Page 53 of Tourist Season
When her eyes meet mine, they shine. Something cracks inside my heart, a fissure beneath the strata of time and anger. A sliver of space that she climbs inside, like roots between fractures in pavement. And her presence in that crevice only grows when she blinks her tears away. They mount a protest at her lash line, refusing to be subdued.
“We don’t talk,” Harper whispers, a dying protest. She backs away from my touch, and it stings more than I thought it would.
I let my hand fall to my side. “We’re talking now.”
“We are not.”
“Then what are we doing?”
“We’re … I don’t know …” Harper looks away again. She’s fighting herself with every moment that passes. A tear finallybreaches her lash line. Her voice is hushed when she says, “I’m losing my best friend.” Her lips tremble as she swipes at her cheek with the edge of her bloody glove. “I’m a shitty caregiver. I missed the symptoms, and now he’s in the hospital when it’s something I should have caught. I’m out of my depth.”
She sniffs and looks down at the ground. Maybe that weight she carries is a little lighter with her confession. If I could, I’d reach out and reel her into me. Let her cry against my chest. “I don’t think most people who have the responsibility of looking after another person get a guidebook. You’re doing the best you can,” I say instead, and her tear-filled eyes snap to mine.
“Why are you voluntarily being nice to me?” she asks. Wariness rolls from her in waves.
“Because … I don’t want to see you upset.”
Her eyes narrow. “But you’ve come here to inflict the maximum amount of suffering on me as possible.”
“Maybe I did,” I admit. “But that’s not why I’m here now.”
“Is this part of your game to get your book back?”
“No, I—”
A roar of sound rushes toward me, my next words cut off as I’m thrown face-first to the ground, the air shoved from my lungs. Sudden pain burns in my shoulder as a heavy block pins me to the lawn. A heartbeat later, the weight is gone, though it leaves behind something lodged deep in my deltoid. But the searing pain barely registers as fear takes over, all of it concentrated only on Harper.
When I look up, the man from the grass is stumbling toward her, ropes trailing after him with steel pegs bouncing in his wake. He has the spike aerator clutched in his hands, swinging it like a mace as Harper backs away from him. Her ax is raised, but he’sgot the more powerful weapon. And he’s the one with everything to lose.
I grab one of the ropes, twist it around my fist, andpull.
The man stumbles. But he doesn’t go down. He turns on me and swings the aerator in my direction. I raise my arm to take the hit. He only catches me with a wheel, but the strength of his blow radiates through my elbow in a shock of pain. I swear I can feel it vibrate through the titanium screws. I let out an agonized rasp, but a louder sound drowns me out. One of determination.Harper.
“Get the fuck away from him,” she snarls.
Harper’s ax slices through the air and lands in his neck with a sickeningthwack. Blood lashes across my face.
Everything goes quiet. Everything goes still.
The man’s wide blue eyes are fixed to mine as his fingers unfurl from the handle of the aerator. It drops to the ground next to him as he falls to his knees, his other hand rising to graze the ax lodged at the juncture of his shoulder. With a garbled, liquid swallow, he falls flat on his face and dies.
For a moment, neither of us moves. Harper’s eyes coast over me to alight on the source of the pain that now throbs in my shoulder. She reaches out a tentative hand toward me, but stops herself. “Are you okay?”
A thousand images of what could have happened to her fly through my head as I rise.
“No. I am fuckingnot okay,” I say, barely managing to keep my voice from a yell as I reach behind my shoulder to pull the peg from my flesh. I toss the bloody spike at her feet. “Jesus fucking Christ, Harper.” I drag a trembling hand through my hair. Breaths saw from my chest. I want to grab her by the arms and stare into her eyes and shake her to her senses. Then I want to crush her tome and never let her go. “Don’t you know what could have happened?”
A look of hurt flashes across her face. And then it dissolves into something lightless. Somethingdeadly. Before I have a chance to take a breath and clarify, all her pent-up fury comes pouring from her mouth. “Oh, I fucking get it. Just like I thought. It all comes down to your fuckingscrapbook. That’s whateverythingis about, isn’t it? Including the other night. You’re fucking toying with me. If you can’t put me in your book, you’re going to find every possible way to make me suffer until you finally get it back. And then, all bets are off.”
“That is one-hundred-fucking-percentnotwhat this is about.”
“You told me yourself that you fucking hate me. Two nights ago. As you were fucking me, remember?”
“And you asked me to fuck you like I hated you—”
“That’s the difference between us. You actually do hate me.”
I blink, momentarily thrown off by her words. Judging by the shaken expression that fleets across her face before she subdues it, she is too. “I do not.”
