Page 30 of Half the Summer's Night
“Do you need—support, or something?” I imagine stepping into the examination room as Rowan Hanover. But Abi shakes her head.
“I just need to get out of my head for a while, and this helped. A lot. Thank you.” Her blue eyes meet mine. “Really. I appreciate it. I know how weird?—”
“It’s not weird,” I say quickly. “I like talking to you.”
A pink blush creeps into Abi’s cheeks, and, just for a second, I catch the same heightened orchid scent from last night. My cock stirs.
“I like talking to you, too,” she says. “Maybe we can do it again?”
“Anytime.”
When she stands up from the table, I do, too. I’m a gentleman, after all.
“Thanks for the latte,” she says. “I’ll text you, okay? Maybe this weekend?”
“Sure.” As if I’m going to wait until the weekend to see her again. I’ve never needed much sleep, which means I’ll be watching Abi’s house tonight. And tomorrow night. And every night until I make sure that the interloper who killed Olivia Pearce breathes for the last time.
I don’t believe in coincidences. Uncle Nash taught me that. And it’s certainly not a coincidence that Olivia Pearce died in Rosado, not Magnolia. I’m a killer who sends messages, so I know what a killer’s message looks like.
“Thanks again,” Abi says sweetly, lingering by the table.
“Let me walk you out,” I say.
Let me do anything to protect you.
11
ROWAN
Icrouch on the lower branches of the big, sprawling oak tree that grows in Abi’s yard, right next to the window that opens into her living room. The funeral parlor is downstairs, so Abi doesn’t spend much time there. This tree has proven to be a perfect place for me to be with her when I don’t want to risk breaking in. It helps that her only curtains are these pale, gauzy things that let the sunlight in during the day. At night, when she has the living room lights on, I can see everything.
I’ve spent so much time with her like this. Joined her in her annualBlood Raiser 3viewings. Sat with her during Thanksgiving last year while she ate a dinner she cooked for herself and watchedTheGodfather. Or just hanging out in the evenings, both of us sprawled out: Abi on the couch in an oversized T-shirt after a long day at work, and me in my killing face on this thick branch that slings down like a hammock.
She’s not alone tonight, though, nor is she watching movies. She’s with her two friends on Zoom. I can’t see or hear them, but Abi keeps waltzing around the living room with her laptop in hand, speaking to the screen. She smoked a joint earlier and then opened a bottle of wine, and it’s made her light and giggly, loud enough that her voice spills out through the thick, distortedglass of the window. My hearing’s always been good—uncannily good, Uncle Nash would say with a knowing wink, just like I’m uncannily strong and uncannily talented at killing—and I know they’ve been talking about some development in Chloe’s life. But since I only hear Abi’s side of the conversation, I don’t know the details. Something about Chloe getting a house on a lake.
It doesn’t matter. I’m here to make sure Abi’s safe, not to eavesdrop. Although when I hear my name, my whole body lights up, and I lean forward, making the tree branches rustle.
“—coffee together,” Abi’s saying. She’s stopped next to the window, holding the laptop like a waiter balancing a tray on one hand. She has her wineglass in the other. “He’s really nice. A lot nicer than most guys around here.”
I get that weird twist of guilt again. She wouldn’t say the real me is nice. That encounter, she hasn’t even mentioned to her friends.
She pauses, staring down at the computer, then gives a shriek and a giggle and cries, “Oh my god! No! It was just coffee!”
Heat warms my cheeks.
“Stop!” she cries. “I never should have told you two about him.”
Abi turns away from the window, drifting out of my line of sight. I can still sense her inside—the quiet hum of her voice, too far away for me to really hear, and something else, a kind of underlying rhythm that feels reassuring. I settle back agains the trunk of the tree, staring at the window of light through the canopy of leaves.
She thinks I’m nice.
No, she thinks Rowan Hanover is nice.
I am Rowan Hanover.
You’re a fucking monster.
That last bit, it’s in my mother’s voice, screaming and hysterical. She was drunk, too, when she said that to me. I don’teven know how she knew what I was capable of. I was only eight. I hadn’t killed anyone yet.
