He’s clearly been beaten.
Badly.
Methodically.
God, I hate that even now—even after the closet, the gun, the hotel room—the sight of Z beaten does something animal and awful to my chest.
It’s not love. I know it’s not love.
It’s older than that—it’s the compulsion of the twelve-year-old girl who learned to runtowardthe bleeding thing because Z taught her that. And he’s spent ten years counting on it.
His mouth’s been moving on the screen the whole time, but the audio’s muted.
Look at you, I think as my hand moves instinctively toward the volume button.Even now.
But no, this is because of the conversation Caleb and I just had earlier in bed.
We need information.
Z’s frantic voice suddenly starts echoing loudly through the hall as I continue toward the front door. “—know I’m the last person you want to hear from right now. Just believe me when I tell you how fuckingsorryI am, Harp. It was the meth, and I was just so mad—fuck, none of that matters now. I’m tryin’ to make it right. Senior wants to meet with you. Just to meet, I swear. If you sign over Silas’s club, he’ll let you and Bruiser go. It’s only Silas he?—”
I kill the volume again.
He’s sorry? He’ssorry?
I think of the flowers he’d bring in trembling hands after some fuck-up or other. And how he’d get small and boyish everytime he’d say those exact words to me.I’m sorry. I’m trying to make it right.
He always knew how to be sorry in a way that cost me everything and him nothing.
I hand the phone back to Anna.
“Don’t let Bruiser out of his room, ‘kay?” I say. “I won’t let this asshole traumatize him anymore.”
“On it,” says Anna.
Anna’s husband Domhnall is waiting at the front door, their cute baby in his arms. He takes one look at my face. “I allowed him into the secure yard, if you want to open the door and talk to him through the security glass. Our systems swept him for weapons as he entered the gate. He’s not carrying.”
I adore that Caleb’s friend doesn’t try to handle me. I also adore that he gets out of the way when I say, “Open the door.”
He nods and pulls the knob that opens the inner door.
There’s Z.
Separated from me now by nothing but security glass—an inch of it, maybe less.
His ruined face is close enough that I can see the specific pattern of the bruising, clearly inflicted by men who knew what they were doing.
He sees me and lunges, palm smacking against the glass.
“Harper—” His voice cracks on my name the way it always does. The way he’s always known affects me. “I’m so sorry, I swear to God, I was out of my mind, I didn’t mean?—”
I hold up one hand. “Stop talking.”
“But Harper, if you would just list?—”
“Isaid, stop talking.”
He stops talking. That’s new.