Page 129 of Not That Ridiculous

I wantedKevinto stay with me. I sighed, and shook my head. “I’m good.”

I was so far from good it was insane.

With obvious reluctance, Jasper left. I sat there on the very edge of the mattress, staring at the centre of the room.

That was where the second of Ray’s dead guys had lain for who knows how long before Ray, doing a spot of DIY, had found him. Just like the first one—that Kevin found—the body had been packed in a plastic storage tub filled with cat litter and wedged under the floorboards.

I mean…?

Who thehellwas stashing bodies in the floors and now walls of random Chipping Fairford houses?

Liam had investigated the first body; a team had come up from London to help out when Ray found the second body; it had made the national news when Ray’s dad dug up the clown in the garden.

Shit.

Jasper wouldn’t write any dodgy articles about me, but I was about to be in the papers anyway. What a fucking nightmare.

The worst part of it?

I didn’t evencareall that much about the bodies. Yes, it was objectively creepy as hell. I’d been sleeping every night in my bedroom, a few feet away from the sightless, dried-out raisin-eyes of however many mummified cowboys were standing in their little boxes and stuck behind a false wall.

I wasn’t happy about it.

It would definitely take some getting used to when I went back home and started sleeping there again.

But the worst part of it was, Kevin had left me to it.

I had a feeling he wasn’t coming back.

I woke up,frowned at the unfamiliar room around me, and then screwed up my face with a groan. Ugh. I was at Adam and Ray’s, and instead of going downstairs for a nice risotto dinner, I’d fallen asleep.

I hated naps. I rarely had occasion to indulge, but whenever I did, I woke up like a bear in spring. Cranky as hell and in desperate need of food.

I rubbed my face and went to roll off the bed, flailing when I got tangled up in the thick blanket that someone had put over me. I fought my way out and looked down at myself with surprise.

Someone had wrapped me up in a blanket like a burrito. Not content with that, that someone had also taken off my shoes and my hoodie, leaving me in jeans, socks, and a t-shirt. I must have been out of it if I hadn’t woken up at the manhandling, because in general, I was a light sleeper.

The room was dark and the curtains shut. I stumbled over to the window and opened them, blinking stupidly at the blue-and-pink beginnings of a glorious dawn sky.

I’d slept the whole night?

My stomach gurgled aggressively, letting me know that yes, I had indeed slept the whole night, I hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday, and my blood sugar was positively subterranean.

Deciding I needed to fix that first and then I could get on with freaking out, I headed downstairs. I’d been to Ray and Adam’s often enough and knew my way to the kitchen.

Adam was already up and honestly, it was almost worth all this fuss to see his epic bedhead and his slitted, bleary eyes as he leaned against the kitchen counter, cradling a cup of coffee and staring vacantly out of the window. Since I didn’t get a hello from my dog, I assumed Phil was out there doing his morning things, and Adam was keeping watch.

I’d never seen this soft, unguarded version of Adam before. It was endearing.

I’d known him since he was one of Amalie’s scrawny, spotty little friends—along with Jasper, who’d been less spotty but more scrawny.

Adam had been a bossy little gremlin back then, and he’d somehow metamorphosed into this beauteous specimen of manhood. Still a bossy gremlin, but one who was so insanely good-looking that not only did he get away with it, fashion designers and photographers had thrown scads of money at him to lounge around wearing their clothes and looking pissed off about it.

That had been in his late teens and early twenties. Now he was in his late twenties, and all signs pointed to him growing even more disgustingly handsome as he aged.

Today, though, his copper-blond curls were going everywhere, and I now knew that his preferred sleeping position was on his face, because he had wicked pillow creases.

“Morning,” I said.

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