“I read it for the articles,” he shoots back, clicking over to Netflix. “So, is one serial killer documentary as good as another? Or do you have, like, a greatest hits list you like to work from?”
Fiona smiles magnanimously. “You can pick.”
In the end they watch some grisly fucking thing about the Mansons—a cheesy sixties rock score played over shot after shot of Sharon Tate’s yellow hair and round, pregnant belly. Sam tries not to flinch. He likes a slasher flick as much as the next guy, but true crime has always weirded him out—the luridness of it, he guesses, low-end producers making money off the worst day of other people’s lives.
Also, it always makes him a little nervous he’s about to get serial murdered.
Still, he likes having Fiona propped up on one elbow beside him, the ends of her long hair just brushing his arm. It’s not like he’stryingto look or anything, but the collar of her tank top gapes open a little so he can see the tops of her breasts out of the corner of his eye, a handful of freckles scattered across her chest like glitter. He can feel the heat radiating off her skin. Something about the whole setup has Sam afraid to move too much, like how his mom always made Adam and him hold still when deer showed up in their yard while they were playing football. He doesn’t want to scare her away.
“Okay,” he says finally, grimacing as the narrator reports thefindings of Sharon Tate’s autopsy in excruciatingly minute detail. “Can we turn this off, please?”
Fiona sighs loudly, flopping over onto her back. “I guess,” she agrees. “But if I wind up lying awake all night it’s your fault.”
Sam looks at her pointedly. “I might say the same thing to you, cutie-pie.”
In any case, she’s passed out what feels like two seconds later—hogging all the blankets, her chilly feet brushing his underneath the sheets. Sam looks over at her, squinting to try and see her in the darkness. The sound of her breathing is the last thing he hears before he falls asleep.
Chapter Nine
Fiona
The first thing Fiona registers when she wakes up the following morning is how nice the sheets are, crisp white cotton percale with what must be a thread count in the thousands.
The second thing she registers is that she’s lying in Sam Fox’s bed.
WithSam Fox.
Shit.
He’s still sleeping, thank fuck, sacked out on the mattress beside her with one tanned, muscled arm slung over his face—lean and bare-chested, the sun streaming through the trees outside his bedroom window casting patterns of shadow and light across his smooth, unblemished skin.
Fiona pushes the covers back and sits up as quietly as possible so she doesn’t wake him, lifting a careful hand to her mouth. Her lips feel swollen and itchy, bruised in a good way. Fiona shivers. She hasn’t kissed anyone like that in—she doesn’t know if she’severkissed anyone like that, actually. Kissing Sam felt like how she imagines it would have been to make out in someone’s car in highschool: like she physically couldn’t get enough of him, like all this time there was a secret string of explosives rigged inside her body and he methodically set about tripping every single one. She curls her toes against the plush shag of the area rug and lets herself stare at him for a minute, the jut of his hip bones and the trail of dark hair beneath his navel and his stupid perfect pectoral muscles, the kind you only get if you’re a goober who goes to the gym every day and is obsessed with his own physique.
Oh, god, this is going to be so awkward.
Fiona tiptoes down the hallway into the living area, where her jacket is slung over the back of one of the leather barstools and her purse is slouched on a woven bench near the door. She slings the bag over her shoulder, then breathes a sigh of relief at having successfully avoided the cringiest non-postcoital morning after in recorded history and grabs her shoe off the hardwood floor of the foyer.
That’s shoe, singular.
Because its mate? Is nowhere to be found.
Fiona frowns, turning in a slow circle and scanning the living room. Sam was right, last night—shewassurprised by how nice this place is, not just the apartment itself but the physical items inside it: the deep, cognac-colored couch and the antique pharmacist’s lamp beside the armchair, the block-printed throw pillows in geometric blues and greens. On the bookshelf is a black-and-white photo of a long-haired woman Fiona assumes is Sam’s mother holding a fat, bald baby, her head thrown back laughing; there’s atall, proud palm tree in a big terra-cotta pot by the doors that lead to the balcony, and by all appearances it is alive.
Fiona checks fruitlessly under the coffee table and behind the door in the tiny black-and-white bathroom, then circles back to the kitchen and starts the search again. What the fuck? Like, quite seriously, did a coyote sneak in here while she was sleeping and run off with it? It’s ashoe. She’s on her hands and knees peering under the sofa when she hears the sound of someone clearing his voice behind her. “Uh,” Sam says, his voice low and a little bit hoarse. “Morning.”
Fiona winces, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment before straightening up and looking at him. “Oh,” she says, tucking her tangled hair behind her ears. “Hey.”
“Whatcha doing?” he asks, reaching up to scratch his naked shoulder. He hasn’t bothered putting pants on, the outline of his cock fully visible through his dark gray boxer briefs.
Fiona clears her throat, trying not to stare. “Did you hide my shoe?” she asks.
Sam snorts. “What?”
“My shoe,” she says again, feeling the slightest bit hysterical. “I was wearing two when I got here, obviously, but now...” She gestures at her orphaned boot. “Did you hide it?”
Sam looks at her like she’s insane. “Why would I hide your—?” He breaks off. “What, like, to keep you here?”
“I—” Fiona feels her cheeks flame. It sounds absurd, now that she hears it out loud. “No, of course not. I just—”
