Page 54 of Tourist Season
“I don’t believe you, Nolan.”
“Then I guess we’re not that different after all, are we?” I snarl as I crowd her space and stare down at her. “Because you’re determined to believe what you want to, no matter what contrary evidence is staring you in the fucking face.”
She eats the remaining distance, leaving only a thread of space between us. “That’sexactlythe kind of shit an enemy would do. Use their opponent’s own words against them. And they certainly wouldn’t say ‘thank you for saving my life.’”
For the briefest moment, her gaze drops to my lips. She’s so close that her chest touches mine with every heaving breath. Iwant to crash into her, to claim those plump lips. To claim all of her. But she shoves past me with a derisive snort, stopping beside the dead man to press a boot to the back of his head as she works the ax free of his neck. When it finally releases, she notches it over her shoulder, and with a final, cutting glare, she marches away.
“You’re fucking welcome,” she yells as she reaches the garden gate. Middle finger tossed over her shoulder, she disappears. The image of the ribbon bouncing in her ponytail as blood drips from the ax to spatter her shirt with drips of crimson burns through my mind long after the back door of the cottage slams shut.
I look to the body on the ground as the raven swoops down from the garden wall to survey his next meal. “Pretty murder bird,” he says.
But it’s only Harper’s voice I hear.
TOWLINEHarper
IRUN MY HANDS DOWNmy skirt, one that has an almost Victorian-era feel despite the hem landing just below my knees, its black-and-white stripes unusual and quirky, perfect for the evening’s festivities. With a short-sleeved black top and black tights and a pair of retro deep red velvet oxford heels, I’m cute as hell. Then I loop a red ribbon around my ponytail.Even cuter. I just wish Nolan could see me in something other than muddy or bloody clothes.
No, I don’t. That’s fucking stupid.
Is it, though?
It feels like the most asinine thing I could ever do would be to put my trust—myrealtrust, not my tenuous “I have your skinbook and you will do what I want” trust—in a man who has explicitly said that he would hunt the deepest reaches of hell to find me. One who has come here to kill me. Of all the women in the world, I cannot be the one to roll over and say, “Take me now, Murder Daddy.”
Fuck no. Not after what I’ve survived.
A deep sigh fills and empties from my lungs and I press my eyesclosed, rolling my neck where tension has been endlessly building until it feels ready to snap. My head says I can’t do it. But my heart sees the hurt in his eyes when I told him I didn’t believe that he could care about anything other than the belongings Lukas hid on my behalf. It looked real.
But appearances can be so deceiving that they’re deadly.
I leave the floor-length mirror to open the top drawer in my dresser. Beneath my lingerie is a small, nondescript jewelry box. One I don’t open often. I couldn’t bear to put it beneath the floorboards or on the makeshift gravestone in the Lancaster family plot of the cemetery. But I can hardly look at it either.
I take the watch out and lay it on my palm.
There’s no strap. Just the shattered crystal and scratched dial of a TAG Heuer Autavia. A faint smile passes over my lips as I remember Adam’s twenty-first birthday. We went to dinner with his parents. They gave him this watch. Adam was so surprised. He was always joyful, generous with his laughter and kind words. But that night, he was so vibrant he lit up the whole room. That was the day before we left on our adventure to live the van life for the next two years.
My smile fades.
“I can tow you. I’ve got a garage. I’ll fix that van right up for ya,” Harvey Mead’s voice echoes from memory, corrupting my mind like ink on pristine paper.
Adam had given him the same glowing grin he gave to everyone. “That would be so great, thank you.”
I remember Mead smiling at Adam in return, but it never reached the lightless abyss of his eyes. He walked back to his tow truck as I whispered to Adam, “Are you sure about this?”
“Yeah,” he’d said, running a hand over my hair before placing a kiss on my forehead. “He seems all right.”
I open my eyes as the image of scattering vultures flutters through my mind.
I blink down at the watch. It looks just the same as it did when I pulled it from the ashes of Harvey Mead’s house. Just the same as when I tried to give it to Adam’s parents. When Mrs. Cunningham’s hand folded around mine and she told me to keep it. She never once tried to make me feel guilty for being the one to survive that hell where her son was torn apart. But I still felt it anyway.
There were many times I wished it had been me who died there. Grief debrided me like teeth on a grater, shaving away every piece of me until only ribbons of my life were left behind. And every time I tried to pick them up and mold them into something that looked vaguely familiar, they fell apart. I had to let go of the woman I used to be and glue my shredded pieces together with shadow and sin to feel anything close to whole again.
I can’t just give that up. I can’t force that broken woman back into the light. I can’t unravel this life I’ve created here in Cape Carnage. I cannot,I will not, let Nolan Rhodes take it from me.
I set the watch inside the box, staring down at it for a long moment before I place it back in the dresser and walk into town, forgoing the opportunity to ride with Lukas so he can have some one-on-one time with his grandfather. It feels good to just walk for the sake of it. Lately, it’s just been a constant swirl of gardening, refurbishing the soapbox racer, crafting a fake corpse, and, for the last three nights, ever since I dispatched Mr. McMillan on my lawn, working in near-silence with Nolan to exhume Arthur’s long-buried victims.
I finally mustered up the courage last night to apologize for nearly getting him killed and then yelling at him, though he didn’t give me much of a reaction, unless a bottomless, indecipherable stare of molten darkness qualifies as tacit acceptance. Atleast I tried, I guess. It won’t be a bad thing to get a break from Nolan for a night. I should probably be getting ready to head to the river right now, but I just can’t bear to miss one of Arthur’s favorite annual events on his first day out of the hospital.
So on this warm, clear evening, I soak in the details of my town on a leisurely stroll instead. From the ornate wooden scrollwork on the peaked roofs of houses to the hanging baskets I take care of every summer, Cape Carnage is a place I finally feel at home. It looks after me. And I look after it, just the way Arthur has taught me.
