Page 21 of Death, Interrupted
“Yeah. I mean, no.” Running my free hand through my hair, I lowered my head in defeat. “I’m sorry.”
Her mouth did a single twitch, but it wasn’t a smile. “Are you going to follow me through every aisle, or do you want to tell me what you need?”
What I needed was not to ruin this moment. I needed to stay calm and not overwhelm her. “I needed to see you standing. Breathing. Not drowning in the fallout I left you with.”
“You didn’t leave me with the fallout,” she said.
“Yes, I did. Sure, you crashed my plans and messed things up, but they were still my issues you stumbled into. And you were the one left with them.”
She kept those perfect grey eyes on me, saying nothing, letting the silence sit between us. A few customers drifted past without giving a damn about us. One guy grunted when I stood in his way. A woman parked herself between us for almost two minutes, oblivious of her surroundings.
During all of that, Sumner never broke eye contact, and when we were alone again, I said, “I’m not here to make this weird.”
“You’re failing.”
“That tracks.” I rubbed the back of my neck.
“You scared me,” she said. “Not the knife or your intentions that night. The last five nights.”
I didn’t try to minimize it. She had every right to be this honest—and worried. “I’m sorry.”
“You said that already,” she said. “I need something more honest, Sly.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I told her. “I kept seeing you. I kept hearing you. I told myself I’d stay away because it was the right thing, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I stood in the dark like an idiot because I needed to know you were okay. You look sad and hurt, and I know that’s on me.”
“I’m not sad. Or hurt.”
I frowned. “But I killed Joey…”
“You didn’t kill him.”
My eyes rolled before I could stop them. It was a reflex at this point because I hated hearing, mostly from myself, that I didn’t kill any of these guys in the past. “Yeah, I kinda did.”
“No, Sly, you did not kill him,” she said, sharp and clear. “Because Joey is alive.”
Chapter 8
Sumner
Ihad to tell him because hiding it felt wrong. I watched his face and knew he didn’t believe me at first, but the longer we stood there, the more he understood I wasn’t joking.
He furrowed his brows and shook his head. “Come again?”
“Joey’s alive,” I said.
Sly dropped his face into his hand, muttered a curse, then looked up. “Of course he’s fucking alive.Unbelievable.”
I just nodded, because I’d been shocked too when he suddenly moved after Sly left.
“How? What happened after I left?”
The grocery store wasn’t the best place to talk about this, but pretending we could shop first and talk later felt worse. I took a deep breath, took one step closer to him, and told him everything.
“After you left, I went to call the cops and an ambulance to tell them there was a dead man in my house. When I came back with my phone, Joey was moving and groaning. I stood there wondering if I’d gone mad, and if I had been imagining everything. To be fair, it was a strange night.”
Sly pressed his lips together and shrugged, like he hadn’t helped make it strange.
“He’d lost a lot of blood. He was drowsy and confused. I called an ambulance, helped him sit up, and kept pressure on the wound. Before they arrived, I took the tape off his arms and legs. When they got there, they loaded him fast and took him to the hospital without asking many questions.”