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Page 173 of That Time I Accidentally Became A Serial Killer

“I caught them the night before our wedding,” he adds, voice low, like the memory still scrapes something raw in him.

I gasp, clutching my tea like it might save me. “That’s awful.”

I can understand why he doesn’t want anyone to get close again. Best friend and partner at work—and he lost the woman he thought he’d spend the rest of his life with.

It explains why he’s got the reputation he does around the courthouse. Another notch on the Blackwood bedpost, if you catch my drift.

“She was my high school sweetheart,” he keeps going, shrugging one massive shoulder like it doesn’t still gut him. “Should’ve known it was doomed to fail from our first kiss.”

“What happened with your first kiss?” My eyes are wide, and I hold my soup dumpling in a spoon as I bite a hole in it, the rich broth seeping out like it’s joining the conversation.

“Our braces got stuck together. Orthodontist had to separate us.”

I choke so hard on the broth I almost die.

Like—actual tears-in-the-eyes, gasping-for-air-level choking.

He’s dead serious. Sitting there in this dim sum restaurant, looking like he’s recounting a POW story, while I’m trying not to faceplant into the siu mai.

“It’s not funny.”

I snort. Actually snort and cover my mouth quickly like that will hold it in.

“We had to sit like that for two fucking hours,” he says—trying and failing to convince me of the gravity of the situation. “Do you have any idea how much of her spit went into my mouth?”

I lose it completely.

Full-body laughter, fists pounding the table, suffocating myself with my napkin to try and stifle my wheezing.

Declan tries to scowl.

Really, he does.

But I catch it—the little twitch at the corner of his mouth, the almost-smile he’s fighting with everything he’s got. But he can’t hold it back.

He gives me a full-force smile, dimple and all, before he looks down and shakes his head.

A soft, reluctant chuckle rumbles out of him—so rare and raw it’s not been observed since the Jurassic period.

My laughter dies down, and I stare at him because he’s beautiful like this.

Untouched by anger or betrayal or grief for once.

Just... him.

Unarmored. Real.

His green eyes brighten, and something in my chest goes stupid and warm and helpless.

“Your dimples are cute,” I blurt before I can stop myself, still a little breathless from laughing, voice too soft to pretend it’s a joke.

For the first time since I met him, he looks caught off guard.

Not brooding.

Not calculating the ways this could all go sideways.

Just... caught.


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