He smiles at that. Smiles.

“You’re a killer, you’re a liar, you’re—”

And then he’s right up next to me and my thoughts are all jumbled again. He’s hot and sweaty and normally this should just gross me out. But all I see is the beautiful. “What else?” he asks softly. His fingertips slide up my bare shoulder to caress the nape of my neck. “Tell me what else I am, Harper.”

I swallow as he pulls me into his chest.

“If you know me, then tell me what else I am.”

“My promise. You’re my promise.”

He squeezes me gently and then rests his chin on my head. “I thought you knew. All these years, I thought your father would’ve at least given you a picture. Or had you spy on me from afar.”

James’ words come out with such longing, such surprise, such… amazement. He wins again. All I hear is the beautiful. “Like you did me?”

“Yeah,” he laughs. “Like that. I watched you grow up. Every year your father sent for me on your birthday. And I want you to know, Harper, that I turned him down every time. I never wanted you—”

“I know you never wanted me, ass**le.” Bitchy Harper is back with that admission. I pull the little notebook from my pocket and then push James off me. “Because I found this and it spelled all that out pretty clearly.”

He looks at it for a few seconds and I can see his mind whirling. Because he can’t deny it.

“That’s true.” He nods, agreeing with me. “Everything in that little book is true. It came from my heart.”

“Your heart? You hated me!”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “No, I didn’t hate you, Harper. You were just a little girl caught up in this shit. How could I hate you?”

I untangle myself from his embrace and step back. I need space between us. Because what he says now and what he felt then are polar opposites. How do I reconcile this? “I have your own words in here, James!”

I shake the book at him and he snatches it out of my hand and flings it carelessly over the porch railing and into the dirt yard.

But I am not deterred. Either I let him know I’m not some piece of clay he can mold with his dirty talk and smoldering gaze, or I’ll end up powerless to resist him. “Is lying so second nature to you that this means nothing? You don’t even sweat the fact that I have proof, I read your own words. You’re not what you say you are, yet you smooth it over with the word cock? How f**king dare—”

His mouth crashes into mine. His hand fists my hair as his crushing kiss overtakes all my thoughts. “No!” I push him back, but he’s ready for me.

“Stop, Harper. Forget this book, it’s nothing. It’s just confusion left over from a different guy.”

“I bet you’d like that. Just forget all the nasty things you said about me. Sure. I bet all I have to do is forget that you loathed me and then rename myself Amber, right? Then you’d be all over me—”

“What did you just say?” He shakes me by the shoulders as he stares down into my eyes. He’s angry now. “Answer me!”

“You wrote her a sweet little letter at the end of my notebook, James. So sorry, a c**k and a kiss won’t cut it because whatever you’re doing is all about her!”

He opens his mouth. Then turns around and goes inside. I follow him in but he’s already down the hallway, gone from sight. A few seconds later a door slams. I look across the room at the girl and she gives me a small shrug.

“He’s been moody all day. I’m sure it’s not you.”

I glance back at hallway. It is me. Or at least it’s the name Amber that set him off.

“But at least he didn’t threaten to kill you. He threatened me a lot today. But I forgive him. And so should you.”

I look over at the girl again. “Why?”

She lies down on the couch and closes her eyes, tucking her hands between her legs like the air-conditioning is giving her a chill. “Because,” she says through a long yawn, “he’s all we’ve got.”

Chapter Seven - James

I slam the bathroom door behind me and turn around.

“Fucking hell.” I’m presented with my face in the mirror. It’s the first time I’ve looked at myself in months. And I’m sorry I chose this moment to make the reacquaintance because I look every inch a killer.

My eyes are wild, my dark hair is longer than usual, and it’s got an unruly look. Like it’s putting up a resistance to the wind and the dust and the thousand miles I traveled since the last time I thought about it.

And my mouth—the same mouth that can kiss Harper in that soft and tender way, so foreign to me—looks severe. There’s a crease in my brow and lines around my eyes.

I punch the mirror and it cracks from the center outward. Blood drips from my hands.

There has never been a moment in the last twelve years where my hands were not soiled with blood. And no amount of hot desert air will ever dry it off.

Is this how Sasha saw me all day? Crazy? Am I crazy? The psych eval came back crazy. That’s why they sent me to the beach. “Unwind, James,” the Admiral said. “Relax.” And then his f**king daughter shows up. And that—that was not in the f**king plan.

At least I don’t think it was in the plan. I had a blackout around that time. I can remember the order to go to the beach, but then… nothing until that day I saw Harper for the first time. I’m pretty sure the blackout time can be counted in hours, not days. But I have no real proof. Life was a blur after Tony…

Adjust, the Tet voice inside me whispers. Adjust, James.

Why the f**k did I write that letter to Amber?

Why the f**k did I write that stupid f**king letter?

Why’d I write any of that shit?

“Fuck!” I punch the mirror again and this time pieces of it drop off and clatter into the sink.

I look at myself between the cracks.

A guy who’s pushing thirty, traipsing around the American West with a little girl, trying to get back to his child bride—even if she is all grown up now. It’s sick. And now Harper not only realizes she was given to me on her sixth birthday, but she knows I refused to accept the gift. And even if I could convince her that my rejection was for every altruistic reason imaginable—she was practically a baby, she was a bribe, she’s not a piece of property to be traded for favors—none of that matters anymore because I wrote that letter to Amber in the book and Harper read it. A pledge of revenge. A pledge to kill in her name.