Page 45 of Matchmaking for Psychopaths

“Well, no. I do have a job. I was concerned about you after we talked. You mentioned that your fiancé—your ex -fiancé—was being delivered to your door in pieces. I was hoping to catch whoever was doing it in the act.”

“But that was you. You killed him. You cut him into pieces and brought him to my house.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I told you before, I didn’t have anything to do with his disappearance. He was never my competition. His presence was no threat to me.”

His voice was unwavering. He spoke as a man without doubt.

I’d listened to so many of my clients describe what it was like when they had a successful match.

Don’t tell them that I said this, they’d confide in me, but I think I’m in love .

I realize that my other relationships were never real, because this one is, they said.

What’s that phrase? ‘When you know, you know’? Well, I know now.

I’d nodded along, happy that I’d done a good job. I’d considered it a workplace accomplishment, assuming that I understood what they meant because I had a fiancé. Yeah, yeah, love, whatever.

I hadn’t known though. I could see that now, lying in bed next to Aidan. Everything else had been a shadow of the real thing, a simulacrum of love. I watched it on TV and thought I’d understood, when I’d merely been watching a cast.

That was the whole thing about being human.

It was impossible to gauge which experiences were universal.

My college roommate hadn’t known she was color-blind until the third grade, when she did a class project on the condition and discovered that she couldn’t see the numbers embedded within circles that everyone else could.

I hadn’t known until I felt the real thing with Aidan that I wasn’t really in love with Noah.

How could I? Love is like one of those islands that can be found only by people who already know where they are.

I’d spent so long running. I thought that I could steer my life in a particular direction to evade destiny.

In the end, no lifestyle changes I could make would alter my DNA.

I was born a killer, a psychopath, or I had been made that way by my parents.

Ultimately, nature or nurture became irrelevant. I was who I was.

Marrying a man like Noah wouldn’t have turned me into a happy housewife.

Eventually, we would’ve divorced or killed each other, whichever came first. His mother would never have replaced mine, because I’d never learned how to be mothered.

Even if Noah’s mother had sincerely cared for me, I wouldn’t have known how to accept that type of kindness.

My muscles were tired from contorting my body into unnatural shapes.

What a relief it was to embrace myself. What a pleasure to give into a man who loved me so much that he would kill for me.

He hadn’t killed Noah though, just Ethan, and who cared about him?

He was a side character, not even in the supporting cast.

“I can’t figure it out,” I said. “If it wasn’t you, then who was it? I think someone is trying to frame me. Nicole did the stuff at work, but there’s someone else.”

“Who might want to kill Noah?” he asked.

“No one. He was a doctor. A great man. Everyone online is saying so.”

He scowled.

“People will say anything online. They’re all playing pretend.”

“Is that why you don’t have any social media accounts?”

“Are you saying that you looked me up on social media?”

“You’re a psychopath who showed up in my office claiming that we were meant to be together. Of course I looked you up.”

“I was right though, wasn’t I?”

“You were right,” I conceded. “Noah was a good person in some ways though. Not so great in others. Mostly, he wasn’t great to me.

To Molly either. I think she thought she’d ‘won’ when he left me for her, but he wasn’t a very good boyfriend.

It went bad so quickly between them. When I saw her, she looked so rattled. ”

“Do you think she could’ve killed him?”

“No. I don’t know. I didn’t think she would steal my fiancé either, and she did that. It’s so hard to know another person, isn’t it?”

“You can’t ever really know someone else. All you can do is put your faith in a person and hope they don’t hurt you,” he replied.

I looked at the man next to me—the psychopath . I realized that I was no longer frightened. I’d mistaken my fear of embracing something real, something forever, for a fear of the man. Sure, he’d killed people. But I had too. And despite all that, we had each other. What a gift.

“I don’t know if she had anything to do with Noah’s disappearance, but she’s the only one who would make sense working with Nicole.

The two of them met a couple of times, and they follow each other on social media.

It wouldn’t have been difficult for Molly to reach out to her.

On top of that, Molly knows my secrets. She must’ve told Nicole.

It makes me mad. She stole my fiancé and tried to sabotage me at work, and Nicole paid for it with her life.

Aside from losing Noah, Molly hasn’t paid for any of the things that she’s done. ”

“Do you want me to kill her for you?” he asked.

I worried that Aidan was serious until I saw the joking look on his face.

“No. We can’t just kill everyone who’s inconvenient. There’d be no one left.”

“Fair enough.”

“I have something else in mind for Molly. Something better,” I said.