Page 70 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

“Do you remember that day at the farmers market?” I casually stroll around his chair, running my finger across the thick line of his shoulders as I walk. “I do.”

After he blew in my mouth that day, he’d tossed me on the bed and returned the favor, going down on me until I came so hard the pretty red ribbon slipped out of my hair.

Funny how he didn’t upload that last part to the Philosopher Kings forum.

“I thought it was romantic. Maybe the best afternoon we ever spent together.” I come to a stop when I’m back in front of him. “I bet you remember it a little differently, though.”

With a flash of my knife, he loses his right thumb, his screams turning shrill as blood pulses from the stump in time with his heartbeat. I take a step back when it starts to pool on the floor. I want to avoid the mess, yes, but there’s also my rage, which threatens to spill all over this otherwise clean job.

“Now that I’ve seen the video, I know it wasn’t romantic. It was the warm-up. The show was for your friends.”

Another slice. Another finger gone. Another scream.

“Greg.” I snap my own very intact fingers in front of his scrunched, sweaty, crying face. “Did you or did you not share recordings of me in Marcus Navarro’s cesspool of a forum?”

Naturally, he picks up on the wrong conversational thread.

“Marcus.” He sniffles, trying to clear his nasal passages. “Jesus, did you kill him?”

“Oh gosh, no!” I straighten my spine and widen my eyes, the picture of innocence. “Didn’t you hear? Marcus fell face-first into his glass cabinet. It was a terrible accident.”

My tone is so sickly, sweetly sarcastic that he recoils in terror.

“H-holy fuck.”

I beam. “Yeah, sugar. I killed your buddy. But here’s the thing: it wasn’t personal with Marcus. It was⁠—”

It was personal. Navarro said he knew me. A dying stranger knew me, and I didn’t know Greg at all.

I clench the handle of my knife. Breathe through my nose. Grope for the calm I need.

“This,” I say, “is personal. I loved you.”

I choke on those last words and have to clear my throat to continue.

“I ended things because I thought you were a good man, and I didn’t want you getting dragged down by all of this someday.” I wave my arm over the Chamber, making it clear he’s not the first guest in my chair.

“I am a good man. I loved you.” Despite all the pain and all the blood, his face transforms into something sincere and earnest. Something I used to believe.

“Then why did you do it?” I whisper, hating how broken the words sound.

“That video⁠—”

“Videos.” My voice is still thready.

“Those videos were stolen from my phone,” he says earnestly, “and⁠—”

“Why were they there in the first place? Because we sure as fuck never discussed putting cameras in our bedroom.”

“You don’t remember us talking about that?” He’s looking at me with such wounded confusion that I squeeze my eyes shut. How long has he been using his appealing exterior to lie, gaslight, and cover up everything rotten inside him?

Long enough that I fell in love with him, moved in with him. I’m the one who trusted the wrong person, and if I’m not careful, I’m going to start suspecting every man around me of being as dangerous as he is. As Timms is and Navarro was. Hell, how well do I know Bart or even Gomez? And god, imagine if Hugo was⁠—

My stomach lurches at the thought of my goofy, rose-growing, Motown-loving neighbor hiding a virulent streak of misogyny the way Greg did. What if I’m completely wrong about him, and he ends up in my chair someday too? Or worse, what if we keep getting close, and I get caught? Learning I’m a killer would destroy his trust, make him doubt himself. Maybe even leave him feeling like I do now.

I spin away from Greg and press the heels of my hands into my eyes until I’ve banished those thoughts from my mind.

Once I’m feeling steady again, I drop to my knees at Greg’s feet.