Sign Here(66)

“Do you remember how to shoot?”

Lily laughed and held the gun up so it rested in the crook of her shoulder. “I have a feeling it will come back to me.”

She squinted down the sights and took a breath, squeezing the trigger with her exhale. She heard a pop and felt the nudge of the gun, but the cans didn’t move.

“Look who got cocky,” Silas said, grinning. “I guess I should’ve placed that bet.”

“Hey, the day is still young! I’m just warming up.”

“Give me that.”

Lily handed Silas the gun, and he steadied himself. He squeezed, and a can exploded with a burst of sound.

“Gotcha!”

“Beginner’s luck,” Lily said. “Give it back.”

Silas shrugged and handed the rifle over to Lily before leaning back against the tree.

“Remember how good my mom was?”

Lily laughed again as she lined up her next shot. “I think she must’ve been a spy before she had you.”

“And Philip was so bad.”

“Well, he was always better with bigger machines.” Lily pushed her breath out and squeezed, and the can on the left ricocheted off the closest tree.

“Bam!”

“But be honest—were you aiming for that one?” Silas asked, kicking her ankle with his foot.

“Double or nothing,” she said as she squared off again.

“We didn’t actually bet anything!”

Lily squinted before exhaling and hitting two more cans in a row. But then she felt her phone buzz in her pocket, and she faltered. The third bullet hit the tree on the right, spraying bark. She rested the gun against her leg and pulled out her phone.

It was a message from Gavin.

. . . anything?

And then another.

I miss you.

Lily swiped out of the message instantly but felt its effect everywhere. She squeezed her eyes shut, suddenly embarrassed by the cans and the rifle resting against her leg—the whole scene.

Gavin did not like guns.

“You know,” she said, loosening her hair, “that’s probably enough friendly fire for me.”

“Are you serious? You were just heating up!”

“I know,” Lily said. “That’s why I’m going to go up and make another drink, to cool down.” She hung the rifle on the ancient hook embedded in the tree closest to her. “You’ll put this away when you’re done?”

Silas sighed. “I’ll take care of it.”

Lily came to a stop in front of him. There was a sprig of pine stuck in his hair.

From the moment Lily saw Silas at Sweeney High’s freshman football tryouts, her body changed for him. It was changing anyway, but he caught her eye and became the end goal amid all that cellular chaos. A blueprint dropped into her previously mismanaged construction site.

Become the girl who can get Silas Harrison.

So that’s what she did. But her young logic missed one important thing: being his meant nothing if he wasn’t also hers.

Between the smell of the grass in the summer air and the power of the rifle in her hands and the way he looked right then, his face, softened by the haze of late-day sun and gun smoke, made her think that if she looked at him for too long, she might crack, might fall back into him. And then, as it always was with them, he would see her as won and lose interest, and she would be left open and wanting.

She thought again about Gavin’s message. She liked being missed, she thought as she reached, despite herself, to sweep the needles free from Silas’s brow.

“Thanks,” she said, turning toward the house. “This was fun.”

Like most broken marriages, theirs hadn’t broken all at once. Instead, it became gnarled the way wind gnarls a tree on a cliff— with quiet pressure, relentlessly the same. And she knew, the way the tree that strains at a sharper and sharper angle knows, that a thing can grow even under terrible circumstances, but that doesn’t mean it should.

“Wait, Lil,” he said. “One quick thing.”

She turned around and pushed her hair behind her ear so she could see him clearly, aglow against the setting sun over the lake.

“Is the Gavin you’re fucking Sarah Kelly’s brother?”





PEYOTE





EVAN WAS THE FIRST Harrison to surprise me. The three before him came naturally to their fate, hungry but never humbled by it. They wanted money, power, a name that would carry on—lives lived in homage. The bread and butter of the Deals Department. But Evan was different.

Evan was the first Harrison I knew to make a deal for the sake of another.

When Evan called for me seventeen years ago, it was raining. Or maybe it had stopped raining by then, or hadn’t started yet. I don’t remember. I just know the air was all juicy and dark, a drunk kiss of a night. When I arrived, he had a cup of tea ready.

“How can I help you, Evan?” I asked.

“You know me?”

“You can assume I know everything.”

Evan rolled his shoulders, his hands steepled around his tea.

“I’m prepared to make a deal with you, but I have one question first. Can I trust that you will answer me honestly? Do you know how to do that?”

There was something about being in front of Evan after watching him for so long—it was kind of like meeting the actor who played your favorite character. You’ve been thinking about them as yours to watch, to know. You never wonder what they would think of you. I understand why: it hits all the harder when they don’t like what they see.