I stare at the ceiling, blood pounding in my ears.

Just when I thought I had her, she goes back to James.

She comes with me, and her first thought afterwards is him. Her very first fucking thought.

Why did you do it? In that high, whispery voice of hers.

Right now, I wish I could kill the son-of-a-bitch all over again. I wish I could kill him before he met her.

She falls asleep in my arms, tears drying on her cheeks like a beautiful child. Her breath comes in little spasms as she drifts off. Her heartbeat is fast, her eyelids fluttering.

Even in sleep, she’s not at peace. She’s still afraid of me. Her heart and soul are uneasy. As they fucking should be.

God, I want her. My cock is huge and stiff, and my balls ache. I could fuck her so hard and fast right now. Roll her on her back, spread her wet thighs, and take her virginity with no fanfare at all. Just take it, like I’ve taken everything else in my life.

She wouldn’t be the first virgin I’ve fucked. I should prove just how much power I have. How little I care.

After all, the first lesson of control is to control oneself.

Which I could hardly do. She wanted to talk, and I shut her down. I shouldn’t have, but for her to mention him…

That was all it took. It doesn’t matter who I am now, or what I’ve accomplished. I’m right back there, a skinny runt kid all over again.

Every good day, every Christmas, every summer afternoon – my father shit all over it. And he wasn’t even there. He didn’t care that I was turning nine, or it was July 4^th, or I just got the bow and arrow I’d begged for all year. No matter what day it was, his absence was a wound that bled all over our lives.

My mother was still young and pretty when he left us. But she turned down every good man after him so she could pine for the asshole who never came home.

She tried to smile on birthdays and holidays, but her eyes always betrayed her. Even when she was looking straight at me, she wasn’t with me. She was with him.

I could have had a stepfather, somebody to look out for me. She needed her ghost instead. The bastard stole her from me my whole life. And I’ll never forgive him.

Grace’s arms are tight around me. So clingy and needy. Just the way I imagined my broken girl could be. Submission, stormy skies, silence forever. This is our isolated place, right here.

My palm burns from striking her. Tomorrow she’ll have bruises, and I’ll make her wear them proudly.

Tonight was the first time I’ve ever truly spanked a woman. Not that I haven’t turned the asses of a hundred girls red with my hand, but none of it was real. They pretended they didn’t want it and so did I. But Grace gave me the gift of her fear. Her resistance and her tears.

I made her want it. I turned pain into fucking bliss. That was the power I always wanted and never had. Until she gave it to me.

I love her for that.

I wince. The thought of love makes me choke. I can be protective of her. I owe her that. But she’s not mine to love.

I’ve tried this before. I’ve tried to love a haunted girl with loyalties I couldn’t break, no matter how hard I spanked, whipped, or fucked her.

I unhook Grace’s arms from around my neck and slowly pull away from her. She whimpers, but doesn’t open her eyes. Her hands clutch a pillow in place of me.

I stand up. Her ass is covered with a crisscross pattern of welts. My fingers, branded into her skin.

As I turn to go, her lips part and she whispers something. Probably his fucking name. I’m not even gone and she’s dreaming of him already.

Once upon a very different time, I made a promise to myself. I wouldn’t say a word about him. She wouldn’t believe me if I did.

But right now, it’s all I can fucking do not to shake her awake. To stare into those innocent eyes and shatter the wall between us.

Closing her door quietly, I go to my bedroom, change into jeans, and head downstairs. I ignore the boxes of five-star food sitting on the kitchen counter, and go to the garage.

I know where I’m driving. I just don’t know why.

It takes me almost forty minutes to drive into the city and out the other side, to a suburb of bleak apartment buildings and shabby, working-class homes. Every time I come here, no matter what season, it’s raining. Tonight, drizzle spits down from a flat gray sky, making everything look hazy.

I park and look up at the corner unit on the second floor. 4B. The drapes are open and the lights are off. He’s in bed, or watching television in the dark.

Sometimes I see his figure walking back and forth. He’s always alone.

I knew his wife left him last year. I didn’t know his business had failed until Grace told me.

I feel no animosity toward him. He’s just an ordinary guy that life steamrolled. He’s what everybody could be with enough bad luck.

I imagine walking up to his door and knocking. Seeing his slack gray face blinking out at me when he answers.

And then what? This is where my imagination always slams into a wall.

There’s only one thing I could do. Tell him everything. Try to make losing his son okay, even though it never will be.

I wanted to give him the money two years ago. In fact, I met with my lawyers and fucking insisted on it. But they said no. It would make me look guilty, and be bad for Phantom. The lead attorney practically repeated what Miriam Peck said word for word. Forget guilt. Forget what’s right. What matters is how things look.

You could lose everything, he said, and it won’t bring back his son, anyway.

And that’s a fact. I can’t bring James back. But I can give his father the truth.

I can already feel the wet pavement under my feet as I grab the door handle. This time I’m going to tell him. I’m going to fix what I can fix, let Grace go, and move the fuck on.

But like always, I drop my hand and sit back. And like always, I remember what my grandfather said when I was thirteen.

It’s time you knew about your father, Bram. You’ve been in the dark long enough.

He sat on our ratty couch for an hour and shit all over my illusions with the truth. Loser. Liar. A drunk. That’s the man your mother mopes over. A deadbeat fucking ghost.

To this day, I wish he’d lied. I wished he’d left me something of the man my mother worshipped, and I missed like fucking crazy.

I won’t do that to James’s father. I won’t do it to Grace.

I start the engine and drive back across town. I don’t mean to go to the cemetery, but that’s where I find myself.

I pull around back where the fence is low, park, and get out. The grass is slippery under my boots. I walk past rows of recent graves until I get to his. It looks well-tended. It hurts like hell to look at it.

The grass is flat, like someone’s been sitting there. On top of the headstone is a little silver heart. It sits in a tiny pool of rain. Grace must have left it. A symbol of her undying devotion to a man who isn’t me.

I shouldn’t have stopped here. It wasn’t James’s grave I came for anyway.

Drizzle coats my hair as I walk toward the older part of the cemetery. I’ve never been here at night. I shouldn’t be here at all.

The first time I came, eighteen months ago, I knew somebody might spot me. But once I found out, I had to see for myself. I had to know it was real.

Grace’s mother made me promise. Whatever my lawyers dug up, I wouldn’t tell Grace. I was so shocked to hear Melinda Garrett’s voice on the phone two weeks before the trial, I could hardly speak.

“You might…discover things,” she said. “From a long time ago.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“You will. And if you have any decency, you won’t use it. You’ll let my daughter live in peace.”

I didn’t know what she meant, and she wouldn’t tell me. But I promised anyway. “I won’t say a word. You can count on that.”

My lawyers came to me a week later with new information. It looked bad for Scott Garrett. It cast doubt on the whole family, on who they were and what they believed.

But I’d made a promise, and I was glad. I told my lawyers that using it wasn’t an option. My decision was final.

The grave is in such a dark, distant place. The back corner of the cemetery at the end of a row, set off all by itself. It makes me so fucking sad every time I see it. It’s like they wanted to hide him. To pretend this little boy never lived.

No one’s tended this grave for years. There are no flowers, no silver hearts, just a blanket of dead leaves so thick it covers up his name.

Squatting down, I sweep the leaves away with my hand. I scrape the dried mud from the front of the headstone so the years show again, and I can read the words. Blessed child.

Or not, it turns out.

I would have brought something for him if I’d known I was coming. I’m the only person who ever comes, which is why I do, I guess.

I stand up and walk away. It just doesn’t sit right with me. It’s not the promise to Melinda Garrett, or the secret. It’s not even how he died.

It’s that Grace would love him, if she knew. And he deserves that.