Page 54 of Matchmaking for Psychopaths

I need your help, I texted Aidan.

The ceremony was supposed to start in half an hour. Guests were filling in the chairs that were lined in rows in the garden outside.

Aidan showed up at the door of the bridal suite almost immediately.

“Isn’t it bad luck to see the bride before the ceremony?” he asked as he took me in.

The fabric of my dress, once a creamy white, was stained red with blood. There was blood on the carpet, the walls. Rebecca was a rag doll on the floor.

“I think we’re past the point of considering luck,” I told him.

It had been like the first murder. I remembered grabbing the knife, but not the look on Rebecca’s face as I turned on her.

I must’ve taken her by surprise, because she was taller and stronger than I was.

When I resumed consciousness, Rebecca was dead and the room destroyed. So much for my security deposit.

“What happened?” Aidan asked as he surveyed the scene.

“Rebecca’s my sister,” I told him. “She was the one who killed Noah, who sent all that stuff to my door. She helped Nicole and Molly plant the stuff at Better Love. It turns out that she was following me before we even met.”

“That explains why she was so familiar to me. We must’ve run into each other at some point while I was following you.”

I rolled my eyes. “I really need fewer psychopaths in my life,” I said.

“You’ll never be free of us. We’re everywhere,” Aidan said. He was joking, but like with every joke, there was truth buried in it.

Reluctantly, I took off my stained dress. We used the layers of fabric to wrap up Rebecca’s body.

“What about the mess?” I asked.

He pulled me close to him. I was wearing my underwear and bra, which were miraculously unstained. Aidan had thrown on my robe that said Bride across the back in order to protect his suit.

“I don’t want you to worry about that right now. It’s your big day. I have someone I can call. They’ll take care of it.”

Previously, I thought the greatest act of love was killing for a partner. In this moment, I realized the true greatest act of love was taking care of the cleanup after the murder was done.

The body would have to wait. Every minute, more guests filtered into the hall below.

Rationally, I understood that I should feel sad about the death of my sister, and worse that I’d been responsible for it, but I felt utterly calm.

I’d spent two decades training myself to turn off my emotions, particularly when it came to my family, and my heart had barricaded itself before the first stab.

All the feeling that I had left was reserved for Aidan and the life we were going to build together.

We stuffed Rebecca’s body into a closet and did our best to tidy the room.

Aidan texted friends—how I loved that he had people to count on—and they managed to procure something new for me to wear. The new dress was a deep red, and through some miracle, it fit me perfectly.

“You know it’s bad luck to see the bride before the ceremony,” I reminded Aidan as he eyed the outfit.

“Fuck luck,” he said. “We have something better. We have love.”

He was right. I could feel it in the air as I walked toward the altar.

No one seemed to care that I wasn’t wearing a white dress.

The red suited me. It was a little quirky, a little out there, just like I was.

I got lost in the moment. My father was dead, my mother imprisoned, and I’d just killed the sister I’d never known I had.

None of that mattered. All that was important was the man in front of me.

“I vow always to be there when you need me. I vow to keep you safe. I vow to let you watch your favorite reality shows even if they drive me crazy.” There was a roar of laughter at that one. “I vow to keep our lives adventurous. Most of all, I vow to love you for who you are.”

My parents’ wedding had been a small, rushed affair.

There was an urgency to it, as though they knew their time together was limited.

As they had alienated their family members, the only witnesses were two fleeting friends.

My mother had made it sound romantic, but when the crowd cheered as Aidan and I kissed, cementing our union, I understood how lonely her life ultimately had been.

I was getting married to a psychopath, yes, a man who had killed people, but he was a psychopath with friends.

The rest of the night was just like in the movies.

The photographer took shots while the guests drank signature cocktails and ate hors d’oeuvres.

Our entry into the reception was met with a round of applause.

We ate dinner, and then hit the dance floor.

Drinks appeared in my hand without my asking for them.

Guests came up to me to tell me how beautiful I looked and how happy they were that Aidan had finally found someone to tame him.

“Oh, I’m not taming him,” I told them. “He finally found someone who could keep up.”

We cut the cake. I threw my bouquet backward over my head, and Oliver caught it and groaned.

I realized as I danced with my wedding guests that I was never again going to try to seek out a best friend, the way that I had with Molly and Rebecca.

One had stolen my fiancé, and the other had murdered him, delivered his dismembered body parts to my door, and turned out to be my secret sister.

I’d spent so much time longing for that type of connection, the kind that I’d witnessed in the shows that I watched, only for it to go so horribly wrong.

As it turned out, reality television wasn’t a good instruction manual for how to be a human.

The revelation that I would never again have a best friend didn’t bother me the way that it once might’ve.

I had a husband with an active social life, and I had a cat.

We’d just closed on a house, and we were talking about having kids.

In the fall, I was going back to school to start a PhD in psychology.

I didn’t need Molly, Rebecca, or even my mother.

I’d excised the toxic parts of my life and, in doing so, found the life that I’d always dreamed of. Finally, I was being true to myself.

At the end of the reception, the guests lined the doorway with sparklers as Aidan and I made our way to a golf cart, which I’d thought would be a cute way to leave instead of the usual limousine.

Rather than driving to the nearby hotel where we’d reserved the honeymoon suite, we drove to the back of the venue and snuck up the stairs.

Rebecca was still waiting for us in the closet. I guess I did have a family member at the wedding, even if she wasn’t alive to watch it. Aidan was strong, and the two of us carried her corpse down the stairs without much difficulty, then loaded it onto the back of the golf cart.

We drove her to the far side of the lake.

The woods weren’t spooky when Aidan was by my side.

We got into the water, which was still cold in late spring, dragging Rebecca along with us.

We weighed her dress down with stones—how she’d bragged about those pockets! —and watched as she sank to the bottom.

Presumably, there were people who would notice her absence—my mother or Rebecca’s coworkers—but I was the only one she was really close to.

She’d even held the other members of COMP at a distance.

I used to be lonely like Rebecca was, but Aidan had changed things.

We did stuff together. His friends were my friends.

We went to barbecues, attended sporting events and concerts.

For all intents and purposes, we were ordinary, friendly people.

The dip in the lake was cleansing, a type of purification.

I washed myself free of Molly, Noah, and Rebecca.

I let go of my grievances with my mother.

I was with Aidan now, my soulmate. We had it all planned out.

Our lives were going to be perfect. Perfect, that was, as long as we could keep ourselves from killing too many people.