Page 52 of Say You Will

Bronwyn snickers. “Are you threatening me with a knuckle sandwich?”

“I was thinking one of those disgusting protein shakes you said Dean drinks. I don’t know what a knuckle sandwich is.”

Henry presses his lips together, obviously fighting a smile. “She wanted to know if you were threatening to punch her in the mouth.”

Reaching for my hand with one of his, he curls my fingers in, guiding my thumb to wrap around the outside. Henry lifts my fist to graze his lips with my knuckles.

I gasp and pull my hand back to my lap.

“Never thrown a punch?” he asks.

I tighten my hand and imagine what that would be like to plow my fist into another person’s face. At the moment, Jonny’s comes to mind. I ignored his voicemail earlier. I’m sure it’s about Leo Kingston, and I don’t want to hear it.

I can picture myself hurting the guys who harassed me in the street. My mother’s boyfriend, David Vance, pulled the last one away from me, but I wish I’d been the one to deal with him.

“Does it hurt?” If I did punch someone, I’d probably injure myself more than I did the other person. My hands ache and burn often enough without impact. Even the thought of it makes me wince.

“Yeah, it hurts,” Bronwyn says. “How much depends on where the punch lands, whether you were ready for it, and how much force is behind it. Sucker punches are the worst.”

“She’s not asking if it hurts to be on the receiving end,” Henry corrects. “She wants to know if it hurts to be the one throwing the punch.”

“Oh. Yeah. It does. If you do it wrong or hit a bony area, you can break your hand. When you’re sparring, wrap your knuckles and remember to aim for soft places. Don’t get distracted by your own pain in a fight,” she says.

It takes a lot of pain to distract me. I’m used to it.

“But I don’t think punching anything, even a bag, would be a good idea for you,” she says. “Ask Henry to set you up with a firearm.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Then a taser, at least. They only work about 50 percent of the time, but you know I think you should be carrying something after all the crap that’s happened to you.”

Henry’s brows snap together in a fierce frown. “Send the shopping list. We’ll see you when we’re done.” Jaw flexing, Henry reaches out and hits End Call on my phone.

I put the phone into my purse, then twist in my seat. I examine my hand, curling it back into that fist.

“Franki.” Henry’s voice is quiet, but there’s anger there. And resolve. “Give me a name.”

Startled, I glance his way. “What?”

He pulls the SUV off the road and onto the wide gravel berm, glancing in his rearview mirror with a lift of his hand. I frown, confused.

As Henry shifts his body toward me, his eyes have gone almost frighteningly flat. He folds my hand back into a fist and presses it gently into his palm. “You’re sitting here imagining what it would be like to fight back. Give me a name. Tell me who you need me to hurt.”

I sit, frozen, as I process his words. This is the first time he’s ever said the quiet part out loud. I’m not a naive teenager anymore, and I spent too much time in the McRae home not to have figured some things out in retrospect. Those missions he goes on aren’t government-sanctioned. That house has more than alarm systems and panic rooms. There isn’t a room in the place that doesn’t have a stash of weapons hidden inside the walls or secret drawer spaces accessed with a thumbprint. The security guards move like soldiers because theyaresoldiers. Henry doesn’t carry a knife strapped to his calf for slicing apples.

“Tell me,” he repeats.

I shake my head. “You’re not going out on some vigilante revenge mission on my behalf. I don’t need it.”

“No one hurt you?”

“I’ve been assaulted a few times by people who thought I was my mother. Imagine if you hadn’t been there in the hotel lobby to step in with those guys. It was that sort of thing. The last one tried to drag me into a car.”

Something chases behind Henry’s eyes, and I hurry to explain. “I wasn’t hurt badly. It was only a few bruises.”

It’s not true that I was unaffected, especially the most recent time, but Henry looks like he needs someone to walk him off a ledge. The look on his face is like nothing I’ve ever seen. I shiver at the blank sort of hardness that falls over him.

“What happened to the men who hurt you?” he asks softly.

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