Page 38 of Phoenix

“I don’t need you to do that. She’s left-handed. I’ve seen her sign documents.”

“Cool. Stand up.” Tor slid off the stool.

Jule rose as well.

“Now if I’m holding a knife in my left hand and I go to stab you”—he mimicked thrusting a knife toward Jule—“I’m probably going to hit your left side, and it’ll be at an angle from left to right. She’s shorter than him so even if she got to his right side”—he shifted his stance— “there’d probably still be a slight left to right angle horizontally, and either way, it’d be dead on or from bottom to top vertically.” He met Jule’s eyes. “His stab wound is on his right side, and it’s slightly angled from right to left and top to bottom. See.” He pointed at the computer and waited for Jule to review the images. “Only way that makes sense is if it was made like this.” He punched his right hand against his own waist.

“He stabbed himself,” Jule said slowly, the realization sinking in.

“Yeah. If you look really closely at the picture, you’ll see that there are a couple of marks just next to the wound. Hesitation marks because he couldn’t quite make himself do it on his first tries.”

Jule didn’t need to ask Tor how he knew so much about wounds. He had seen the evidence of that written on Tor’s own body. He went back to the computer and looked at the pictures again, not at all surprised to see that Tor was right.

“Think that’s enough for you to win the case?” Tor asked.

“I think that’s enough for me to get the prosecutor to drop the thing entirely and charge the boyfriend with filing a false report and identity theft and probably some other shit once I have a minute to think about it.”

“That’s great news.” Tor sounded pleased. He creeped his arms around Jule from behind and skimmed one hand under hisshirt and the other over his shorts. “Does that mean we freed up your morning?”

***

Jule walked out of the bathroom, laughing. Two full days with Tor and his body felt looser, chest lighter, brain clearer. He could breathe. “We need sustenance before we can go at it again, Tori. You finish up in there and I’ll get us some food.” He rubbed his towel over his chest and walked across his bedroom, rearing back when he realized someone was standing in the doorway. “Holy shit!” he shouted, startled. When he saw who it was, his heart started beating again. “Lydia? What are you doing in my apartment?”

She seemed frozen in shock. The last time they had spoken was on Thursday when he had dropped her off at her house after her company holiday party. He hadn’t invited her over, and even if he had, she shouldn’t have been able to get in on her own. “I brought you dinner. You said you’d be working tonight but I thought you’d need a break so…” She flicked her gaze to the bathroom door. “I, uh, picked up food from Windsor and brought it over.”

“How did you get into my apartment?” He tightly wrapped the towel around his waist.

“Remember that time we were dropping off that box from your mom and you were holding it, so I had to type in your door code?”

“Uh, yeah. You memorized my door code?”

“It’s four numbers. I rang the bell and I texted to tell you I was here, but you probably didn’t hear that because you were in the shower.” She looked toward the bathroom again. “I couldn’t leave the food outside, so I came in.”

He shook his head, disoriented by the situation.

“Who’s Tori?”

That snapped his mind back into place. “Lydia, you need to leave.” He hustled over to her. “Now.”

“You’re cheating on me?”

“It’s not like that.” He put his hand on her back and nudged her down the hallway.

“I can hear the water running, Julian, and I heard you talking to her. I know she’s in the shower and you clearly just came out.”

Small blessings that Tori sounded like a woman’s name. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Julian, you walked out of that bathroom naked and wet from a shower. A shower that Tori is still in. How is that not cheating?”

When they had cleared the hallway and were standing in the living room, he took his hand off her. “It’s not cheating because we’re not together.” That was obvious and should have required no explanation, but she clearly thought otherwise and he didn’t want to be mean. Even if she had essentially broken into his house. He was going to change the door code as soon as she left.

“So she’s a hookup?”

“Who?” He realized she was referring to Tor. “No.” He shook his head. “I meant you and me.” He moved his finger back and forth between them. “We’re not together.”

“We’ve been dating for months,” she said, sounding more confused than angry.

He had made assumptions without confirming that they were on the same page. Maybe he bore some responsibility for this situation. “They were charity galas and company parties. That’s not really dating, is it?”