Page 55 of To All the Men I’ve Killed Before

His lips touch mine and I wait for the miracle to happen. The romance-novel moment where my knees weaken and my pulse quickens and my memories of Charlie melt into nothing.

But that’s not what happens.

That’s not what happens at all.

Travis has me in his arms. They’re not letting me go anywhere. They’re gym-toned and strong.

My heart is beginning to quicken.

An alarm starts going off in my brain. No, not an alarm, a siren. The relentless screaming of an emergency phone alert. Danger to life.

Danger to life.

Those arms.

They’re not letting me go anywhere.

They’re not letting me go anywhere.

I pull away and Travis is smiling down at me. But it’s not Travis’s face anymore. It’s a face that haunts my dreams, my nightmares.

A buzzcut and a sneer.

The man from the beach in Cannes.

Connor.

But I killed him.

How is he here?

Travis is still holding me tightly and I struggle in his arms. Those arms that aren’t letting me go. That could hold me down and keep me there. The hands that could easily slip around my neck and squeeze my last breaths out of me. I’m breathing hard now and I need to escape. That’s the only thing my brain can focus on. It knows I’m in danger and I need to run. My legs are buzzing with the need. I barely realise I’m doing it but my knee is rising and then it hits its target. He falls to the ground, holding his groin, looking up at me in confusion. But I don’t have time to think about the man on the floor because flight has taken hold and I’m running and running and running.

30

Kitty and Antoinette’s Airbnb, West Hollywood, Los Angeles

‘You did what?’ Antoinette and Agnes are staring at me like I’ve just confessed to drowning baby hamsters and enjoying it. They crashed through the door about half an hour ago, kissing and grabbing at each other, only stopping when they saw me, sitting on the sofa in the dark, a picture of abject mortification.

Now they’ve made me rose tea and I’m sitting, wrapped up in a blanket while I try to explain the terrible turn my date took after they left. Antoinette’s eyes are as wide as saucers and Agnes has been pressing her lips together in an attempt not to laugh. She may be able to cry on demand but her serious-face acting needs some fucking work.

‘I just don’t understand,’ Agnes is saying. ‘He seemed such a sweetheart.’

Antoinette turns to her. ‘He is,’ she says. ‘Kitty has PTSD that she’s refusing to acknowledge. Even when it leads her to hoof some poor man in the baby makers for having the audacity to ask before he kisses her.’

‘PTSD?’ Agnes says. ‘Why?’

Antoinette begins to explain to her what happened with Connor when I was drunk and heartbroken on that Cote d’Azur beach in the summer. How he forced himself on me when I decided I didn’t want to be alone on a beach with him after all. When I sobered up enough to realise I’d only gone down there with him to stop the intrusive thoughts about Charlie, who I’d convinced myself was cheating on me. When I couldn’t fight him off and thought he was going to rape me and then kill me.

She leaves out the part where I throttled him with a string bikini and dragged his body into the Med.

Thankfully.

I like Agnes but I don’t think she could handle the full, unadulterated truth.

Not yet, anyway.

‘Oh God,’ Agnes says, clamping a hand to her mouth. ‘Kitty, I am so sorry. How horrible for you. So it was what, like a flashback or something?’