Page 96 of (My Accidental) Killer Summer

I keep my eyes closed.

The mattress dips near my calves. The whisper of cotton. The soft, practiced hush of a man stepping around the floorboard that squeaks. The faint click of the closet safe where he keeps the things that make himhim: badge, gun, the parts of a life that never really fit inside a home.

I could say his name. I could ask where he’s going. I could make him choose between lying to me and telling me a truth I’m not ready to carry.

“Be boring,” he whispers from the doorway.

I could let him know I’m awake. Instead, I slide my hand across the warm space he leaves and curl my fingers into the sheet, trying to hang on tothis momenta bit longer. Where the only things that can’t be undone were caused by me and me alone. Rain beats softly against the house. Somewhere down the block a dog barks twice and goes back to sleep. I picture Noah inthe kitchen, pausing, looking back down the hallway like a man deciding between sins.

The porch smells like wet dirt and rosemary when it rains. In the morning, I will pretend I don’t know I know that if he mentions it.

The back door sticks unless you lean left at the latch. He remembers and leans. It doesn’t thud.

The front lock clicks. Quiet. Careful.

I roll to his pillow, press my face into it, and pretend to sleep.

forty-eight

. . .

Noah

FIVE MINUTES EARLIER

Elle’s breathing is slow and even, a soft hush against my chest.

Her thigh hooks over my hip like a promise I don’t deserve. I could stay. I could let the night harden around us and pretend the world outside this bed isn’t waiting with a clipboard and a body.

I don’t.

I ease my hand under her knee and slip free an inch at a time. She murmurs something that sounds like don’t go and my heart stops like it heard its own name. I freeze. Her leg tightens in her sleep, a slow, possessive drag that lights every nerve I just spent an hour trying to forget. Her breath evens.

I want to kiss her hair and make a vow I can’t keep. Instead, I don’t touch her at all. I can guess at how this all plays out. I can put the pieces in exactly the right place. But I can’t guarantee it’s going to work. That’s the part that kills me.

Clothes first, then gun, then badge—last, like a penance. The order matters tonight.

The floorboard beside the dresser still complains so I step around it like a man who’s learned where a house keeps its secrets.

At the back door I lean my weight where you have to, left of the latch, so it doesn’t thud. The porch smells like wet dirt and rosemary and us. I want to tell her.

I pull the door closed behind me and step into the hum of the street, keys cold in my palm.

Do the rightwrongthing fast. Then live with it.

Screens. Steel. Dirt. Paper.

I start the car.

First stop: screens and the guy who can make a security frog go blind.

The strip mall is a long bruise of neon—vape shop, tax prep, a shuttered pho place, and NuVision Home Security glowing like a kid’s nightlight. A bell tings when I push inside. The place smells like plastic and dust. The guy behind the counter looks up from YouTube with the reflexes of someone who lives online and smokes out back between firmware updates.

“Santos,” I say.

He blinks, then ghosts a smile. “Grant. You want the bundle? Doorbell, two cams, cloud sub, half off?”

“I want five minutes,” I say. “On a system you installed three doors down from me.”