh slips out of me, and I want to clap my hand over my mouth to call it back. “Bleeding out from a punctured lung takes a little time, my friend.”

“Mmm,” he says slowly. “Good for… good.”

“Agreed,” I say a little too vehemently, reaching into my bag for the box of frosted animal cookies. “Want one?”

His battered face lights up with a grin. “Really? You’d share?” When I nod, he selects a rainbow-sprinkled rhino and uses one finger to slide it into his mouth. Then his eyes droop. “I can’t… think right. My broken is brain.”

“It sure is, buddy.” I pat my lap, and he accepts my invitation, curling back around me as he drifts off. Once he’s out, I pull out the pupillometer and lift his left lid, then his right one, jotting down the readings and the time on the back of the list of instructions.

Felicity calls halfway through that second three-hour sleep shift. I’ve got my laptop perched on the knee not occupied by Hugo’s head and am catching up on work as best as I can one-handed while my other hand lazily strokes down his back from time to time.

“Hi,” I whisper.

“Why are you whispering?” she whispers.

“Why are you whispering?” I whisper.

She guffaws at top volume. “Because you are! Are you not at home?”

“Technically, no. Hang on.”

A glance at Hugo confirms that the boy is passed out; his eyelids don’t so much as flicker when I ease his head off my lap and settle it carefully on the couch. Before I slip out of the room, I grab the afghan tucked into a basket in the corner of the room and drape it over him, tucking it under his feet. The duplex can get chilly when the sun goes down, and as I found out earlier (and haven’t been able to forget), he’s not wearing socks.

I grab a second blanket from the basket and go onto the back porch, figuring that’ll be the most private spot for a conversation while still keeping me in shouting distance.

“Let me guess,” Fi says as I walk down the steps into Hugo’s unsurprisingly well-maintained yard, pulling the fuzzy red material around my shoulders. “Dr. Huge-o Bore finally snapped and you’re in the trunk of his car, being driven to a remote cabin in the woods so he can make you his mountain bride.”

“You’re a tiny bit correct.” I cross the yellow-brown grass to the fence separating my half of the property from his and lean against the wooden slats.

“Is it the mountain bride part?”

“It is not,” I say. “Hugo has a concussion and needs someone to sit with him, so I’m hanging out on his couch tonight. And before you ask, no, he doesn’t seem to have anybody else who can do it. It’s me or possible death by head injury.”

“Okay.”

Her skeptical response hangs there until I sigh. “Go ahead and say what you’re going to say.”

“You like him.”

“I—”

“It’s okay if you do, obviously,” she says. “Just… be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

She snorts. “You’re fucking a stranger at your future crime scenes, and you’re playing house with the guy who wants to make you his mountain bride. None of that is careful.”

“I’m not… We aren’t…” I struggle to latch onto something I can refute. “Gomez and I aren’t fucking. And as far as I know, Hugo doesn’t have a cabin in the mountains, and he doesn’t want to make me his anything.”