Page 39 of The Love Destroyers

His smile widens. “So you’re a girl who likes the classics, huh?”

“We had a parttime nanny who watched it. Now, I’m going to get up, but you’re going to stay put. In fact, you should lie back down—”

“Not going to happen,” he all but growls.

“Will you promise not to move if I get up?”

His eyebrows rise. “Emma, you do realize that I could get up even with you on my legs and my head done in, right?”

I stay put. “Promise me.”

Sighing, he says, “Yes, I fucking promise.”

I get up, bringing the hammer with me, my heart beating hard. Because of adrenaline, I decide. It’s not every day your mother nearly kills your sort-of brother-in-law.

Still carrying the hammer one-handed, I walk over to the globe bar and grab a fancy folded towel, not dusty because the house cleaning service my mother uses comes in here regularly, and hurry it over to him. I lower the hammer for a moment so I can get onto my knees again.

“Please don’t tell me you’re planning to press that to my injury,” he says.

“I’m not going to lie. You need to put pressure on it, right?”

He huffs out air. “I don’t know, I’m not a fucking doctor.”

I gently bring it up to his forehead, dabbing at the wound. It obviously hurts—I can tell from the way he’s holding his strong jaw. I don’t think, I just lean in and kiss the uninjured part of his forehead next to it. It’s warm beneath my lips.

When I pull back, I see him looking at me—an emotion I can’t read in his eyes.

I shrug. “Something my nanny said. She always said she’d kiss it better. Did it work?”

“No. You should probably do it again to thoroughly test it.”

It’s his easy flirting again—which seems to flow out of him like water from a faucet. I like it more than I should, but I’m not foolish enough to believe it means anything. So I just smile at him and lift his hand up so he’s the one holding the cloth to his forehead. “Better not.”

“Too bad.” He runs his free hand over mine, his voice a deep rumble. “Is your mother going to finish the job when she finds out that I’ve dirtied her cloth?”

“I won’t let her.”

A moment passes. Me looking at him, him looking at me, only a few inches separating us. It’s there again—the chemistry trying to fizz out of control between us.

I clear my throat and stand. “Now, what do I do?”

“Wrap your hands around the handle, one at the end and the other midway,” he says. “Then stand with your legs shoulder-distance apart and your knees slightly bent—”

“Like golfing,” I say.

He snorts. “Like golfing, Little Rich Girl.”

Maybe I deserved that one.

“Now, think about Jeffrey Nichols and put a fucking hole in that wall. High up though. Careful for our friend.”

I cry out and slam the hammer into the wall, putting force behind it. It hurts. It feelsfantastic. And through it all, that little voice continues to mewl.

I hit the wall again and again, until finally there’s a hole—a holeIput there. I did it. Me. Over the past month, I’ve torn down wallpaper. I’ve thrown things away. I’ve stabbed a mattress just to see what it felt like—but none of it was satisfying in the way this is. Maybe because this isn’t only about releasing anger. I’m trying to save someone too.

“There’s a hole, Seamus,” I say, turning to him. He still has the cloth pressed to his forehead, and he’s watching me intently.

I expect him to say something weighty, fitting to the occasion—I’ve struck a hole into my father’s heart. I’ve taken the first step toward freeing an innocent creature, I’ve done some dirty work for once in my white-collar life. But Seamus just grins at me and says, “That’s what he said.”

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