I jerked my gaze back to the road. That cemented it. I’d officially become so numb that not even the body of a dead rapist affected me like it should.

I snuck one last glance at the passenger seat. Or maybe Josh was so handsome that the laws of morality broke in his presence.

“The worst part about it is that I don’t even feel bad,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m freaked out that I killed someone, but beneath that, I don’t have any guilt over it. I’m more fucked up over not being fucked up if that makes sense.”

“It does,” I said as we approached a four-way stop. My map helpfully told me to turn right, so I threw my blinker on and followed the directions as I mulled over a more detailed response. “I think most people would feel the same way in your shoes. Death in and of itself is terrifying. The first time I watched someone pass, I stepped into the hall afterward and puked all over the floor. I’ve watched other new nurses pass out. Your response is pretty normal. As for not feeling bad, why would you?”

He turned toward me. “Because I took a human life.”

I shook my head. “That’s societal pressure. You’ve been taught that killing is wrong and only monsters do it, but that’s not right. People kill for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes, it’s in the heat of the moment, and they spend the rest of their lives regretting what they’ve done. Other times, it’s out of desperation, like a woman killing her abuser because she knows that if she doesn’t, she’ll end up dead instead. And then there are accidents like what happened tonight. I’m honestly relieved we did it ourselves. Part of me was panicking over the thought of those people calling the cops instead of taking care of Brad on their own.”

I reached out and gripped Josh’s knee. “Just keep reminding yourself that it was an accident, and making one mistake doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Especially when the result is removing a rapist and potential murderer from this earth. Between his family money and his obvious escalation, he would have gone on to target someone else if we didn't stop him. Who knows how many lives we might have saved by taking his?”

Josh shifted, his leg flexing beneath my palm. “You keep saying we, but I was the one who did it.”

“Yeah, but I’m just as complicit,” I said. “Maybe I didn’t put the duct tape over Brad’s mouth, but I went into this planning for him to end up dead, one way or another.”

Josh slipped his hand beneath mine and threaded our fingers together. “Thank you for saying all that. It helps.”

“You’re welcome. And I hope you know I’m not blowing smoke up your ass. I truly believe we made the world better by removing Brad from it. I know vigilante justice is problematic as fuck, but sometimes I think it’s necessary, especially when the system put in place to deal with men like Brad fails because it's susceptible to loopholes.”

“Don’t forget bribery,” Josh said. “Brad gave off plenty of warning signs that went ignored, including peeping through windows, animal cruelty, and sexual harassment. All as a teenager. I read a quote from a judge who let him off without so much as probation after he got drunk his senior year of high school and drove his car into the house of a classmate who’d turned him down. It was, “He’s a bright young man with his whole future ahead of him. It’d be terrible to ruin it over something like this.” The judge was a golf buddy of Brad’s father.”

I pulled my hand from Josh’s before I broke one of his fingers from squeezing too hard. “That right there is why I won’t ever feel bad about this.”

Josh let out a low, angry sound. “It barely scratches the surface of what Brad got away with.”

I glared at the road ahead of me. “I keep getting stuck on how it went on for so long. That one judge? I get. Not that I understand, just that there are corrupt shitheads in every profession. But years and years of Brad getting away with his crimes? That no one will ever be able to explain to me in a way I’ll understand, even if they give me a detailed bullet list of every misstep along the way.”

“Maybe it all led up to tonight,” Josh said. “Maybe I was meant to kill him.”

I frowned. “Like fate?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe I was always meant to be a killer, and it would have happened one way or another.”

What the fuck? How could Josh possibly think something like that? Him? Destined to be a killer? I couldn’t accept it. He was too good, too kind, and yes, he’d broken into my house and stalked me, but I’d asked him to commit the B&E, and I’d never told him to stop watching me. I had a feeling that if I had, he would have listened and never bothered me again. His actions might be similar to Brad’s when examined through a wide lens, but when you zoomed in, the two men couldn’t be more different, and I refused to let Josh compare himself to such a garbage human being.

“No,” I said. “I reject the idea that this was your fate. It’s too fucked up when you take into account the pain and suffering of Brad’s victims. There’s no way they were put on this earth to fall prey to him.”

Josh ran a hand over his face and released a heavy sigh. “I sound full of myself when you put it like that.”

“Not full of yourself, just conflicted and confused after a traumatic event.”

A glance at him revealed the worry on his face, brows drawn together, full lips flattened into a hard line.

I needed to drive my point home, and what better way than using his logic against him? “You asked me if I would ever blame another teenager for killing their parent, so let me turn that around on you. If it was me who’d accidentally killed Brad, would you be wondering if I was always meant to be a killer?”

“Never,” Josh said. “But it’s not the same.”

“It is, though,” I argued.

“It’s not. This is something I’ve worried about since I was a child.”

My blood ran cold. Who had thoughts like that as a kid? “What do you mean?”

“Uh-uh,” he said. “We’re not doing this now. If there was ever a worst time to have the Josh’s Tragic Backstory conversation, it’s right after I killed someone.”

“No fair. I spilled my guts to you about mine.”

He let out an exasperated sound. “Aly, my backstory is the stuff of people’s nightmares.”

I glanced over at him, starting to worry. “Have you ever killed before?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Have you ever hurt anyone?”

“Not outside a martial arts studio, and even then, only accidentally, and never seriously.”

“Are you a criminal?”

“I’m a hacker, so technically, yes. I’ve broken countless laws, but the worst thing I’ve ever done was break into your house and stalk you.”

I lifted a brow at him and then sent a pointed look over my shoulder toward the trunk. “Really? That’s the worst thing?”

He shot me a grin. “I said what I said. Weren’t you just telling me we did the world a favor by killing Brad?”

I smiled. Yeah, I had, and it was nice to see some of Josh’s sass returning. “Then that’s all I need to know. I trust my gut that you’re not a bad person. Anything you have to tell me can wait until you’re ready. No rush.”

He leaned over the center console and pressed a kiss to my cheek. “You are the best girlfriend a guy could ask for.”

My eyebrows flew up so fast it felt like they were trying to jump off my forehead. “Uh, what was that?”

“Too soon?” he said. “I mean, I know we haven’t had the official conversation yet, but we share a child, and I feel like disposing of a body is a boyfriend-girlfriend activity and not something you do with a casual hookup.”

I schooled my face. “Are you saying that the couple who commits homicide together, stays together?”

He snorted. “Too wordy. I prefer the couple who slays together, stays together.”

I choked out a laugh. Yup. Straight to hell. The both of us.

“Where are we going, by the way?” he asked. “I feel like you were about to tell me right before the last time I had you pull over so I could dry heave some more.”