Page 49 of Murder

There’s a beat of silence, in which crackling leaves chase each other across my brownish grass. Then he moves his arm off me and steps down off the porch. He holds a hand out. “C’mon.”

“Huh?”

He reaches down and wraps his hands around my waist, under my arms. “C’mon, Gwenna.” He lifts me up. “You ever get called Gwen?” He sets me on my feet, then seems to re-evaluate and throws me over his shoulder. The motion is surprisingly controlled and gentle.

After a second of shock at our little plot twist, I shriek and mock-beat his back. “Where are you taking me, you freaking Sasquatch?”

He laughs. “Sasquatch?”

“When I saw you, when I kicked you, I thought you were Sasquatch.”

I can feel his laughter in the movement of his shoulders. “That’s some funny shit.”

“Yeah, you’re like…part giant.”

His arm around my back tightens. “To answer you,” he says as we get into his yard, “it’s somewhere good. You’ll see.”

I think I know where he might be taking me when we start up the stairs to the third floor of his house, but I don’t know for sure until he sets me in the second floor hall outside the bedroom doors and reaches for a notch there in the ceiling. He tugs it lightly, pulling a big square of ceiling downward just a little. With his left hand, he pushes me gently back.

He turns to me and smiles, dimpled and panty-melting. “Do you trust me?”

I arch a brow. “Should I?”

He looks stricken.

“Yes.” I roll my eyes. “Why wouldn’t I? Although I will say,” I tell him as he pulls the stairs all the way down, “if you chop me into little pieces, I will haunt your shit so hard…”

He gives a low laugh. “Well, I don’t need that.”

I smile sweetly. “Then you better treat me like a BFF.”

He gives me a funny little look—a kind of long pre-smile in which he somehow, indescribably, just looks like he could smile. And then he does.

My heart skips several beats.

“I’ll go first. To test the ladder,” he says.

As I watch him climb into the attic and turn on a light, I have a strange déjà vu feeling: high school. Butterflies and flop sweat and lust, I think as he leans back down over the ladder.

“We’re good,” that low voice rumbles. “Come on up.”

He hovers near the top of the ladder as I climb. I’m watching his face as I step fully up into the attic space, so I see him opening his mouth, seemingly to protest. Then I get a peek at the room behind him and my jaw drops.

The room looks like—it is—a little library. It’s a rectangular space about the size of a school classroom, with a cedar floor, exposed rafters, and whitewashed walls. Right out in front of me, punched into the wall that forms the top line of the rectangle, there is a quilted, queen-sized bed that folds out of the wall. The long wall to my right is nothing but built-in shelving, packed with books, trinkets, and even a little lantern. To my left, along that long wall, there is an antique desk, a fish-shaped floor lamp beside a cozy leather armchair, and—perhaps the room’s most awesome feature—the most giant window seat I’ve ever seen: about the size of my kitchen table. The window is three giant sheets of glass arranged like the top of a hexagon.

My eyes rove the room again as my hand covers my mouth. “Holy hell, this is beyond adorable.”

I turn a circle, noting an antique rocking chair, a circular woven rug, a random gnome statue, and tiny wind chimes hanging from the ceiling near the window seat.

The only thing I’ve ever heard about the Haywoods’ attic was something about a homemade telescope. I search the room for it, and when I don’t see it, my gaze boomerangs to Barrett.

He’s got his arms folded in front of his chest, and I’m pretty sure the look on his face is a smug one.

“This is fabulous,” I say. “I may move in.”

He smiles. “Turn to your left.”

“That window seat is awesome. I think I should sit in it.”

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