Page 49 of When I Accidentally Snagged a Serial Killer

“I don’t want to sit down.”

“Neither do I, but if I don’t sit, I’ll fall.”

Jubilee moves, lowering herself onto the far end of the couch, and they angle toward each other while Tyson lies in front of them like a very macabre coffee table.

Anne nearly curls in on herself. “He started making comments about you not long after we moved in. Two years ago, maybe a little less.”

Jubilee’s lips flatten. “What kind of comments?”

“The kind you think.” The skin beneath Anne’s eyes looks bruised. Her nose wrinkles. “I told him to stay the fuck away from my daughter. We were paying on time, but the rent and the debt kept going up, and our income didn’t. Then he started making offers.” She lets her hair fall, hiding halfway behind it. “We’d bounced around for years, Juju Bean. Shelters. Shitty apartments. Our car for a while. This was finally somewhere decent, and I couldn’t put us through another move. Especially after you found a job you loved nearby.” Saint Violet.

Something cold settles behind my ribs.

“Mom.” Jubilee’s shoulders climb toward her ears. “What did you agree to?”

For the first time since she came through the door, the fury drains from her mother’s face, leaving a worse emotion. Shame. “I told him if he wanted that, he came through me. You were off-limits.”

Jubilee’s throat works hard. I must unclench a fist in my pocket.

Down the hallway, another apartment door slams, followed by muffled laughter. Ordinary life continues six feet away as Jubilee looks like the floor has caved in.

“You let him—” She wraps her arms around herself. “You did that because of me?”

Her mother’s head snaps up. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare make this your fault, Jubilee. I know that face.” She points a shaky finger. “You’re doing exactly what you always do. Making yourself responsible for someone else’s fucked-up choices.”

A broken little laugh escapes Jubilee, and I cage the storm inside me. I remember her in the rain, clutching a bloody knife, counting prime numbers with me, ready to call the police on herself when nothing was ever her fault.

She rocks herself. “I thought I was protecting you.”

Her mother’s brows pull together. “Protecting me? How?”

Jubilee starts to fidget, ears, then hair. “You really never wondered why I started dyeing my hair black? Why I changed the way I dressed? The piercings? All of it?”

Her mother blinks, genuinely confused. “I thought you were figuring yourself out.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.” She shrugs. “Juju Bean, when have I ever cared what you wore? The elf ears. The body glitter phase. All your bedazzled riding boots. Horses and fantasy. Those movies with the rings⁠—”

“Lord of the Rings.”

“Yes, those.”

Interest piqued, I straighten, and Jubilee senses it immediately. She turns her head very slowly toward me with a warning glare. I make the mistake of speaking anyway. “You had body glitter?”

She’s off the couch in a heartbeat, marching the two steps between us to plant her palm over my mouth. “Not now, Gage.”

I nod solemnly. She kisses my cheek anyway before rushing back to the couch, and the relief of that tiny gesture nearly undoes me.

The beginning of a smile crosses her mother’s features, but it fades. “Not long after we moved in here, you tore all of it down. Posters, pictures, everything. You boxed up the horses. You started wearing black and decorating with skulls and those creepy birds.”

“They’re crows.”

“Murder crows.”

“They’re not called—” Jubilee stops and claws at her skull. “You seriously thought I changed that much because I wanted to?”

“I thought maybe you needed to.” Her mother’s voice softens. “Ever since your father left and we lost everything, we were in survival mode for years. When we moved here, I thought you changing everything was your fresh start. I wasn’t going to be the mother who told you the version of yourself you chose was wrong.”