Page 99 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

My eyes drop to the shirt she’s wearing.

“I pictured us together a million times.” My hand smooths down her throat. “Kissing. Touching. Fucking.”

She shudders when I free the top button of the too-large flannel and brush the pads of my fingers across her collarbones.

“But each time I pictured us together,” I say, opening the second button, “you sure as fuck weren’t wearing another man’s shirt.”

I rip it the rest of the way open to reveal her breasts, glorious in white lace.

“Did he see you like this?” I growl as I part the open halves of Pell’s shirt and run my thumbs across her nipples.

She responds with a whimper, so I pinch those two hard points and repeat myself. “Did he?”

“No. I… I changed in the car,” she gasps out. “I was in a hurry to come home to you.”

She blinks and looks away, like she’s surprised by this small confession.

I’m not. All I see is the girl who wanted roses.

“God, baby.” I slide my fingers into her hair. “Every time I listened to that little vibrator of yours through the wall, I thought about all the ways I could do it better.” I brush my lips along her throat. “How I could make you scream with my hands and my tongue and my cock.”

“You listened? When I…”

“Yes, neighbor girl,” I murmur, moving my mouth to the underside of her jaw. “Listened but never watched. I wouldn’t do that to you. I always closed the app when you…”

I hear it. Then I feel it.

My careless words. Her knife at my throat.

“What?” she says at the same time I pat my pocket and ask, “How did you⁠—”

Ah. She was reaching for me, but she was also working her hand toward her knife. A killer reclaiming her tool as naturally as an artist picks up a dropped brush. I even felt it happen, felt her hand at my hip. I leaned into it because I’m still starved for her touch.

She might’ve just been planning to pocket it. Then I gave her a reason to use it.

“Hugo,” she says sharply. “What do you mean you never watched?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Rue

What do you mean you never watched?

My question echoes through my head as Hugo’s fingers move toward the front pocket of his sweater.

But I notice—of fucking course I notice, it’s my job to notice—and I snatch his phone before he can.

He grabs my wrist, but I break his hold and back away.

“You’ll never get it unloc⁠—”

“My birthday in reverse?” I look at him in exaggerated pity. “That’s fucking pathetic, Hugo.”

When he tries to make another grab for me, I put the couch between us so I can swipe through his phone.

Then my world collapses.

“Front door, back door, kitchen,” I say, my voice sounding flat and faraway to my disbelieving ears. “Oh look, there we are. Living room.”