Page 83 of Last Shot

‘It’s fine. You’re more likely to recognise someone connected to the La Marcas than me. And anyway, this is actually better than I remember.’ She tapped the steering wheel. ‘I think it’s about being in control.’

He stared out the windscreen at the flat grey road ahead of them. ‘I think we both like being in control.’

She inhaled. He wasn’t wrong; ever since her parents died, she’d wanted to control everything. But she hadn’t been in control last night. Not with him. She’d never been like that before, not with Damien, not with anyone.

Last night had been—

No. There was no point thinking—

But maybe it wasn’thimshe craved, maybe it was just that feeling. That untethered, uncaged, electric feeling. He wasn’t the only guy in the world she could get that with – she just wanted him because she couldn’t have him. She’d find it again. But she was not going to compromise solving this murder and getting her career back on track just because of some over-achieving abdominals.

‘What happened at that party?’ she asked instead. ‘The one the Ravens were talking about?’

The one good thing about almost sleeping with him was that now she knew there was nothing between them, she felt a strange sense of freedom about what she could ask.

Grey glanced at her. ‘Luca punched Forrest – the waiter from the restaurant. You know this.’

‘You tensed up in the Ravens’ house when they mentioned the party.’

‘Did I?’ His voice gave nothing away. He was so fucking good at pretending.

‘There’s more going on here, and I think Libby knows more than she’s saying—’

‘Oh really? The great all-knowing Libby Johnston?’

She clenched her jaw. ‘How many people know what you told me – about the balcony?’

‘It’s okay, Maxella, you can say the words. I’m not going to turn into a pile of goo.’

‘Good, because I think these seats are real leather.’

‘It’s not exactly something I put on my Instagram bio.’ He put his headphones back in and the video resumed.

As if he had Instagram. What would his profile picture be? A row of knives? His bio would be something like:I hate long walks, beaches and sunsets, DM me for dismembering tips.He’d have one picture on his grid, so he didn’t get reported for being a bot, and it would probably be a stock image from Canva of someone else’s dog.

She knew what she had to do. This was her job. She knew how to break people apart, to poke at their vulnerabilities, looking for the part that hurts – then stab down. He wasn’t telling her everything, and she had to get to the bottom of what happened at that party, why he’d tensed up at the Ravens’.

But she couldn’t.

And that pissed her off. He didn’t get to just sit there like that after showing her a small piece of him that no one else had seen, after ... everything. He didn’t get to just sit there, with every breath, every swallow, every unwitting bicep flex attached to an invisible wire connected to her heart. Every microscopic reminder of his existence tugging it out like a fish on a hook.

‘So you trusted me enough to tell me about the boy on the bal—Were you just pretending?’ she snapped. ‘Last night – was that just, like, letting off steam?’

He tugged at the headphones and they came off in the one movement, like everything he did – perfect, controlled. ‘Pull over.’

‘Don’t tell me what to do.’

‘Pull the fuck over!’

Bessy protested as her wheels skittered over the gravel, demonstrating just how indignant she was at Max’s spontaneous detour by tilting them perilously into a grassy ditch.

‘We need to get back,’ Max said as she wrenched the handbrake and Bessy groaned.Sorry, Bessy, I’m not mad at YOU.

Grey frowned, brown eyes gliding over her face with such intensity she swore she could feel the phantom brush of his fingers. ‘You thought I was pretending?’

She knew he wasn’t talking about the flashback.

‘Of course you were.’ Except it came out as ‘Of c—’ because the rest of the sentence was swallowed by his mouth.

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