Page 53 of Matchmaking for Psychopaths

Rebecca was following me. Aidan was following me. There had been a whole parade on my tail and I hadn’t even noticed.

“So you decided to kill my fiancé instead?”

“To be fair, I killed him after he left you. He wasn’t really your fiancé anymore. It made me mad that you slept with him after what he did. I had to do something. Have some self-respect, Lexie. It doesn’t matter who a man is; he shouldn’t be allowed to get away with things like that.”

The excuse was weak. Noah had died before Rebecca had known what he’d done.

She’d killed him because she wanted to. Even if she had somehow known, I resented her judgment.

Rebecca might be my sister, but she hadn’t grown up in the same house as me.

She didn’t know what it had been like. She didn’t understand why I wanted someone like Noah, a milquetoast man who loved his family.

Was it settling if it got me what I wanted?

“He wasn’t hard to kill. I followed him to Molly’s apartment—that bitch—and watched him storm out a little while later.

He went straight to a bar and got drunk.

I swear, he nearly peed himself with excitement when I invited him to come home with me.

Boy, was he surprised when I stabbed him.

Don’t worry—I made sure that his death was slow.

I wanted him to suffer for what he did to you.

He kept saying ‘Why, why, why?’ like he couldn’t possibly fathom anything he’d done wrong in his entire life.

If only he’d stayed loyal, then he might be getting married today. ”

Rebecca shook her head as though she truly thought it was a pity. She didn’t. She would’ve killed Noah even if he hadn’t hurt me. She didn’t need a reason to do what she did. That was the difference between us. I killed to save myself, and she killed because she loved it, just like my parents.

The box still rested on my legs. Sometimes, when Noah had had a really long shift at the hospital, he’d come home and lay his head on my lap and I’d run my fingers through his hair to comfort him.

Mmm, that feels good, he’d murmur. The current situation wasn’t so different from that, aside from the fact that he was dead and could no longer feel anything.

“Fine, you killed him to protect me. But what about leaving his heart on my doorstep? The display on my mantel? And the stuff that happened at Better Love—was that you too?”

“You did get one thing right. The stuff at Better Love was Molly’s brainchild.

She’s pretty fun, for a terrible person.

It’s good that she’s in prison now. She doesn’t need to be out in the world, with the rest of us.

Molly, Nicole, and I struck up a friendship for a while.

Or, they thought I was their friend. Nicole, as you know, was insufferable. I wasn’t sad to hear that she died.”

Rebecca narrowed her eyes at me.

“You didn’t have something to do with that, did you?

She really hated you, Lexie. She hated your clients too, all your little psychopaths.

That’s what she called them. She told me, ‘I don’t mean you, Becky.

’ But I knew she did. She just wanted me around so that she could use me.

Anyway, I killed Noah because I was mad that he cheated, and I wanted you for myself.

You were so comfortable in that little life you created.

It’s like you couldn’t even tell how unhappy you were.

No one really changes unless they’re forced to.

I needed to get you away from your stupid fiancé and that matchmaking job.

I wanted to remind you of where you came from, who you really are. ”

I thought of my cold fingers pawing at the frozen ground in an attempt to cover up part of Noah’s body.

Was that person my authentic self? More real than the woman who was engaged to a doctor, worked as a matchmaker, and lived in a town house adorned in gray?

Both Rebecca and Aidan had seen it, the cage that I didn’t realize I was trapped inside.

Was I supposed to thank her for giving me freedom, or had I simply been placed behind bars of a different kind now?

I shook my head.

“That’s not who I am. I’m not a killer.”

Rebecca strode to the snack table, her maid-of-honor dress swishing as she walked. She picked up a petit four and popped it into her mouth.

“I heard something interesting from Mom a couple of months ago.”

I wanted to yank the word “mom” out of her mouth and cut it into a million pieces. That wasn’t who she was. She was Mother. Something threatening. Something that could devour us all.

“She said that you confessed to killing the woman the police nailed her for. You set her up. What a sneaky little bitch.”

Rebecca’s tone had changed from friendly to venomous. Reluctantly, I put Noah’s head on the floor and stood up. I wasn’t totally sure what was happening, but I wanted to be ready.

“I had to do it. They were killing people.” My voice was weak, unconvincing. The line between need and want was so thin.

“Did you have to, Lexie? Mom’s never going to be free, you know. She’s stuck in there because of you.”

“What is it that you want, Rebecca?”

It occurred to me that that might not be her real name.

“I used to want a sister, someone who really got me. We did get each other, didn’t we, Lex?

I had these stupid fantasies about the two of us traveling together to see Mom.

” She shook her head. “Practicality isn’t a strong suit in our family.

All of us are living in our own imagination.

When Mom told me what you did, I realized the error of my ways.

I didn’t want a sister . I hate competition. ”

I watched Rebecca’s face as she spoke. Now that she’d said it, I recognized how she was similar to my mother.

Our mother. The sharpness of her gaze. The high cheekbones.

I saw too the part of me that couldn’t help but love her even as she explained that the world wasn’t big enough for us both.

I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t seen it before.

There was that other side of me though, the part of me that loathed my mother, had devoted the entirety of my existence to being anyone other than her.

I had needed to take my parents down, or they would’ve done the same to me.

They might not have killed me, but they would’ve rotted out my core.

There were days when I wondered whether it had been too late.

Maybe I’d already turned bad. But I recognized something within myself, a tendril of goodness. Someone who wanted love.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” I said. “This isn’t how the movie is supposed to go.”

“What movie?” Rebecca asked.

“The one where I get what I want,” I said as I grabbed from the snack table the knife that had previously been used to slice bagels and I stabbed it into her gut.