I’m fucking her with every ounce of me that craves vengeance. Every piece of me that needs revenge, I pound it into her, and she gives it to me.

She’s the one with the power, and she’ll steal my soul if I let her.

But it doesn’t make me stop.

Losing myself in her, letting her take me as hard as I’m taking her—I need it.

She comes again, her body bowing toward me, gripping me and robbing me of control. She rips the orgasm from me. If I had thought to make it last, her tightening around me imprisons my will to do anything but come inside her.

I collapse onto her, and she crumples to the floor with my weight.

There are no words, and I don’t know what to say. Before she was my enemy’s daughter. She’s still that, but now she’s also something else that I refuse to name. “Wife” being the least of the possibilities.

I get off her and walk to the bathroom to dispose of the condom. When I come back to her, sitting on the floor in my T-shirt, her hair unruly around her face, I realize I didn’t kiss her mouth or her nipples, again.

I stalk to her, ready to do both.

A female voice sounds from the hallway. “Penny?”

Penny groans “Layla,” and hangs her head.

I grab my shorts and put them on. “How did she get in here?”

“She has the door code.”

“I’m changing that. Stay here.” I walk out the door.

Layla sits on the back of the couch, her hands demure in her lap. “Am I intruding?” Her impish smile means she knows she is and isn’t sorry at all.

“We’re busy. Penny will call you.”

“But I’d like to see her.” She peers around me toward the bedroom.

I block her view. “She’s not coming out. Maybe you can see her tomorrow.” But Penny walks out of her room, still wearing my shirt, her legs wobbly, her face flushed. Maybe I do like her dressed in my clothes. It makes her enjoyment of what I’m doing to her more obvious.

“Hi, Layla.” Her voice is low like sex, and it aches with impatience, like she can’t wait for me to get my tongue between her legs again.

“So this is how you two spend your time now,” Layla says to her. “Screwing like rabbits?”

“No,” Penny says at the same time I say, “Yes.”

Penny ducks her chin and hides her face in her hair.

Layla laughs. “You know, you didn’t have to get married to have round-the-clock sex.”

I bite back my urge to swear her out the door, and try for a joke. “We’re in a honeymoon phase.”

She ignores me and walks toward Penny. “You left the bar in such a hurry last night and weren’t answering your phone. You’re okay?” She says it so calmly, so patiently, I want to make her leave.

Gentleness is the last thing Penny needs right now.

She doesn’t need someone asking about the shit I made her read last night. She needs to learn who she is without defining herself as her father’s daughter. I’m helping her do that. I’m helping her escape but also helping her find who she is without the lies in her past, without all the things the man she called father told her to be.

I shake the thoughts from my head. This isn’t about helping her. This is about revenge for me. And I feel better than I have in years. Like the pieces of myself I’ve kept hidden have a place in this world. Like I don’t have to hide the strongest parts of me in order to survive. Like there’s someone, one person, who wants me for me. My shoulders are lighter, my back is straighter, and I need to defend what’s mine.

Penny glances at me, a loud, unmistakable request for help.

I intercept Layla, putting my arm in front of her. “It’s Penny’s day off, so we’re spending it together. She’ll call you tomorrow.”

She says to Penny, “Promise?”

Penny retreats in relief. “Yeah.”

I encourage Layla toward the door.

She takes a second look at Penny and frowns. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

I respond for her. “Penny’s tired. I’m afraid she didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Layla smiles again, “That I believe.” She waves goodbye to Penny and lets me lead her to the door. She’s almost outside when she asks, “You’re serious about staying with her, right?”

I nod. “Deadly.” Her brows wrinkle with concern, so I add, “Till death do us part.”

“She means a lot to me. If you leave her, you’ll have to run real fast to get away from me.”

“I won’t be leaving anytime soon.”

She nods, satisfied and goes to her car.

And I realize: It’s true.

Well, it’s not like I have anywhere else to go. I may as well stay here.

When I return to the main room, Penny’s not there, so I dig through her kitchen drawers until I find the correct instruction manual.

I change the key code on the front door. No more surprise visitors. No one’s getting in this house except Penny and me.

* * *

I left my hat on the beach. I go down to get it and end up dipping my toes in the ice cold surf.

It’s a perfect day. Not too hot, not too cold. A breeze blows across the waves, and the water shines cerulean in the sun. It mocks me.

My chest is a chasm, a storm of too many emotions too strong to name.

I sent away my best friend without talking to her, without telling her the life-altering things that are happening to me. But I can’t face her and tell her what’s happening with me—this shit with my father, this shit with Logan. I can’t put any of it into words yet, much less deal with her responses.

Me and who I was, who I am, the definitions aren’t clear. If the man who was the only parent I knew is a rapist, what does that make me? What does that say about everything he ever told me and taught me and gave me? I don’t know if I can believe any of what I used to know. Any of myself. Any of my past.

I can’t relate to myself right now, let alone anyone else. Except Logan.

“She’s gone.” He walks up beside me.

I’m hollow, surrounded by darkness, stranded at the end of a long tunnel—with him the only person who can reach me. “Thank you.”

He faces the water, basking in the sun, not looking at me, his jaw as sharp as ever, the rest of his face guarded in its cool rigid angles. His expression hasn’t softened, it’s still unyielding, but there’s more to him now. Before, he blocked himself, presented himself like a two-dimensional machine of vengeance. Now . . .

He is as real and complicated and multi-dimensional as any man I’ve ever met.

His lips part and he says, loud enough to be heard over the surf, “I didn’t get rid of her for you.”

“Then why?”

“I did it so I could get back to fucking you.”

I expect him to crack a smile, but he’s so serious, I do what I never thought I could do today: I laugh.

His eyebrows lift. “What’s funny?”

“You can’t say that with a straight face.”

“Sure, I can. I take my fucking very seriously.”

I laugh harder, and he almost smiles. Not one of his sadistic smiles. This one’s almost happy.

He’s lived with this for years. I don’t know how.

I knew the world was a terrible cruel place. That tragic things happen and people are capable of evil things. But I never thought good people could do terrible things. Or someone I knew and loved, or thought I knew and loved could do something so . . . so . . .

I grip my hair. The burning question whipping through my brain: Why? Why did this happen?

He blurts out, “Don’t do that to yourself. It’s not worth it.”

“How would you know?”

He shakes his head. “Asking why, trying to figure out the reason, will drive you insane. There is no reason for evil. It just is.”

“How have you lived with this for so long?” I cover my heart with my hand, tugging at the soft fabric of his T-shirt. “It hurts. Here.”

“The truth is more brutal than any contrived torture.”

“How old were you when you found out?”

“I was fifteen when the cops knocked on the door and told us she was dead.” He clears his throat. “It took me two years, but I bribed someone to show me her file.”

It hits me like a slap across the face. “I’m so sorry.”

He stares at me like I’m crazy, as though I said the ocean was made of glass. “What?” His eyes do something I never thought I’d see. They soften. And he looks almost normal, like he’s taken off the hunter’s armor and he’s just a man—one with a beating heart, not a bloodthirsty soul.

I say it again. “I’m sorry about what happened. To your sister. And what you’ve had to go through.”

“No one’s ever believed me before.” The loneliness—he tries to mask it, but it seeps through his voice. “Everyone else thinks she killed herself.”

“Did she?”

He shrugs. “That’s what the coroner’s file said.”

“But you don’t think so?”

The softness drains from his eyes, and he is once more Logan the Vengeful. “You heard the voice of the woman on those recordings. Does that sound like a woman who was done being alive?”

“No.” To the last minute of the third disc, she was angry. Every word she spoke was like a sword. “She wanted to fight.”

“And she didn’t commit suicide. She died before her third case went to trial.”

“How?”

He shakes his head and refuses to answer. “The trial was dismissed. Without her testimony, they had no case.”

“Was she killed by someone?”

He picks up a shell from the sand and throws it in the ocean. “We’ll never know.”

“And now my father’s dead too.”

“Yup.”

“Died in a hospital bed.”

“I know.”

“In his sleep.”

“Too easy.” He picks up another shell and throws it into the water.

“What did your parents think? Did they believe her?”

“She never told us. Not me. Not my mom. She couldn’t afford to lose her scholarship or her campus job that was buying our groceries.”

“She kept it all to herself?” I can’t fathom going through something like that alone. “Do your parents think she killed herself?”

He gazes heavily at the horizon. “Our dad was never around before, so I never cared to find out after. Our mom . . .” He makes a bitter grunt in his throat. “She cared more about her liquor than she ever did about us. And that was before Louisa died.”

When he doesn’t go on, I ask, “Is she still alive?”

“No.” He chews his jaw. “They’d say it was from alcohol poisoning, but I’d call it a suicide.”

I no longer wonder at him being so morbid. I marvel at his not being more fucked up. I watch the white foam of the water ebb around my feet. My toes numb to the icy waves. I can no longer feel them. “He was fucked up. Malcolm.” I don’t even want to call him my father.

He snorts. “You could say that.”

“I don’t mean just what he did to Louisa. I mean, as a father, too.” The confession comes easier than I ever thought it would.

“That’s not what you said before.”

“I know. You were right.”

“I was?” His smile turns gloating.

“I spent so much time convincing myself he was normal. That the whacked-out things he did were what all upper-crust Southern fathers did for their daughters.”

“He didn’t . . . to you . . .” A look of pure horror erupts across his face. “Did he hurt you?”

“No. Thank God. But I was basically his property. I did what he said, when he said, however he said it.” I charge a wave and kick my foot in the water. “When I was nine, he shipped me off to boarding school and never let me back in the house for more than a week at a time.”

“That’s a good thing.”

“He let my brother stay.”

“He was protecting you. From himself.”

“Maybe. Probably.” It disturbs me to think it, but it makes everything fit. “He would call me back to show me off. Like my only purpose was to present to the public and make him look like a normal father. I once flew to Nashville for a one-hour cocktail party even though I had a final exam here in California the next morning. Because he ‘needed his precious baby girl.’”

“Why have you defended him?”

“He was the only parent I had. I convinced myself he loved me the best way he could. I couldn’t handle the possibility . . . that . . . he . . .” Does it count, does the love of a man so violent rank anywhere as real love?

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What?”

“Whether he loved you, it doesn’t matter. You are the same.” His face is too muted for me to tell whether he’s being mean or kind. But it makes me feel better. It eases a little of the ache. The one in my chest, anyway.

“You’re really smart.”

His eyebrows draw together. “And you’re really obvious.”

“What did you go to school for?”

“I graduated high school, if that’s what you mean.”

“You didn’t go to college?”

He crosses his arms. “I went to school for revenge. The school of learning everything Vandershall.”

“Is that how you learned all the stuff you know? You stalked him? My . . . Malcolm.” It’s harder to say it than it was.

“And his lawyers. And his financial advisers.”

“You’re a professional at this.” I smile. “No wonder you’re so scary.”

He steps closer, forcing me to look up. “I’m much scarier to you.”

My voice lodges in my throat. The fear, the fear I always feel when he gets near, returns blissfully, erasing my agitation. Even after talking with him it’s still there. “Why?”

He strokes my arm, raising goose bumps. “Because I’m not here to bribe you for information. I’m here to spoil your perfect life.”

I lean into him. “You are. Changing everything. With the truth.” I don’t know when that turned into a good thing, but there’s a thrill when I say it. I didn’t know how much was wrong with my world until he poked holes in it.

He runs a teasing finger over my cheek, so light it’s barely touching. It makes me shiver. “Go back inside.”

Heat chases the goose bumps away from my skin. He wants to go back to before Layla interrupted us, to him hunting me and fucking me. Heat thumps through my veins from my heart to my toes.

A familiar darkness narrows his eyes. “Run if you have to.”

I leap away from him. “I think we should do something else with my day off.”

“Like what?” He’s confused. He wants to have sex. He has no idea how to do anything else with me.

I like unsettling him. “We should go paddleboarding. I haven’t been to the bay in ages.”

“Paddleboarding?” He wrinkles his nose. “What the hell is that?”

“You’ll see.” I skip past him. “I’ll get my purse and keys and meet you at the car.”

I’m going to make him do a normal fun-loving twentysomething activity. He’s spent too much of his life stalking.

He’s wrecked my life. It’s my turn to unsettle his.