Page 120 of To All the Men I’ve Killed Before

She looks flushed, dishevelled, like she’s been running.

‘Lauren!’ I say. ‘You’re okay?’

She stares at me before running at me and wrapping her arms around me. I’m a little taken aback as I’ve never seen her this tactile before. I awkwardly hug her back.

‘So are you!’ she says. ‘God, I was so worried.’

‘What happened to you?’

‘I ran,’ she says. ‘After Cort hit you over the head. I just ran and ran. I thought I’d be able to find someone else. Get some help.’ She shakes her head. ‘There’s nothing. No one.’ She looks around, her eyes wide with fear. ‘Where is he?’ she says. ‘Where’s Cort?’

‘In the basement,’ I say. ‘You don’t need to worry about him.’

‘I got him good,’ Antoinette says and Lauren’s eyes widen even more.

‘You mean … he’s dead?’

‘Dead as fuck. Completely cooked. I got him right in the jugular.’ I wish Antoinette didn’t sound quite as delighted with herself as she does. He may have been a murdering psychopath but he was still Lauren’s boyfriend. A little sensitivity wouldn’t hurt here.

Lauren’s hand shoots to her mouth and I can see that it’s trembling. Lauren collapses like she’s been shot. Her legs give out from underneath her and she falls to the floor, gasping. She crawls into child’s pose and I can see huge sobs shaking her body.

‘I need to see him,’ she whimpers. ‘I need to see him.’

An image of Cort and the huge gaping hole in his neck pops into my mind. She really doesn’t need to see him. That’s the kind of thing that’ll land her in therapy for years.

‘Lauren,’ I say carefully as I kneel beside her, putting a hand on her back. ‘You need to breathe. You’re having a panic attack.’ She doesn’t stop sobbing and gasping and I look to Antoinette for help but she just shrugs, helpless. I rub her back like I’ve done for Maisie and Tor in the past. ‘Come on,’ I say to her. ‘Sit up. It’s okay.’

She pulls herself into a sitting position and stares at me. Her mascara has bled around her eyes. The effect would be funny if the situation wasn’t so awful. She looks like a Tradwife who’s had a 2010 emo Tumblr makeover.

‘It’s not okay, Kitty,’ she says. ‘He’s dead. Cort’s dead.’

That image again.

That stab wound and all that blood.

Yeah.

Cort’s very much dead.

‘You cannot feel bad about that,’ Antoinette snaps from her corner, wiping the blood from the knife on her sleeve. ‘You know what he did. To those women.’

I glare at her and shake my head. She might be right, but Lauren won’t want to hear that at the moment. Whatever Cort was, she loved him. And that’s not just going to go away.

I turn back to Lauren. She looks too fragile to touch right now. Like she might break if I try to offer physical comfort.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine how hard this is for you.’

She keels forward, pressing her fists into her eyes harder than can be good for them.

‘He was mine,’ she says between sobs. ‘I loved him. I really did.’

‘You loved who he was pretending to be,’ Antoinette says. And then, under her breath so only I can hear, ‘And that was a prick as well.’

I glare at her again.

Lauren folds over again, shaking violently.

‘Lauren, you need to get it together.’ Antoinette’s patience has run out now. ‘You can’t fall to pieces. We need to get out of here.’