Page 124 of Insidious Heart
“You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t be here at all let alone seeing this kind of thing. Why don’t you go home and if you want to talk or something you can—”
“Oh my god,” Stevie gasps. “Oh my god, I know her.”
And those six little words turn my blood to ice in my veins.
“Oh my god.” She gets to her feet, her eyes bouncing between the bashed in face and what used to be the woman’s chest, which is now a relatively hollowed out shell with pieces of fabric inside. “This is Sasha.”
“Sasha?” My brow furrows as I move toward where she’s looking, but Stevie jumps and darts away from me. “Baby dove?”
She shakes her head, her aquamarine eyes wide and full of tears. “Don’t call me that.”
I stop dead in my tracks and blink as my heart rate starts to pick up speed. “What?”
“Don’t call me that, please. I can’t have you calling me that right now.”
“I don’t understand.” I take a few more steps but Stevie bumps into the counter behind her and starts searching it for… “Are you looking for a weapon?”
“You lied to me, Victor.”
“Never,” I grit out through clenched teeth, dropping the knife to grab my mask before yanking it down then shoving my goggles up. “I havenever, not once, lied to you, and if you would let me fucking explain myself you’d see that.”
But she keeps shaking her head. “I had myself convinced, was sure that you were telling the truth about my dad—”
“I was! I am!”
“I couldn’t wrap my head around the way we were when we were together, everything we’d shared only to have it be a lie—”
“Because it wasn’t. Itisn’t!”
Stevie keeps backing away, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Maybe not. Or maybe you didn’t understand what was happening between us, what was happening to me, but even if you didn’t lie about Beau, you lied about this.”
She motions toSashaand something inside my brain fucking snaps.
“You’re The Harvester of Bones expert, Stevie. Look at this amateur bullshit and tell me without a shred of doubt that it was my work. Fucking look at it!” I start to pace,mygrip slipping asIstart to spiral out of control.
The last few days without my little dove have been torture. Torture worse than anything physical that’s ever been done to me, or that I’ve done to anyone else. Realizing how I feel about Stevie, what it actually all means, then having her reject me the way she did, god it nearly fucking ruined me.
I took it out on Beau, and went at him for another few hours before he blacked out again, but by then I was too damn tired to keep going. Beingemotionally stuntedmeans having emotions at all is draining as fuck for me, so I handled it by beating that son of a bitch senseless until I couldn’t lift my arms. Then I left him to rot.
I gave my girl her space, though.
Sure, not without leaving her an apology gift despite not knowingwhatexactly I was apologizing for, but then I stayed away, hoping she would come to me instead.
She didn’t.
Stevie shut off the phone and stayed inside her house the last two days and it destroyed me to not see her, to not hear her voice or be there to protect her. And not fully grasping where things were left between us didn’t fucking help either.
And now, standing here in a shithole house with a mangled body between us, Stevie actually accusing me of being The Ripper? If this is what it feels like to have your heart broken, this shit is for the birds.
But a quitter, I am not.
“From the very first body, you’ve said these kills weren’t mine.” I continue to pace, careful to avoid as much blood as possible. “Right from the start. You analyzed and picked apart countless bodies attached to my name, comparing them to this”—I motioneverywhere—“bullshit and explainingwhyit couldn’t be The Harvester, why it couldn’t beme.”
“But… I-I could have been wrong.” Judging by her tone, she doesn’t even believe that half-assed lie herself.
So I shake my head. “Not you. You haven’t been wrong about either of us, not one fucking time, and you know how I know that,baby dove?” She flinches and it’s like a punch to the dick, but I keep going because I have to. “I’ve been tracking this son of a bitch ever since he made himself at home here in El Paso County, ever since he started trying to pin this shit on me. I’ve been trying to catch the bastard myself because the cops are all too happy to chalk these bodies up to the Harvester, too.”
Stevie watches my every move and doesn’t try to leave, but she keeps her eyes glued to me as I move back and forth over the worn linoleum floor. “But everything you’ve said about The Ripper has been right, down to the escalating and losing control, and you’ve been right about me, abouteverythingwhen it comes to the how, what, and who.” I stop and turn abruptly, narrowing my eyes on her fucking beautiful, tear-stained face, pissed at myself for yelling at her. And for what I’m about to say next. “You were even right about thewhy, little dove.”
