Page 16 of This Might Hurt

I lose my death grip on my emotions, still clutching the lighter like it’s going to save my life. “Jesus, I went fucking hiking. Why the hell do we come to this stupid state if we’re just going to sit around inside?”

His eyebrows go up. “Okay then.” I can’t tell if Archie told him about the tracking or not.

Amusement plays around his mouth as he takes a slow bite of the yogurt, then loses interest and tosses the spoon and half-full carton on the counter for someone to clean up later.

“Look. They think Dad has pneumonia. Archie’s flying into La Guardia to be with him, and if he’s not improving in a week or so we’ll pack everything up early and head back to New York.

Is this sinking in yet?” He leans forward, and I force myself not to pull away when he taps a finger against my forehead.

“If he gets sicker, your wedding will happen sooner than we thought. So no more joyrides.”

My brain stumbles back through all his words, trying to reorient myself. “I thought the hospital was a precaution.”

“God.” He rakes a hand through his thick, dark hair, the same color as my mother’s.

“What part of ‘an eighty-four-year-old man has pneumonia’ sounds like it’s not a fucking problem, buddy?

This is the real deal.” All the humor drains from his slate-gray eyes as they pin me to my seat.

“Your brain hasn't done anything for this family, so I suggest you make an effort and get your hole ready to make Daxton happy. It's the least you can do. Get it?”

I lower my head and try to bring my entire body to its most invisible state—flatline, no sign of life. No words, no aura, no thoughts, no friction. Just a pile of skin and bones that no one besides some guy named Jude has ever looked at for real. “Yes.”

“Good.” As he bounces to his feet, he huffs a laugh and catches my wrist lightly, running a thumb along the lumps and ridges of wet, damaged skin. “So what did you do? Fall down the damn mountain?”

“Uh-huh.”

He scoops up his laptop, leaving the yogurt behind.

“Pathetic little fucker.” A minute after he wanders out, chuckling to himself, Fuentes comes back with a blank expression and resumes his work.

The steady pressure of his fingers should feel comforting, but I’m too far gone into the emptiness to notice anymore.

I drift, half asleep, as he wraps a bandage securely around my hand.

“Ice this twice a day and take these prescription-strength ibuprofen,” he instructs.

“I’ll get you a scan if it doesn’t improve rapidly. Mr. Innes?”

When I hear my name, I realize he’s waiting for something. I blink at him, disoriented, then nod when I manage to retroactively process what he said. “Yeah.”

I watch him leave without answering his “Good night”, then pick up the small bottle of painkillers and head upstairs.

Mother has a suite on the top floor, but I go to my room first. Muffled, stagnant air presses down on me as I flick on a single bedside lamp and strip off my clothes.

The worn out sweatpants that don’t even fit me go straight into the garbage.

My body rebels when I try to toss the shirt, my fingers curling around the rough, green cotton.

The raptor on the front is cracked and peeling from age.

Slowly, unwillingly, I rest my nose in the folds of fabric.

First, I get something artificial and soapy, with a hint of the dryer sheets our housekeeper used to let me play with when I was a bored toddler.

Closing my eyes, I nuzzle deeper and hunt for the places that would have touched him the most—collar, armpits.

There it is. Smoke. Sweat and sun. Messy hair and a feral smile.

God. I stand there for so long I lose track of time, feeling my shattered nervous system relax the way it did when he talked to me.

I stuff the t-shirt under my pillow and turn to my closet.

Everything in my wardrobe matches everything else, so I barely have to open my eyes as I grab a random dress shirt from the closet, along with a pair of chinos.

After raking a comb through my hair, I climb the stairs as if this is how I arrived home.

No one answers my knock, but I nudge the door open anyway because I know she’s waiting for me.

My mother looks up from her phone, her pale gray eyes faintly red like she’s been crying.

Her slight figure is dwarfed by her California king bed and the even larger artwork above it—a custom oil painting depicting the view outside, in case she’s too lazy to look out the window.

“Oh, Andrew,” she sniffles, reaching out a hand toward me.

She’s only forty-four, with stunning curly black hair, but between the constant paranoia and some iffy Botox she looks older.

Setting aside the fact that she never loved me, this is what I hate most about my mother. She’s not hysterical or helpless, not really, but she’s weaponized her family’s image of her for so long that it became reality. I suppose I should know how that feels.

I sit on the edge of the mattress and rest my hand on top of hers on the down comforter. The room smells too thickly of perfume and flowers, like she never opens the windows. “I’m here.” I study the size of my hand over hers, her long, beige nails. “I’m sorry.”

“What is this?” Clicking her tongue, she reaches for my bandaged knuckles.

“What happened? You look so sad.” I just watch her silently as she turns it this way and that, then folds it between her hands, which sends a jolt of pain up my arm.

For a fucking messed up second, I want to rest my face in her shoulder and close my eyes and pretend her skin is his.

“Is this going to scar, sweetheart? Did Fuentes give you some cream or anything?”

“It’s fine.” Pulling away, I fold my arms around myself.

“I went hiking.” I don’t know why I’m so desperately stuck on this line when everyone knows I don’t give a shit about hiking.

There aren’t any words in my head, so I have to keep recycling the same ones.

“I saw Colin,” I add after a pause. “He told me everyone’s worried about Grandfather. ”

She sits back against the sculpted walnut headboard, nervously turning her phone over and over in her lap.

The fanatical light in her eyes when she talks about the succession always scares me.

It’s the only reason I exist. “You can’t behave erratically right now.

If you give your uncles the ammunition, they’ll try to get him to change the will again. ”

“I know,” I breathe. I was fifteen the first time Archie and Colin seriously tried to convince my grandfather to change his will and appoint them to lead the company.

They spent months preparing and went down to his office in New York City for two days to meet with him.

When they got back to the estate, Colin came through the front door first, his face expressionless.

All he said to me on his way past was, “You should run.”

But I sat there like a confused fool until Archie came boiling in like a cloud of absolute darkness and broke my jaw in one solid hit. It’s the only time before or since that he’s hurt me so badly. In a way, I understand. This family is cursed, and nothing we do can seem to untangle us from it.

Vaguely, I realize my mother is talking again. “I don’t want to rush the wedding, but if he takes a turn for the worse, we’ll have to. You know Daxton’s family will only sign the merger if you’re married to their son when the will goes into effect.”

“I don’t—” My flatlining heart wakes up, thumping sluggishly and painfully in my chest. I accepted this arrangement with Daxton Pryce because I had no reason not to, and merging our legacies is the only thing in my entire life that the whole family has agreed on.

I know every detail of their extensive mining operations and access to elusive Southeast Asian luxury markets, how the merger will double our profits in under three years.

But I know nothing about Daxton himself except for the blunt, unintelligent face and cold eyes I’ve seen briefly at parties, how his huge body and bullish energy remind me too much of Archie.

Mother holds up one hand to cut me off. “Stop. We’ve let you be…

this.” She gestures at me, somehow wrapping up my useless body, weak spirit, and inconvenient sexuality all into one.

“We’ve allowed you to bank your sperm and marry a man, even though you know it almost killed your grandfather.

We supported you to the press. All I ask is for you to be grateful and not throw away all the years I’ve fought for us. Please, my baby.”

When I glance up at her window, it’s dawn. Twenty-four hours since I left this place forever. I could almost laugh.

“Andrew Innes.” I turn back to my mother and force myself to hold her stare obediently. She reaches out and rests a cool hand on my cheek. “Be strong for me.”

“I will,” I mumble, staying very still, letting her look inside me and find nothing, which is all she really wants. When she pulls back like a dismissal, I get up and leave, shutting the door quietly behind me.

The huge house feels dead, like a massive buffalo corpse left to rot in the grass.

I fetch the pillow from my room and carry it out onto my balcony, where I can sit on the cold concrete and watch through the glass railing as the sky pales and devours the faint stars.

I drowse off and on for an hour as the sky turns yellow, then blue, as I try to piece together a world where Daxton Pryce might tell me things were okay, might buy me a hot dog or hold my hand in the rain.