Page 23 of This Might Hurt
The grounds seem busy as I cross the gravel stretch between the lawns and the house.
Men in green polos are unloading crates of food and alcohol from a box truck at the kitchen door, and I can hear the roar of a tractor engine in the distance where they’re ripping out pieces of lawn that got damaged during the engagement party and laying fresh sod.
The sun beats down on the back of my neck as I stop and watch with a growing sense of unease, like even if Daxton never came back, the wedding would still go on because my family is just that inexorable.
“How’s it going?” a blunt, coarse voice calls from somewhere behind me.
Oh.
Never mind.
I don’t know why I spent all morning worrying. Jude confused me, made me forget that the answer was incredibly simple this whole time. I’m glad I didn’t text him; that would have been embarrassing.
Turning slowly on my heel, I stare at Daxton. His huge shoulders fill out his sleeveless hoodie as he rocks back and forth on pristine white trainers with his hands in his pockets. “Sorry I missed breakfast,” he explains, his pale eyes studying me casually. “I had some stuff going on.”
I let myself sink one layer closer to nothingness, where my heart doesn’t have to beat so hard. “That’s alright.” But I haven’t gone deep enough yet, because my voice cracks.
After an awkward moment, he jerks his chin at me in dismissal and wanders away toward the house. “Your uncle wants to see you, by the way,” he tosses over his shoulder as he disappears inside.
I have no idea how long I stand there, looking after him. He seems much too dense to be a good liar, which means he probably hasn’t connected me with the note. That’s something, I guess, though at this point I’m not sure it would make any difference.
Jude told me it would work.
Except he didn’t, to be fair. He told me there was a ten percent chance and somehow made that sound like a good thing.
He’s right. He doesn’t make anything better. And for a second, I lose my grip on feeling nothing and hate him so fucking much for letting me believe that anything I do in this world matters.
Since I have nowhere else to go, my body carries me instinctively through a private side door, into a large cloakroom cluttered with my uncles’ outdoor gear, Mother’s walking stick, my bird-watching binoculars.
Almost like a normal family in an uncurated house.
As I pull off my boots, I study the row of Grandfather’s wool jackets and flat caps hanging along one wall.
Even if he dies this weekend, they’ll probably stay there forever.
Tucked along the hallway to the main living area is a room that always fascinated and scared me as a child.
A billiards table, a wet bar, dark-paneled walls framing dozens of animal heads—deer, elk, boar, bear, and a mournful-looking lion Archie brought back from Africa.
It always smells like cigar smoke and the cologne of my grandfather’s and uncles’ friends.
When I was ten, there was an incident where they kept giving me whiskey sours to see how I’d make a fool of myself.
After that, Mother banned me from going in until I was sixteen.
Instinct or a sense of inevitability tells me to stop and look inside. At the creak of the floor, Archie glances up from his seat on the mahogany bar and raises his rum glass with a wide smile. “Hey! I found Dax for you. There was a little mix-up.”
I swallow, watching him carefully, trying to read the tenor of his mood.
This is the moment I could choose to be brave.
If I refused to admit I had anything to do with this—because really, how the fuck can he know for sure—I could hold on to the smallest scrap of dignity.
In a twisted way I know that if I did, Archie would be pleased with me.
But I wipe the sweat off the back of my neck with my sleeve and wait in silence.
Without lifting his hand, he twitches one finger at me like come here. Nudging the door shut with my heel, I cross half the distance between us and stop on the corner of the Persian rug with my head down. The thick glass windows block out all the noise from outside, leaving us in total silence.
He whistles once, quietly, and I lift my eyes just enough to watch him pull out the thick cream envelope I left in Daxton’s car and offer it to me. The silky texture of the paper brushes my fingertips as I open it and remove the note inside. Archie downs another gulp of rum. “Go ahead.”
I shoot him a pleading look, but he sits back and watches me with his glass resting against his lower lip, his eyes caught in some dangerous place between cold and amused.
Knowing I can’t leave until he’s satisfied, I squint at the page.
In the daylight it looks exactly like my own handwriting, even though I tried so hard.
“You have no place in the Innes family. Walk away.” I stumble over the words, my face burning.
“If they find out what you did last summer, they’ll burn you to the ground. ”
He exhales, his smile widening as he shakes his head. “Are you proud of that?”
I shrug wordlessly. I’m so tired, I can’t breathe through my tight chest, and I don’t know what he wants me to say.
“The funny thing is, it almost worked.” My head comes up, and my startled eyes find his. “The guy was in a fucking panic when he brought it to me. You have no idea how close you were.” He tilts his head, considering. “I think you should keep trying, honestly. Entertain me.”
I search his face, confused and sick to my stomach as I try to keep up. “He doesn’t know. You didn’t tell him it was me.”
“Not yet.”
“Archie, please.” If both of them decide to make my life hell, I’m not sure I can survive.
“Let it go this one fucking time. I’m sorry.
I’ll—Wait.” My heart stops at the sight of a familiar black leather notebook on the bar by his hip.
It’s well worn, beaten to hell and back, with the binding popping out because I stuffed a million extra bits of paper between the pages.
“Why…” I have to swallow to make my shaky voice work. “Why do you have that?”
“Oh, this. Dad put me in charge of all the rejected projects, and I found out one of them is yours,” he announces happily, like a proud parent whose kid won the science fair.
Business cards fall out onto the floor as he scoops up the notebook.
“I was going to let it simmer, but I changed my mind. I’m kind of fed up because I’ve been calling these numbers for two hours killing all the deals and negotiations, but I’m still not finished. You really love to waste my time.”
I stare at him uncomprehendingly. I carried that thing around the world with me for the happiest year of my life as I prepared a business proposal for my own branch of the company.
I scribbled notes in it while I stood at the edge of a gold mine in Australia, in an ethical textile factory in Japan, and a tech office in Berlin.
I shook hundreds of hands and networked with dozens of companies to try and pull together my vision: a fully sustainable and ethically produced line of one-of-a-kind luxury pieces.
The unique selling point was that they would each come with a chip buyers could scan to see every facility and artisan that contributed to its creation.
My grandfather barely read a page before he shook his head and told me it wouldn’t work, but I’ve never quite given up on it.
“You fucking didn’t,” I breathe. I can’t think straight. “Please tell me you didn’t.”
He sits back and swirls the dark liquid in his glass, his eyes expressionless. He’s not smiling anymore.
“Why?” My voice comes out hoarse and much too loud.
For one white-hot second, for the first time in my life, I’m more angry at him than I am afraid of him.
“What the fuck did I ever do to you? I don’t understand.
If you hate me so much, convince the board to turn against me or, I dunno, shoot me in the face and bury me in the garden.
Why the hell do you keep doing this to me? ”
Archie watches me for a long moment, unblinking, and my fear rushes back in so violently it erases any hint of fury.
When he slides off the bar, I start backing up until my shoulders bump the carved detailing of the wall panels.
I stare fixedly at the collar of his shirt as he stops in front of me.
I’m not a small man at 6’2”, but being tall makes the few people who are bigger than me even more intimidating.
I press back against the wall when he splays a hand next to my head, reminding myself he can’t break any of my bones when I’m supposed to get married in two days.
“Look at me,” he demands softly. When I don’t move, he grabs the back of my neck and squeezes it warningly.
“This,” he says, his forehead wrinkling in disgust when he sees the panicked look on my face.
“This is why, Andrew. Because you’re weak.
It’s fucking unforgiveable for someone so fucking weak to exist in this family.
Do you understand how I feel when I have to look at you and know that he somehow thought you were better than me? ”
“I—” There are so many things I could feel right now—shame, fury, confusion, despair—but I’m just fucking scared.
I don’t want to be my grandfather’s heir any more than Archie wants me to.
Neither of us can do anything about the legacy we were handed, and now he’s going to settle for methodically destroying every fragment of my body and soul instead.
“Please don’t shut down my project,” I beg, forcing myself not to look away. “I’ll do whatever you—”
“What?” he cuts me off, the darkness in his voice fading to something gentler and much worse.
“Are you going to start offering me pieces of your birthright before Dad is even in the ground? Because I don’t want them.
” I jerk my head away when he reaches for my face like he’s going to wipe away the tears I can feel gathering in my eyes, trying to spill out.
“I want to fight you for every single scrap while you stand there and stare at me exactly like this.”
He slaps the wall hard enough to make me flinch.
I’m vaguely aware of his bulk and presence disappearing, the bang of the door as he throws it open.
My ears are ringing too much to hear him walk away as I slide down the wall and pull my knees up to my chest. I rest my forehead against them and try to calm my ragged breathing, so loud in the empty room.
When I glance up, that awful lion head on the wall is watching me with glass eyes.
I used to study its huge teeth in awe while Archie wove some tale of stalking it all day and taking it down in a perfect shot right before it tore him apart.
These days I know better. There’s no such thing as an apex predator.
Anyone can be muzzled and dragged to a pointless death if you find the one person more powerful than them. And every predator lives in fear of it.
Wiping my eyes roughly, I struggle to my feet and limp to the bar.
All the tight muscles that loosened on my ride with Sid have locked back up again worse than before, and my back protests as I bend over to gather up the business cards scattered on the floor.
Archie got worked up enough that he forgot the notebook sitting next to his mostly empty glass.
I lean across the bar and dump it out in the sink, then grab an unlabeled decanter of something clear and strong-looking.
The crystal rattles against the rim as I pour with shaky hands.
Whatever it is tastes like pure lighter fluid.
I double up against the bar with a hiss of pain as it sears a path all the way to my empty stomach.
Resting my head against the sticky mahogany, I angle my face to study the battered journal a few inches away.
It represents the only time in my life I felt proud to be an Innes.
My grandfather was exactly my age when he bought an obscure company selling bespoke Scottish leather goods.
When it became profitable, he acquired a maker of silk scarves in London, then handbags in Amsterdam, another and another until he built an empire.
I’ve always believed that he was chasing something more than money—the power to harness beauty, to shape humanity’s relationship with the planet’s resources.
This proposal was my attempt to own that responsibility and direct it toward something better.
After the last three weeks, I don’t think I’m still the same man who poured that dream into these pages.
I don’t have the hubris to think I can save myself, or that I matter enough to try.
But if I could hold on to even a small piece of it, maybe my time on this earth would make some kind of difference.
It might make that freak on the riverbank happy, too.
The one who told me I was too important to disappear.
Shaking my head, I stand up and try to pull myself together. There’s no getting around it—I have only one place to go now, a single predator stronger than the one trying to shred me to pieces. The one I’ve been hiding from ever since I came home.