Page 11 of Best Served Cold
Truth be told, a part of her was uncomfortable, and yet, she knew that distancing herself from Morgan would only make the discomfort expand, not unlike the guilt that was currently blossoming inside of her. Sooner or later, she’d be overgrown.
“Stay,” she whispered, squeezing Morgan’s hand ever so gently. “Fall asleep with me.”
Lee Holmes didn’t know if sleep was even possible for her, and yet her intent to focus on ensuring that Morgan felt safe enough in their relationship to fall asleep herself only affirmed her love for her. Even if a part of Lee felt frightened on a level outside oftheir relationship, a larger part still adored the woman she was sat beside.
Extinguishing the bedside light, the pair sunk into one another, as Morgan wrapped an arm around Lee and placed the other in her hair, wrapping individual fingers around equally individual strands. She whispered above the top of Lee’s head after placing a kiss in that very spot. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Lee said back immediately, acknowledging that she had been hesitant about many things this past week, but never that.
Chapter Ten
The positioning of the sun in the sky as it beamed through the bedroom window allowed light on only one half of the room, leaving the other half in a dim haze. Lee concluded that she was the lighter half at that moment, which, by default, meant that Morgan was the darker side. When the sun was no longer visible, and the stars had taken over, that was what kept Lee up at night, clutching at her sheets, desperate for relief. How dark was Morgan Finch?
If she ever wanted to sleep soundly again, next to Morgan, no less, that was a question that needed answers. As Morgan lay pressed against her last night, it affirmed Lee’s love for her, and it was because of this affirmation that she decided there and then that her emotional purgatory was not going to cut it. Before she could regret waking a sleeping lion, Lee reached over to her girlfriend’s darker side of the bed and tapped her gently. “Babe?”
The woman stirred gradually, her eyes still shut as she turned towards Lee, opening them only when they were face to face. “Mhmm? What time is it?”
“Early,” Lee responded immediately. “I couldn’t sleep. Can we talk?”
Morgan nodded, her body stepping into motion like a toy that needed winding as she lifted herself gradually from the covers and stretched her arms out high above her head. “I’ll go make us some coffee.”
Lee wasn’t sure if she could even wait as long as it took for the coffee to brew before she got the answers she craved, spurring her own body into motion as she followed her girlfriend out of the bedroom and into the kitchen like a new puppy desperate for attention.
The clock on the kitchen wall read 6:24am, ticking much like the one in their bedroom, when it was all that she could focus on. At present time, all that Lee could focus on was the question that had been on her mind ever since a knife entered the body of a man in her living room.Who was Morgan Finch?
Lee hadn’t sat inside the living room since—had barely stood. Whenever she walked past the door frame to the room in which her life had changed she felt a chill, as if walking past a graveyard, filled with souls all competing for the same breath of air. The kitchen was her space now, as she sat upon one of the bar stools and threw her elbows onto the counter. “Could you sit with me when you’re done, please? This can’t wait.”
Lee’s leg tapped anxiously against the kitchen tiles, her eyes diverting to the clock, acknowledging that the both of them would have to leave for work soon, before diverting her attention back to Morgan, her calm demeanor only aggravating Lee’s own panicked state.
Morgan opened one of the kitchen drawers, retrieving a teaspoon from its contents. Upon stirring the appropriate number of sugars in both cups, she offered an affirmative “sure,” in response before taking a seat on the unoccupied bar stool as she placed a black coffee to the right of her where Lee sat.
Lee wrapped her hands around the mug, not taking a sip, yet enveloping herself in its warmth as if it might provide her with just the slightest piece of comfort. “I know it’s early, and I know you’re tired, butGod, Morgan, it’s not just that night itself that’s playing in my mind on repeat. It’s the notion that I might not even know who you are. Waking up in a sweat isn’t normal.Thisisn’t normal,” she said, gesturing her hands between the both of them. “I can’t sleep until I know exactly who it is that I’m sleeping next to.”
Her girlfriend gently blew on her coffee, as she always did, and took one small mouthful. She sighed, placing her cup down now, putting a hand on Lee’s arm instead. “Tell me what you want to know, and I’ll tell you. All of it. None of it. Whatever you need.”
The warmth of Morgan’s touch felt oddly contradicting, like knives brushed against a velvet sheet. Her girlfriend was capable of such tenderness, and yet she was also capable of things far too sinister for Lee to comprehend. Taking a deep breath to steady herself upon the stool, she took a sip of her own coffee and exhaled. “Who was that man? How many times have you done this?Whydo you do it?”
Lee took another intake of breath, her questions falling out of her like a snowboarder caught in an avalanche. Morgan was the avalanche. “Okay, that’s a lot of questions.”
Without a second of hesitation, Lee batted back. “Not nearly enough.”
Morgan sighed again, allowing her arm to fall away from Lee as she played with the corner of the counter. She seemed more like a timid child at that moment, than a killer. “His name is—was, Edward Beckett. Believe me when I tell you that no one, not even his family, will miss him. I’ll tell you who he is, but it might be hard to hear.”
Lee surprised even herself when she rolled her eyes at the remark. At present time it felt like her girlfriend knew less abouther than what she had previously thought. What she was capable of handling, and what she wasn’t. “I’ve been listening to murder podcasts for years, Morgan. I know what people like you do. I can handle it. I just want answers.”
Her girlfriend simply nodded, her fingers still playing absentmindedly with the kitchen counter. “To put it bluntly, he was a piece of shit. Do you remember that teenage girl, Summer Roberts?”
“I remember,” Lee confirmed. “I read about her online. She went missing a few years ago about forty minutes away from our apartment, didn’t she? No one knows what happened to her.”
“I do,” Morgan exhaled theatrically, taking a sip of her coffee. “Edward Beckett happened to her.”
Lee was putting the pieces of the puzzle together now, much like she did whilst listening to her podcasts. Figuring out the ins and outs of each crime before the final reveal could peak its head. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Morgan glanced down at her coffee, and then at the counter, looking anywhere besides at her girlfriend. For the first time, Lee felt more like the predator in this situation than the prey, cornering Morgan into a room where only truths lay. “We can skip the details, but yes. Next question, how many times have I done this? That was the question, right?”
Lee nodded, feeling much like a bobblehead at present time, making her own internal assessment that the more she spoke, the longer Morgan had to conjure up an answer. Lee didn’t want a carefully thought-out dialogue. She wanted the haphazard of words that she got from Morgan when she’d had one whiskey too many. She wanted the lazy truth she only got at the bottom of a glass.
Morgan shifted on her seat, her lips a firm line. It seemed like an eternity to Lee before she spoke again. “Are you sure this is something you want to know? I mean, once you know, yourealize you can’t simply un-know any of this. Do you understand that?”
