Page 28 of This Might Hurt

“I’ll give you anything you want if you’ll get legally married to me tomorrow and come to New York for a few days.” He rubs the back of his neck, eyes fixed on nothing.

“Why?”

“We tried to point this so-called gun at my family, right? It didn’t work. I think I have to actually fire it.”

“That…” I blow out a slow breath, twisting the tab on my can around and around. “That’s a whole different thing. It’s messy. You can’t take it back.”

He lifts his chin petulantly. “Don’t lecture me.

I know.” He used one fragile thread of defiance to get himself here.

I can see it, shimmering in the sun. It’s about to break, but he’s still standing tall, trying to make me believe he’s not terrified.

That’s what I never forgot about him for a second.

At the moment he was most desperate to die, when he screamed at me to let the hurt stop, even then he was so earnest and serious, full of so much dignity.

“Okay.”

“I don’t—” He breaks off when he realizes what I said. “But you don’t even know the plan yet.”

“It probably sucks. Tell it to me so I can fix it for you.”

“Really?” He sounds so relieved he can’t even hide it, like he really needs me. That hits me harder than the beer or the heat, and once again I have to fight to keep myself from tackling him.

“Sure.” I gesture to the crooked trunk of a fallen pine, half disintegrated into the ground. “Grab a beer and pull up a seat. Make me understand this.”

He stubbornly ignores the part about the beer and sits down with his long legs stretched out.

“I think that’s where all the ants are coming from,” I offer, perching near to him and nodding toward the rotten wood under his ass.

Faster than I’ve ever seen him move, he rockets to his feet with a pathetic squeal that echoes all over the hilltop.

At the look on his face when he realizes there are no ants, I start giggling so hard I almost fall off the log, drunk on the damn heat and the nearness of him even though I’ve only had two sips of beer.

“Nasty little piece of fucking shit,” he hisses, moving fifteen feet down the log and plopping his butt there, after checking it carefully. I think I lost the privilege of sitting next to him, but it was worth it.

“To put it simply,” he ventures once he’s pulled himself together. “I want to burn something down, and you know how to light fires.”

“Wow.” I take out a fresh pack of Luckies and peel the plastic off. “That sounds like a very poetic way of calling me a criminal with no impulse control.”

“But in this case, it’s a good thing.” He’s so single-minded and up his own ass he doesn’t even realize how that sounds.

When he notices me fishing around for my lighter, he whistles and tosses something heavy and metallic through the air.

I barely manage to stick my cig in my mouth and catch it before it hits the dirt.

“Hey.” I turn the antique lighter over in my fingers. It’s warm, not from the sun but from his body heat, and I could swear the swirly patterns on the sides are even more faded than before. “This is mine.”

He doesn’t answer, just pretends to brush grass seeds off his pants.

I light up carefully, making sure not to drop any sparks, and set up my half-finished beer to hold the ashes.

I’m about to slide the lighter into my pocket when I glance over and realize he’s fixated on it, his whole body tensed.

So I throw it back, feeling like the king of the fucking world as he snags it and wraps his hands possessively around it.

“I don’t know how solid my plan is,” he ventures, shooting me a dark look when I make a told you so noise.

“But I’ll lay it out as clearly as I can.

My family owns one of the biggest luxury goods conglomerates in the world.

My grandfather, the CEO, is on a ventilator and likely to die sometime tomorrow night when his DNR goes into effect.

Once he passes, I will become CEO after a transition period. ”

“So you are a literal prince,” I murmur, more to myself than him, earning an irritated frown. My brain keeps sifting through all this shit, trying to find the reason why the prince marries the frog.

“For the past three years, my family has been negotiating a merger with a company called Meridian Industries, owned by Daxton’s family.

The deal is contingent on our marriage and the fact that my grandfather’s will guarantees him a prominent role in the company.

There’s a chain reaction that has to go off: I marry Daxton before my grandfather’s will goes into effect, which gives my spouse his new position.

And once the marriage and the job are finalized, Daxton’s family will sign the merger. ”

“Your spouse. You said your spouse, not Daxton.” I see the connection now, and it’s fucking insane. I’m so proud of him.

“Right.” He lets out a slow breath, his face twisting like he wants to smile but can’t quite manage it.

“If ‘my spouse’ at the time of Grandfather’s death isn’t Daxton, it will create a massive legal fuck-up, insult the Pryce family, and derail the merger.

That’s my leverage—once the damage is done, I’ll offer to divorce you and help re-negotiate the merger in exchange for taking marriage with Daxton off the table. ”

“So you want us to get a marriage license, then go wave it in their faces once it’s too late for them to change anything?”

“Something like that.” His eyes are begging for—I’m not sure what.

For me to give him something. Like when a kid draws a picture but they need you to tell them they did good and hang it on the fridge.

He wants a partner in crime who can talk him through it, give him points, make him the kind of person who can pull this off.

For once, I don’t know if it’s a good idea.

That should scare me away, but it just intrigues me more.

“You realize this isn’t going to bring anybody crashing down, right? It’s just gonna annoy them. You want to lose everything just to annoy someone?”

In the long pause, I watch a hawk fly out across the low, brown hills. The views in this part of Wyoming are all somehow boring and painfully beautiful at the same time.

“You don’t get it; I don’t have anything to lose.

I’m a dog they bred. I have no purpose.” He takes a deep breath.

His words come out a few at a time with long pauses between, like he’s searching for each one.

“I don’t need to destroy them. I want them to know how much it hurts to see the thing you want taken away. ”

“And then what? If they push back?”

He stared at his hands for so long I shake my head with a dry laugh. “You don’t know.”

“I—” The genius can’t find another word to put after that one, because he has no idea. “They’ll panic,” he manages finally, “They’ll run around trying to undo things that can’t be undone. Then…it depends.”

“On whether you think they’ve hurt enough,” I prod relentlessly. Something fearful flickers in his eyes, like the edges of him are coming apart, but he sets his jaw and nods. I shrug one shoulder and put my cigarette out.

“Fine, we can play it by ear if that’s what you want. I don’t have anything better to do.” He doesn’t know how literally I mean that. Standing up, I stretch out my miserably sore back. “But you have to be flexible and make fast decisions. You don’t seem like the kind of guy who does that.”

“Why do you think I’m here?” he retorts as I walk down the log and sit next to him, close enough our hips touch.

He tenses like he’s going to scoot a few inches away, then gives up.

This much closer, his eyes are heavy and bottomless, like the parts of the ocean everyone’s afraid of, the parts we’ve never seen.

“Okay,” I murmur finally. My fingers flex, begging to touch him, but I smile crookedly instead. “I’ll be bad for you, good boy.”

His eyes widen at the same time I realize it’s very different to say a sentence like that into the phone than it is to say it right to his face, where I can hear him suck in a breath, see his pupils dilate. “Um.” He looks away, blinking sweat out of his eyes. “Fine. Thank you.”

I’ve talked to Lena sixty-eight times since I left home.

I’ve paid thirteen thousand, four hundred and forty-seven dollars and twenty-three cents toward her care.

A tally I don’t have to write down to remember, because it represents how close I am to the day I might be allowed to finally have her back.

But in those sixty-eight conversations, she never knew it was me helping her.

I told myself it didn’t matter. But when someone says thank you to my face so genuinely, only for me, it almost shatters me.

When I come up for air, I realize he’s still talking and I wasn’t listening. “--do you want in return? Money?”

I forgot for a second that there was something in this for me besides thank you and a week of not rotting away with no purpose. “I told you before, I don’t want other people’s money.”

He raises an eyebrow at me, his body heat leaking warm into my side. “Because the money you stole definitely didn’t belong to other people.”

“Shut up.” My parents think I need to suffer more than Lena before things become fair again. I don’t really disagree. Getting the money handed to me doesn’t hurt enough, so it doesn’t count. “I don’t want anything.”

“I’ll owe you something in the future, then.” He stands up impatiently. “You can call it in whenever you want.”

“Wow, you really must be desperate, to promise me anything.”

There’s quiet steel in the look he sends me, mixed with something mocking like he’s already read the depths of my depraved mind and doesn’t find it particularly impressive. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”