I blinked, confused. All my belongings had already arrived. On the bed. Nightstands. Inside the opened closet.
My Invisalign retainer. Satin nightcap. Blue light-blocking glasses. iPad. My essential oils. Clothes. Socks. Slippers.
“When did you have time to bring everything from the flat?” I yelled to be heard through the hallway.
Tate appeared behind my back in a flash, holding a fresh margarita. He moved like a ghost, in complete silence.
“I didn’t.” He leaned against the wall, the soft light caressing the hard planes of his jawline. “I remembered what you use and bought replicas after our engagement. You were bound to come here sooner or later, and I really didn’t need you whining about wanting your Dots for Spots.”
“First of all, those things are literally lifesaving. Second, when have I ever forgotten any ofyourstuff?”
“You never forget my shit,” he agreed. “But you forget yours. You have a tendency to put yourself last.”
He wasn’t wrong, unfortunately.
“Anyway.” He scowled. “I was preemptively making sure you wouldn’t run in the middle of the night to get your fucking grown-up braces or something.”
“Tate, this is giving I’m-going-to-cut-you-and-make-sandwiches-out-of-your-meat.”
“I’m not going to cut you.” He quirked an eyebrow, giving me a once-over. “Unless you’re into that kind of stuff.”
“Do you realize howobsessivethat is?”
His throat rolled with a swallow, and he looked away, at the wall.
He’d catalogued every single product I’d used over the years. Paid close attention in the few times we saw each other in an informal capacity.
The peony and blush shower oil wasn’t a coincidence; he bought it forme.
Butterflies fluttered inside my stomach.
Kill them now, Gia. Kill them with fire.
“Anything else you want to say to me?” he asked, expecting a thank-you.
“As a matter of fact, yes. Drop dead.”
Slamming the door in his face, I got dressed and brushed my hair into a bun. Once I was done, I made sure my Life360 was on and tucked my phone into the pocket of my pj’s. Cal and Dylan had the app. They’d track me if they didn’t hear from me.
I took the stairs down to the kitchen. Tate waited for me at the table with my margarita and whiskey for himself. His lips were pressed in a grim line, his fingers flipping an unlit cigarette.
He seemed quite cross to be explaining himself, and it occurred to me it was probably the first time he had to answer to someone. I could not recall him in that position before.
“Start from the beginning.” I sipped my second margarita. It was almost undiluted tequila.
“What do you want to know first?” He lit up his cigarette, exhaling the smoke to the ceiling. “Why I hate you, or why I killed that man? They’re connected.”
I flinched at the admission he hated me. Of course I knew it, but it was the first time he confirmed it. I was also puzzled as to why I was connected in any way to this murder. Did I know the man he killed in the panic room?
“Why you hate me.” I cleared my throat. “I want to know what I did to deserve the last five years.”
His index finger trailed the rim of his whiskey glass, and I could not, for the life of me, stop imagining him doing the same to my nipples, which puckered under my pj’s.
“When I was twelve, my late father adopted me. Up until then, my life had been hell on earth. I came to him battered and scarred, inside and out. Angry and distrustful. I was fucked up. I wet my bed until I was fifteen. Suffered from nightmares that followed me no matter where I slept. The first few years, I ran away from home every other week. I’d sleep in the woods. Graveyards, sometimes. I needed dirt on my skin, darkness in my eyes to feel at home.
“It took my dad years to peel off my roughest exterior layers. And still, he couldn’t manage to take off more than the first charred coats.” He knocked his tumbler of whiskey back, gulping it in one go before pouring himself three more fingers. “I was unfit to attend a normal school—too aggressive, too wild, too dejected—so he homeschooled me himself, despite being a successful businessman. He ignored my curriculum entirely, instead teaching me useful things. Latin, medieval history, and computational science. Metaphysics, advanced logic, and Eastern worldviews. Every lesson was art, every class an experience. We’d talk into the night, almost every night. When he realized I’d been sneaking out to graveyards, he sometimes followed me. Sometimes sat with me there too. He said I was like the moon.” Tate’s throat bobbed with a swallow. “Just because I wasn’t whole didn’t mean I wasn’t enough.”
Tears stung my eyes. His adoptive father sounded perfect. I was surprised he’d never mentioned him in the five years we’d worked together.
