Page 115 of Nothing Like the Movies

“What do you mean?” I asked.

That’s brilliant, you dipshit.

“It’s wrapped,” she said, her green eyes full of calling-me-out as she looked up at me. Had she gotten shorter or had I grown? It was a ludicrous thought, but the way we fit was second nature to me, like memory foam, and her head was tilted back a fraction more than it used to be. “Did you injure yourself?”

Hell yes, I’d injured myself, but what was I supposed to say?

What does she know?

“I fell,” I said lamely, shrugging like it was a common occurrence for me to just fucking fall on the regular.

“Yeah?” she said, narrowing her eyes. “It seems like there’s a lot of that going around. Last night, the weirdest thing happened at my apartment.”

Here it comes.“Really?”

“Yeah,” she said, rubbing her lips together as she looked up at me. “So our crazy neighbor came to the door and said there was someone on our balcony trying to start a fire.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck.“No shit?”

She tilted her head, her eyes still accusing me. “No shit. There was no one out there, and this guy is kind of known as bonkers anyway, right?”

There was no way she didn’t know. “Right.”

I mean, was there a chance she was just telling me about it and had no idea it was me?

No waycould I be that lucky.

“But then Bonkers’s wife says she has video.”

Nononononononooooooo.

“Really.”

She bit down on her lip, and I swear to God it looked like she wanted to smile when she said, “Really.It’s a video of some guy falling off the gutter.”

She knew, I knew she knew, yet I still said, “Weird.”

Her lips turned up into a tiny grin and she shook her head. “What’s even weirder is that he looks young, like my age, and he’s got a Bruins Baseball bag strapped to his back.”

“Thatisweird.”Come on.“Maybe he was trying to pull off some amazing romantic gesture.”

“Maybe he was acting like an immature jackass,” she said, the smile disappearing.

“I would think thatyouwould appreciate the romantic angle,” I said, breathing in the smell of her perfume as I realized this plan might be more challenging than I thought. “Little Liz loved that stuff.”

“Little Liz has been gone a long time,” she said, breaking my heart with those words as she cleared her throat and readjusted the bag on her shoulder. “I just hope that guy learned his lesson before someone gets hurt.”

I stepped closer, so she filled the space between my body and the wall as I lowered my head so my mouth was closer to her ear. Acosta was loud as hell, and I needed her to hear me when I said, “Y’know, I don’t think he gives a fuck, Lib, because everyone’s already been hurt. He’s got nothing to lose and everything he’salways wanted to gain, so you should probably brace yourself.”

She turned her head a fraction, so her eyes were on mine.

“Brace myself?” she asked, trying to sound bored. But the breathiness of her voice gave her away when she said, “For what, exactly?”

I looked into those green eyes and said, “The hard press.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“I’m glad he’s single, because I’m gonna climb that like a tree.”

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