It’s been an hour. She must be done.

The discs, the three of them, are fifty-three minutes long altogether.

I can’t go inside. I’ve become a statue. The ocean, which I didn’t like before, has become my friend, the crashing waves my companions. The rush of the surf drawing closer, the tide drowns my thoughts. It lulls me to its rhythm.

Crash. Crash. Crash.

I time my breathing to it.

It calms me, and I can finally see why she loves it so much.

I can’t listen to those recordings again. I can hear her voice so clearly in my head. I remember her voice from those CDs too well. I’d rather remember her at home being herself, studying for school. She always loved studying. The only teenager I ever knew who did.

It was her ticket out. She knew it. The more she studied, the more optimistic she was she’d find something better for herself.

I close my eyes and try to remember what Louisa’s voice sounded like outside of the recordings. The kinds of things she said to me. Happy words, loving words—I know she said them. But I remember the feelings they gave me more than the sound. Her laughter, her smile—those I remember. She had plenty of reasons to be full of despair—having an alcoholic for a mother does that to a kid—but Louisa wasn’t.

We can make our lives however we want them to be, she would say.

I’m doing it now—getting the revenge I want her to have.

At two hours, I convince myself to go back inside. Penny’s gone.

The files are spread out on the table.

I gather them quickly—I don’t want to see them—but delicately. They’re my most precious possessions. I return them to their spot in my truck.

Like every time I put them away, when they leave my hands I feel both relief and loss.

Her car is gone. The spotless silver Lexus isn’t in the driveway.

It’s almost midnight. Where did she go?

She believed it.

The contortions of horror, the sighs of outrage mixed with her rapid page turning—she didn’t reject it.

Something in my chest opens. Something that, a long time ago, hurt too much to feel, so I closed it and forced myself to forget it. But I feel it now, and after so long, the pain doubles me over.

I brace my hands on my knees and breathe, heavy.

She believed it.

Someone . . . finally . . . knows.

She knows who her father really was.

Guilt bleeds black into my veins. No one should have to see those pages and read what I forced her to read and hear.

I shouldn’t feel bad. Malcolm Vandershall was the guilty one. Not me. I’m only the deliverer of the truth. She’s only learning what she should’ve always known. What her family should pay the price for. Except . . .

None of this was her fault.

I get in my truck. If she’s feeling even close to what I think she’s feeling—betrayed, abandoned—she’s going to be reckless. She shouldn’t be alone.

She needs my help.

* * *

A shell, an empty one. I want to be. Or I am.

It would be easier if there were nothing inside me, nothing to feel, nothing to think, and definitely no part of me to need anyone ever again.

I drive my nothing self to a little bar a mile from my house. I see no one I know. I go inside and speak to no one, until I get to the bartender.

“Tequila,” I rasp, my voice full of all the things I want to be rid of.

The bartender tilts her head, like she wants to ask if I’m okay. I glare at her so hard—I swear if she asks me I will scream so loud this place will clear. She thinks better of asking and goes to pour my shot.

The bartender brings it. I grab it, down it. It scorches my throat like fire, but the flames don’t touch the pain searing my chest in the spot where my heart used to be. They don’t stop me from asking for another.

I’ve never done shots by myself before.

Now’s a good time to start.

* * *

I get lucky—I drive past a bar and see her car in the lot.

I’m relieved and it surprises me. I didn’t know I needed to find her so badly. But it might not matter. I have no idea what state she’s in. If she’ll even talk to me.

Inside, it’s dim, hard to see.

I have to find her. Must find her.

Her being gone, not knowing where she went, I can’t take it. I have to see her. I have to be with her.

I have to keep her safe.

I walk toward the bar, and see her sitting with her back to me. Her shoulders are hunched, dejected. I can’t see her face, but relief washes through me at rapid speed. It’s chased away by a powerful, ferocious, even savage need to get her out of here. To take her home where I can protect her from all the evil that lives in this world. To chase away the fear and pain that she lives with and replace it with me. To make her feel nothing but me, be nothing but mine, and reveal every piece of her that is who I know she is—though she doesn’t.

And the ruthless need to fuck it into her—it rams through my blood, hardens me, and threatens to destroy all my meticulous restraint.

There are two empty shot glasses in front of her, and she’s staring at a third, thinking about drinking it. I have to take care of her first, before I can offer her anything else.

I get a glass of water from the bartender and walk toward her. “You don’t need to drink that.”

Penny looks up at me. Her eyes are blurry, but they widen when she sees me.

I urge the water glass toward her. “Drink this instead.”

Her mouth pinches with confusion and despair, the look I expect from what she learned tonight. But her expression changes—like I don’t expect—like she needs me, wants me. She . . .

. . . pulls my head to her level and kisses me.

I’m stunned and try to resist her, but she grabs harder and traces my lips with her tongue. I can’t say no. I stroke her tongue with mine and seal our mouths together. She clings to my shoulders.

The longing in her—I know it, I understand it. It lights and stokes the same need in me. The hunger to replace the terrible, to swamp the pain with the ecstatic, to cover it all and chase away the ache of misery. To give in to an ache for something else.

She needs to feel alive, to experience something besides the shock and betrayal that’s swamping her. I know how best to make her feel.

I taste the tequila on her tongue and pull back. “Here.” I hand her the glass of water.

She downs half the glass.

I nod toward the door. “Ready to get out of here?”

She finishes the water and grabs my hand. “I need you.”

The words hit me like a slug to the chest. They press on that spot, the one that I haven’t felt in years. It feels good but it burns too, harsh and unwelcome yet satisfying and addictive.

I shouldn’t take her. But the hard truth is, I need her too, and there’s nothing that can separate her from me now.

I have plans for her, and she’s finally ready for them.

* * *

He came after me.

And the look on his face—I can’t say it was soft, but compared to his usual brooding mask, he looked almost emotional. Like there was something he wanted to express.

He drives me home in my car, and the numbness from the tequila fades until it’s gone. The feelings I’ve been trying to suppress explode in my brain. The images come back, the sting of the truth, the rupturing of every lie I’ve clung to.

My whole childhood was a sham.

I need to get away from it. It’s too much all at once.

My best escape sits next to me. His legs thick on the seat, his broad hands tight on the steering wheel, his arms flexing as he turns it. And then there’s his jaw. How can a jaw be so sexy? Its sharpness, I want to cut my teeth on it. I want to run my hands over him, not over his clothes, but under them. To lick him.

And to let him lick me.

“Drive faster,” I urge him.

He glances at me then presses the accelerator.

My gaze falls to his lap, and I wonder what he has for me there, what hangs between his thighs. My legs fall open, and I am panting. I let my thoughts wander, fantasizing, imagining, letting the arousal creep over my skin. The things I want him to do to me . . .

But the images blur, and my arousal deflates. In its place is horror at my own thoughts. I can’t want something from this man who’s suffered because of my father. I can’t ask him for anything. He should be taking revenge on me, not giving me what I desire.

I close my legs and cover my face.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“I can’t ask you to . . .”

He waits for me to finish, and when I don’t, he says, “You can ask me anything.”

I stare out the window, what I want and what I shouldn’t want morph into a distorted mess inside my head.

“Tell me what you want,” he growls, frustrated, impatient.

I want him impatient with me, taking from me and giving me whatever he wants. I shake my head against it. “Nn-nh.” I can’t say it.

“Do you want me to touch you?”

I bite my lip—how I want him to, like before, and more.

“Do you want me to eat you? Do you want to be swollen and wet for me?”

A moan escapes me. That. And then . . .

“Do you want me hard and pounding so deep inside you, you can’t feel anything else?”

My breath speeds, and I sag in my seat.

“Do you want me to hold you down while I do it? To not let go until you come so tight around me it makes me come too?”

My heart pounds against my ribs. I don’t need to ask him for what I want. He already knows. “Y-yeah.”

“Then get out of the car and go inside.”

I open my eyes. We’re stopped. Parked in my driveway.

I do as he says.