Page 15 of Tourist Season
I force myself to take another step in her direction. “Who’s Arthur?”
Harper’s cheeks flush crimson. “You’re …” she counters, eluding my question. “You’re stalking me?”
“I’m not stalking. I’m hunting.Hewas stalking.” I wave to the head still gripped in her hands. Her brows flicker as she tries to work through everything that’s happening. When her gaze returns to me, she tilts her head.
“So you killed him for me …? To keep me … safe …?”
My mouth opens and closes, but no sound comes out.
No.
… Definitely not.
I feel like I’ve run face-first into a brick wall. Nothing about her is what I expected. Nothing about this has gone the way I wanted.
“Listen,” I say, dropping the severed hands to my sides, “if we’re going to be bitter enemies, I really think we need to improve our communication skills.”
“Why do I want to be enemies with you?”
“Perhaps because I just killed Jake, the man you have a crush on, and left his head in your bird feeder …?”
“I don’t have a crush on Jake.”
I sigh. “I’m starting to gather that.”
“If you’re stalking me—”
“I’mhunting—”
“You’re doing a pretty shit job of it, because you clearly didn’t notice that Jake Hornell is a fucking creep. Hence his nickname,Touchy Feely Creepy Jakey. I think you just did me a favor, actually.” She shrugs, feigning a casualness that never makes it to her cutting glare. “Maybe that makes us friends.”
“We arenotfriends.”
Harper sighs, as though I’m merely here wasting her time, another inconvenience that she can just barrel through before returning to her clearly fucked-up life. “Figured. So, enlighten me. Why are you here?”
I take a step closer. “You really don’t remember me?”
“You like tea bagging and turkey sandwiches,” she says as she edges a step backward. “I think I remember you pretty clearly, yep.”
“That’s not the first time we met.”
Harper’s eyes travel over my face, roaming the contours of my features so slowly that I can feel her glare linger on my skin. “I guess I left an impression.”
I laugh. It’s the first genuine, uninhibited laugh I’ve had in a long time, now that I think about it. Just like the smile that broke free when I teased Harper at the coffee shop yesterday was the first one since my accident that made my heart jump in my chest. I’d forgotten how much I missed that feeling, the one that swoops through you, like being at the top of a roller coaster and suddenly free falling. “You can say that,” I finally manage when my laughter subsides. Clearly, Harper doesn’t think it’s quite as funny as I do, and I’m a little surprised it hasn’t jogged her memory.
“Well, I think we’ve established that I have no idea who the fuck you are and, contrary to whatever you think, I’ve never met you before. So, thanks, I guess, for doing me an obviously unintentional favor that could send you to jail for the rest of your life. But unless you’re staying to talk about hobbies over breakfast,” shesays as she raises the head between us, “maybe you should just leave.”
My grip around the bloodied severed wrists tightens. Harper seems to sense the threat, cataloging every minute change in the tension of my muscles, or the fury in my eyes, or the dark, merciless smile that creeps across my lips.
“I don’t think I’m going anywhere just yet,” I say, taking another step closer. She’s only a few feet away. Just a flash of motion and she’d be within my grasp. I force myself to remember that it’s not time yet—there are still a few weeks to go. But it’s so fucking tempting to rush toward her now. I could squeeze those words from her delicate throat, the ones I’ve been waiting to hear:It’s my fault.
“Harper?” a woman’s voice calls from inside the house. Harper’s eyes widen. Her mouth pops open around a silentoh.
“Who the fuck is that?” I hiss, but the kitchen door is already closing, someone’s footsteps nearing the outside corner of the house. The raven caws and flaps away from his perch on the peak of the stained bird feeder to hide among the branches of the oak, as though he’s unwilling to become an accessory to the crime that will surely spell our imminent demise. And Harper and I? We can’t seem to do anything but stare at each other, both of us frozen in time.
“There you are,” a woman says as she rounds the corner with a book in her hands, barely glancing up at us as she enters the back garden. She nods at me before turning her attention back to her book. “’Sup.”
I give her a weak, thin “Hey,” sliding the severed hands behind my back. But Harper is not so quick to move. She’s still got the head clutched in her grasp, and rather than try to get rid of it, she presses the face to her chest and folds her arms around it.
