He punches him in the face.
Ben stumbles but doesn’t fall, his back hitting the car. Matt grabs him by the collar of his shirt. He’s an inch or two shorter than Ben, but he’s making up for it with sheer rage.
“I am going to sue you for every penny you’re worth,” Matt says through clenched teeth.
Ben tries to twist out of his grasp. “I’ll give you my lawyer’s number. Can you take your hands off me, please?”
Matt responds by gripping his shirt tighter and slamming Ben into the car.
“Matt!” I sound surprised, even though I’m not.
His head whips around to look at me, and then something behind me. I glance back. Half the bar is outside now, staring.
“Beverly is a fucking drunk, and that one is a fucking liar.” Matt lets go of Ben’s shirt to point at me, just so there’s no confusion about who the fucking liar is. Matt is breathing heavily, eyes still wild like they always are when he loses control.
Ben’s shirt is stretched out at the collar and hanging loosely around his neck, but he looks remarkably fine otherwise.
“I’d be happy to add your reply to the podcast, if you’d like to give one.” Ben’s voice wobbles, just a little.
“Go to hell, asshole. That’s my reply.” Matt turns and stomps away.
Ben lifts and lowers his shoulders, like he’s making sure they’re okay. Then he walks around to the hood of the car and grabs his recorder.
He looks up at me with a self-satisfied smile that should be more annoying than it is. “You want to come back to my hotel for a drink?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
LUCY
I’m sure it will surprise no one to learn that I made the stupid choice and accepted Ben’s offer to go back to his hotel.
His suite is cold as I walk in, the AC up high. I shiver, and he pauses at the thermostat on his way into the kitchen.
“Sit,” he says, pointing at the couch. His laptop and notebooks are stacked neatly on the table in front of it. Nothing for me to see there. I don’t know whether I’d want to anyway.
“Whiskey?” he asks.
That seems like a bad idea. “Yes.”
He pours two glasses, gingerly touching his cheek as he finishes. “Matt sure can throw a punch.”
Yes. Well. He’s had some practice.
He walks over to me, whiskey in hand, and holds one out to me. I immediately take a sip. It burns going down, but I lift it to my lips a second time because I would actually really prefer to be drunk again.
I glance at the digital recorder he left on the counter in the kitchen. The light is off. Not recording. He notices me staring at it.
“You recorded that? Matt yelling at you?” I ask as he sits down on the other side of the couch.
“Yeah, I turned it on just in time.”
“Is that legal?”
“In Texas, you can record audio of people without their knowledge if there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy. So, in a restaurant, or a bar, or…”
“If they’re screaming in a parking lot.”
“Yep.”
“Were you recording in the bar?”
“No.”
I don’t know whether I believe him, but it doesn’t matter either way. I didn’t say anything to him that I’d mind being broadcast to thousands of true-crime fans.
“You could have just driven away,” I say. “You had enough time to bolt.”
His lips quirk up. “Where’s the fun in that?”
I prop my bare feet up on the coffee table, cradling the whiskey against my stomach. “You’re going to put that on the podcast, then?”
“Yes. Don’t ask me not to.”
“I wasn’t going to.” I watch as he takes a long sip of his drink. “You know everyone thinks you’re hinting that he’s the one who killed Savvy.”
“I wasn’t very subtle, was I?”
“Do you actually believe that?”
He looks at me with raised eyebrows. “It never occurred to you that Matt might have killed her?”
“Jesus Christ, Ben, I’m not an idiot. Of course it occurred to me.”
His cheeks go a little pink. “Right. Sorry.”
“I just…” I have nothing to say here.
Like I had nothing to say to the police. What could I say? No, Officer, I definitely never would have killed Savvy, because actually we were planning to kill my husband together? Not much of a defense.
I could have confessed that plan, and my suspicions that maybe, for whatever reason, we decided to go after Matt that night, and Matt killed Savvy in self-defense. And then he let everyone think that I did it as a giant fuck you to me.
I wouldn’t blame him, honestly.
But, the fear. The look in his eyes when he asked me to go to my parents’. If that fear was because he thought I was going to try to kill him (again?), he would have told the police the truth. I can’t think of any reason that Matt wouldn’t go to the police if we’d tried to kill him that night. The truth would have mattered, for him.
Ben is staring at me expectantly.
“I wouldn’t focus too much on Matt,” I say, finally.
“Seriously?”
“I don’t think he did it.”
“Seriously?” It’s the baffled word of someone who thinks I should know better. Seriously, Lucy? He hit you! He points to his cheek, which is red.
“It’s your podcast, man, I’m just telling you what I think.”
He lets out a long sigh. “If you want to know the truth, I can’t figure out a motive. I think what Kyle said about them maybe sleeping together is bullshit.”
“That is definitely bullshit.”
He touches his cheek and winces. “Matt’s still a dick, though.”
“You should put ice on that.”
“Meh.”
I go to the fridge and pull a handful of ice from the freezer. I wrap it in a paper towel and walk over to him, holding it out.
“I think it’s fine,” he says.
I sit down next to him and put the ice to his face.
“Ow.”
“Just for a couple minutes. Or are you hoping it swells so you can take a picture and put it on Twitter?”
A smile slides across his face, and I can’t help the one that crosses mine as well.
He takes the ice from me and presses it to his cheek. We sit in silence for several moments that are not quite comfortable.
Then he tosses the ice on the coffee table, leans over, and kisses me.
I’m in his lap almost immediately, his hands under my dress and on my thighs. I can’t remember why I thought this was a bad idea. This is a great idea. This is the best idea I’ve had since arriving in this cursed city.
He pulls my dress down around my waist, his hands on my breasts. I unbutton his pants. I’d like to blame the vodka for that decision.
And I’d like to blame the whiskey for letting him yank off my underwear so we can have sex right there on the couch.
But that would be a lie.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
LUCY
I wake early, before the sun. Ben is asleep beside me on his stomach, his hair disheveled and falling across his eyes. My head hurts.
I sit up slowly. I’m in his bed, naked, because after having sex on the couch he pulled me into his bedroom and we had sex in here too.
An image of me smothering him with a pillow flashes across my vision. That’s pretty standard for me waking up with men. It would be so easy to kill a sleeping man.
“I still vote strangulation for this one,” Savvy whispers. I shake the voice away.
I find my dress on the floor, and my underwear in the living room. It’s ripped, so I toss it in the trash on my way out.
I’m outside before I remember that my car is still at the bar. I debate calling the one Uber driver, but he’s probably asleep, and it’s only about a mile down the road. I start down the sidewalk, hoping a strong breeze doesn’t blow up my dress and expose my ass to the world.
It’s hot, even just before sunrise, and sweat trickles down my back as I walk.
I wasn’t nearly drunk enough last night to blame my choices on the alcohol, which was honestly shit planning on my part. Should have gotten wasted. Then at least I’d have an excuse.