“Your mother,” he says. “Who I promise, Z instructed exactly what to say to me.”
The bottom drops out of my stomach.
“He thought of everything,” I whisper. “He used my own insecurities against me to convince me your mom wanted you to have a fresh start without me in it.”
Caleb goes completely still.
The final pieces click into place. “Some part of me had always believed his version of the story anyway. That I had always been the wrong kind of girl for you.”
“Harper.” His voice has gone rough. “My mother loved you. She told me before she died—” He stops. “She told me you were the best thing that had ever happened to me.”
I close my eyes.
Of course she did.
Of course that’s what Helen said, because Helen was Helen, and Z knew exactly which lie would land hardest on a girl who had been told her whole life that she wasn’t enough.
“He stole the last decade from us,” I say.
It’s so painful, after spending the last few days working through what I know is only the beginning of the bodily autonomy he took from me.
I don’t know how one person can takeso much.
“Yes,” Caleb says.
“He took nine years from Bruiser knowing you as his dad.”
“Yes.”
I open my eyes. Caleb has edged closer, my arms against his chest now as we stand in the blue light and curling steam of the hot tub.
“I’m so angry,” I say. “I don’t know what to do with how angry I am.”
“Then let it out.” His voice has dropped an octave and there’s an edge in it I haven’t heard before, something that has been waiting behind all that careful control. “Stop managing it. Stop filing it away into something neat you can handle, or worse, bottling it up. Just—Feelit. Right now. Here. With me.”
I laugh. “But there’s nothing I candoabout it. Except feel all this stupid fuckinganger!”
“Lemme have it, then,” he says amiably. “We’ve already established I’m a safe person to take out your anger on.”
“What does that even mean?” I scoff.
“I want you to stopperforming‘okay’ when you’re not okay.”
He steps closer and the blue light catches the line of his jaw. “I want you to stop being so Goddamn careful about what you let me see. I’ve seen you shoot a man, Harper. I’ve seen you drive through a firefight with our son in the back seat. I can handle whatever is actually in your chest right now.”
“You want to know what’s in my chest?” My voice is rising again, but I’m starting to hear what he’s saying… so I let it. He is safe. This is a safe place. For the first time in so, so long, I’m finally safe to say what I truly feel out loud.
“I’m furious at Z for all the lies, and I think I’m evenmorefurious atmyselffor believing them. How do I ever trust myself again? He took that from me. And I’m furious atyoufor being so fucking patient with me that I don’t know how to fight with you, because fighting is the only language I actually know, and you keep being so Goddamn?—”
I go to smack him in the chest again, but he snatches my wrists in a firm grip before my fists land.
His grip is loose. But when his fingers flex around my pulse point, my fury finally finds an outlet.
Because my anger abruptly sparks into an explosion of lust.
Suddenly I remember how gentle, boy scout Caleb used to turn into a little masochist in the dark. When everyone else was asleep and it was just the two of us alone as teenagers exploring one another’s bodies.
I remember what it felt like to trust someone else with my darkest, most intimate impulses.