BALLAST
Harper
NOLAN HOLDS MY HAND THROUGH the entire first half of Beauty and the Beast. When the show really gets going Cape Carnage–style and the fake blood starts spraying and my eyes stop leaking, his thumb begins to draw gentle circles, tracing the skin that’s almost healed from the burn. An absent-minded pattern, as though this touch is so easy and natural that it’s second nature.
I can even picture it, us as a couple sitting comfortably in the dark. What if it were a real date? Would we go for dinner afterward? Would we talk and laugh like normal people do? It’s been so long since I’ve allowed myself the indulgent daydream about being with someone that I didn’t truly realize how much I’ve missed it. The empty space in my chest aches in a different way than it does when I think about Adam and the way he was taken from me. I know I miss him. I know I’m lonely. But it’s in this moment, with Nolan’s warm hand wrapped around mine, that I realize the truth of what I’ve really been doing these last four years. I think I’m starting to understand the true impact of the trauma I’ve been trying to hide from. I’ve been so focused on surviving my grief that I’ve forgotten about living.
It’s a nice change to ache for want, rather than for loss.
When the lights come up for intermission, Nolan squeezes my hand before finally letting go. I face him, trying to blink away the feeling that I’m waking up from a long sleep. “I’ll get that popcorn,” he declares, as though he won’t take any argument. “Anything else?”
My mouth suddenly goes dry. I somehow manage to scrape a word together, though it sounds like a rasp. “Ballmeat.”
Nolan laughs. I forgot what it sounded like. It’s so infrequent that I hear it. At least, not a real, genuine laugh like this. It’s resonant and warm. His face lights up, and those murder dimples come out, and oh my God, he’s so fucking beautiful it hurts my eyes. “Not sure they have ballmeat on the menu.”
“Eyeballs will have to do.” I give him a weak smile when he quirks a brow in an unvoiced question. “They have a cocktail that has eyeball candies. I’ll take one of those too, please.”
With a nod, he checks in with Arthur, who’s now finished his chocolate and is nearly done with my former popcorn, then heads off to the concession. I can’t help but watch him go. His cool authority, his predatory grace. He moves as though lethality is coded into his DNA. Why does he always have to look so fucking perfect? Whether it’s the work clothes he wears to our nightly adventures, or this charcoal dress shirt rolled to his elbows and black pants that expertly show off his ass, there’s never a time he’s unattractive to me. And it’s not just the way he looks. It’s something about the man beneath the shell. The way he notices the most minute details. His calm and calculating authority that swims just below the surface of a charismatic mask, one he only wears when he wants to. I’m the only person in the world who knows exactly who he really is. And that’s intoxicating.
I know I should be careful when it comes to Nolan Rhodes. But I can’t shake the way Nolan looked at me that day I killed McMillan. It was as though desperation and distress had chewed their way to his surface, and he couldn’t hold them back.
Because you’re determined to believe what you want to, he’d said. No matter what contrary evidence is staring you in the fucking face.
“You were holding hands with that man,” Arthur says, scaring the shit out of me even though he’s been next to me the whole time. I’d been too immersed in the details of Nolan’s hot ass and enigmatic serial killer appeal
to think about my surroundings.
God. I really need that fucking drink.
“More accurately, he was holding hands with me,” I reply, as though I’m some teenager trying to downplay her first crush to her dad. It’s hard not to feel that way when Arthur gives me an unblinking stare.
“Do you want me to cut his hands off?”
I snort, trying to calm the blush that burns in my cheeks. “Jesus, Arthur.
No.”
“I didn’t think so,” he says in his most curmudgeonly grumble. I shake my head and survey the seats behind me again for Sam. Satisfied there’s no sign of him lurking nearby, I close my arms around my middle and I settle deeper into my chair. “So. Who is he, this man whose hand you were holding as equally as he was holding yours?”
That blush just refuses to go away. “His name is Nolan,” I reply, in case he’s forgotten again. “He’s a tourist.”
Arthur rumbles a low, disgruntled note. He’s not a fan of tourists, though like all Cape Carnage residents, he understands how necessary they are for the town’s flourishing economy. But with tourists comes trouble, and for a man who has spent his entire adult life looking after our odd little home, there’s a built-in level of suspicion toward visitors that he’ll never get over.
“Is he good to you?” he finally asks.
That simple question seems to dismantle my thoughts. It should be so easy to answer. No, I want to say. He came here to murder me, slowly and painfully. To slice pieces from my body and glue them into his fucked-up trophy case. But also yes. I know that he’s helping me to help himself, but it feels like more than that. The shovel, the bear spray, the hot chocolate— though he tries to make them seem like practical things that benefit himself, he watches me as though he hopes I’ll be happy when he gives them to me.
The way he looks at me feels real, despite how hard I try to convince myself it’s all part of his game. The hurt in his eyes the other day. I don’t think that could be manufactured. Even holding my hand tonight. If he truly wanted me to suffer, if he really hated me so much, would he offer such a simple but meaningful comfort?
“I don’t know,” I say, though I’m not sure if it’s an answer to Arthur’s question or a continuation of my thoughts. “I’d like to hope so.”
“That’s not an encouraging answer.”
“It’s the best one I’ve got.”
“Sensible,” Arthur mutters before his attention wanders away. “It’s difficult to judge character these days.”
I don’t know if he’s referring to his own deteriorating health, or the general state of the world, or both. “A guidebook would be helpful. Some criteria.”
“Perhaps you could ask him if he would allow his hideous little dog to relieve itself among my award-winning roses and not clean it up,” he says, his eyes fixed to a bald man in his sixties who’s sidestepping down the aisle three rows ahead. A woman with fluffy blonde hair follows close behind him, chunky gold chains layered around her neck. The couple looks like snowbirds, with their golf club clothes and their over-bleached smiles and their sunglasses tans. Arthur despises tourists like this. Garish. Entitled.
When I first arrived in Cape Carnage, crimes such as indiscriminate dog shitting wouldn’t qualify as a murderable offense—these people would have to do something legitimately heinous for Arthur to consider that. But lately …? I’m not sure his barometer for what qualifies as a “murderable offense” is very accurate.
“I don’t think he would allow that, no,” I say.
Arthur doesn’t pay me any attention. His focus is entirely homed in on this couple as they take their seats to talk and laugh just a decibel too loudly for Arthur’s taste. He’s still watching them intently when he suddenly says,
“You can’t tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
Arthur turns his attention my way, his eyes clearer than they’ve been all night. “Who you are.”
“I had no plans to. I promised you I wouldn’t tell anyone, and I’m not going to break my word,” I say, laying a hand on his arm and squeezing gently. “I’ll look after the town, don’t worry—”
“It’s not for the town, Harper. It’s for you.”
My brows knit. “What do you mean?”
“The wrong man discovered my true nature, my identity, and it made me a prized target. And look at what that cost me,” Arthur says. His eyes shine as he raises a hand to my face. “Keep your past safe. Or the whole world
will descend upon you, and you don’t know what kind of creatures will be coaxed out of hiding. I cannot bear to lose another daughter.”
I can’t trust my voice to form words, not when my heart is crumpling in my chest like crushed flowers. I don’t tell him that Sam is closing in. Or that keeping my identity buried might be a lost cause. I don’t whisper about all the worries that are piling up around me in a suffocating embrace. I just place my hand on his. Lean into the warmth of his palm. With a nod, I reaffirm what I promised to do four years ago.
Arthur gives me a weak smile and then refocuses his attention on the couple ahead. “You’re a good girl, Harper. Even though you put my keys in the dishwasher.”
A breath of a laugh escapes my lips as I sneak a finger beneath my damp lashes. “Are you sure you didn’t—”
“I am absolutely confident I would never put keys in a dishwasher, if that’s what you were about to insinuate.” Arthur’s brows lower when the woman three rows ahead laughs too loudly at something the man says. “I’m looking forward to your topiaries. Perhaps you should start with a beaver.”
“I don’t know shit about topiaries.”
“You’ll learn. I have faith in you.”
“Please don’t.”
Arthur ignores my protests as the couple continues to talk and laugh, his aggravation deepening with every moment of their existence. Though I try to pull his attention away, he seems happily steeped in his irritation, and maybe a little worn out by the emotion of our conversation. So I let us slip into companionable silence. Before long, Nolan returns with a box of popcorn in one hand and two cocktails balanced in the other.
“One Orbit-uary,” he says, passing me the drink with a flummoxed expression. “This place is fucking bizarre.”
“That’s what’s so great about Carnage. It’s unapologetically weird,” I say. Nolan seems to ruminate on that as I take the popcorn from him under the guise of making it easier for him to get settled next to me, but when he reaches for it, I hold it beyond his reach. “Where’s yours?” I ask with faux innocence. “You didn’t forget it at the counter … did you?”
The flat glare he gives me tastes better than the sweet cocktail I take a sip of. His eyes drop to my lips and darken. I can feel the hunger in him that has nothing to do with sugar and salt. A lick of heat coils deep in my belly.
I’m flirting with him. And it’s working.
Hold on a second …
I’m flirting with him.
And it’s— “Have you had dinner?” he asks. It looks as though it takes effort for him to peel his focus away from my mouth. I shake my head. He reaches over and wraps his warm palm around my forearm and reels it in until the box is resting on my lap. “We’ll get dinner after.”
My brows hike. My heart is flip-flopping in my chest like a fish drowning on air. “Don’t we have work to do?”
Nolan just shrugs. He keeps his attention on the stage as the lights lower and a hush descends across the crowd, but I still feel the pull of his thoughts, as though he wants to meet my eyes but denies himself the indulgence. “We need to eat,” he finally says.
Right. It’s just eating. Normal human biological stuff. It’s not as though it’s a date or anything. We haven’t even really gotten past the whole McMillan thing from the other day, despite my apology last night. A bit of empathetic hand-holding and some popcorn doesn’t fix a murder-induced argument. Probably.
I’m not sure my heart gets the message. It reminds me of its existence with every thunderous beat. It only gets worse as the show nears the end and Lukas’s Beast is shot by Gaston in a spray of blood, falling onto a crash pad just behind the set. Belle gets her revenge by bodychecking Gaston into a fire, and in a halo of pyrotechnics, the dramatic climax moves swiftly to a happy ending. I’m barely invested in the song-and-dance finale, despite the juggling act of severed limbs, not with Nolan taking up so much of my thoughts. With the final bow from the cast, I help Arthur out of his seat for the standing ovation, looping his arm through mine so I can keep him steady. When I look up at Nolan, he’s watching me as though he doesn’t quite know who he’s looking at.
People start filing out of their seats. I move to pull Arthur with me as I start following Nolan down the row, but Arthur twists free of my arm and sits back down. “What are you doing?” I ask.
“Waiting here for Lukas,” he replies, settling his cane against the empty seat on his other side. He keeps his eyes on the stage. “Go to dinner with the tourist man.”
When I hesitate, he waves me off. I’ve been dismissed, but not without the barest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Nolan waits at the end of the row when he realizes I’m not right behind him, and that perplexed expression is there again, as though I’ve defied some kind of expectation and he doesn’t know what to make of me.
There’s still no sign of Sam among the crowd as we pass through the foyer, nor on the street as we head outside, where a warm evening breeze envelops us with a faint scent of the sea. Many of the attendees make their way toward the Buoy and Beacon Pub for the Beauty and the Beast– inspired karaoke and half-price drinks. Others head toward Main Street or the shoreline where the fancier bistros and restaurants will be open late. But Nolan and I move as though caught in our own slipstream, drawn to somewhere darker and quieter in the opposite direction of the crowd, ambling slowly away from the voices and laughter and the glow of the ornate Victorian lamps that line the street. Nolan stays close to my side, and though he doesn’t touch me, the heat of his presence warms my skin like a phantom caress.
“Are you going to tell me what got you rattled on your failed trip for popcorn?” Nolan asks, looking down his shoulder at me.
I let out a long, slow breath as I tamp down the urge to scan our surroundings with obvious panic. “It was Sam.”
“You saw him?”
“I more than saw him. I talked to him.”
A flicker of unease passes over Nolan’s face, a muscle fluttering in his clenched jaw. “About Arthur?”
I shrug, pressing my nails into my palm to keep myself from biting my bottom lip. “About me.”
“About you,” he repeats, his voice incredulous. Fury cascades from him in thick waves. “Why? What did he want?”
“My story.” It’s not a lie. But Nolan watches me as though he knows it’s not the truth either. “He wants to interview me for his documentary. I think he’s still convinced that Arthur is La Plume. And he definitely knows there’s more to Cape Carnage than meets the eye.”
“Do you think when it comes out more widely that this McMillan guy is missing that it will throw him off course?”
“That’s what I’m hoping, but I don’t know,” I reply. “I thought that if it happened while Arthur was clearly in the hospital, it would be a perfect alibi that could finally put that whole ‘Arthur is La Plume’ theory to bed.
I’m sure another disappearance will keep Sam interested in Carnage, but at least Arthur will be safe, and I figured that if he doesn’t have a body or the suspect he wanted to pin everything on, he’d be forced to leave eventually.
But what if Sam’s too distracted to focus on anything other than the story he’s determined to tell? Maybe this has all been a waste of effort.”
“It’s not.” Nolan takes my hand. There’s such a relief in the warm touch.
I don’t know what’s changing between us, or why. I can’t understand the tortured expression he gives me. I just know I don’t want this feeling to end.
“I’ll find a way to steer him on the right path.”
“The ‘right’ path leads straight to me. Maybe I …” I swallow, looking away to the growing shadows that surround us. “Maybe I made a mistake.
Let my emotions take too much control until I talked myself into making the wrong choice.”
“The ‘right path’ leads out of this fucking town. And that’s exactly where he’s going to go. That’s a fucking promise, Harper,” he says, his voice low and laced with a vicious edge. His hand tightens around mine. When I look up at Nolan, there’s no doubt written in his face, no trepidation. He’s not a hero. This is not a promise bound by morality. Nolan Rhodes is a villain.
He’ll lie, he’ll manipulate, he’ll even kill for this promise. He would burn this town to ash to keep his word. “You did what you had to do, and he’ll leave when he doesn’t get the story he wants. We just have to stay the course.”
I give him a weak smile, a nod. But I know it will be hard to refocus Sam on one injured quarry when he’s already closing in on the bloody trail of another.
Nolan might not know the full details of my encounter with Sam, but I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing when he keeps hold of my hand as we follow a winding path of packed gravel that leads to an empty playground. Or maybe he’s thinking about all the ways he intends to throw Sam off course. Though I steal glances at him from the corner of my eye, I can only see stern determination in his expression as he keeps his sights on the path ahead. And maybe I shouldn’t trust too much in his promises. But as we slow to a stop and look down over the trail we took to get here, I find that I do believe him. I might not have faith in heroes. But I trust the man at my side to make a vow and keep it.
For a while, we just stand in silence to observe the town and the growing dark. From our little hill, we can see the attendees making their way in different directions. The sea shimmers in the distance, picking up the last light of the fading day. “We should let them all figure out where they’re headed,” he says. “So we don’t have to fight for a table somewhere.”
I sit on one of the swings, rocking back and forth. “Though I’d like to see a fight to the death over the Buoy’s nachos, I agree. I’ve eaten my body weight in popcorn anyway.”
Nolan gives me a faint smile before taking the swing next to mine. For a long while, we don’t talk, letting the swings squeak in harmony instead. I spot Lukas emerging from the theater with Arthur. He helps him to the curb, and though we can’t hear the words, I can make out the body language clearly enough to see that Lukas is about to chuck himself under the judgy bus. When Arthur pops his grandson on the head with the handle of his cane, I snort a laugh.
“How did you meet him?” Nolan asks as we watch Lukas jog down the street toward the nearby public parking lot.
I have a lie ready for exactly this question, one Arthur himself made up for me four years ago. I could feed Nolan the same story about being distant relatives. But instead, I say, “I was boondocking near the Lancaster Distillery. I walked into town to get supplies one day and I was passing by
this same park when I saw an old Chevy Nova drive by. My dad used to tinker with vintage cars, so I noticed it right away. But then a few minutes later, it passed me again, heading in the same direction. And then again, a few minutes later.”
“Someone was following you?” he asks, and though he tries to keep his voice even, there’s still a thread of malice woven into its notes.
“That’s what I thought at first. So I stopped and pretended to tie my boot and watched for the car to come again. I thought maybe I was just paranoid.
But sure enough, the old Nova drove past a fourth time. Just one man in the car. Going slow. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was watching three little girls playing tag at the park with no grown-up around. I just … had a feeling …” I swing back and forth, looking toward the street as I recall the instinct that fired to life in my veins. And the rage. Nolan’s fist tightens around the chain in my peripheral vision, and I can feel that same fury churning within him. We might have started as enemies. Two monsters who are missing their souls. But our shadows share a likeness. “I came up here and sat on the swings, just close enough to keep watch on the girls. And that night, I hunted him down. Except Arthur had found him first, and I waltzed in just after the kill.”
“And Arthur didn’t try to attack you?” Nolan asks.
“He was pretty surprised, but no. Not at all. We kind of hit it off, actually. Shared interests and all that.” A wistful smile rises on my lips as I watch Lukas park in front of the theater just long enough to help his grandfather into the passenger seat of the old Jaguar, and then they’re off, headed for the estate. “By the end of the night, he offered me a permanent home if I promised to learn how to look after Carnage the same way he always has. The rest is history.”
I feel Nolan watching me, but I don’t return his gaze. “That’s a lot of responsibility.”
“Yeah, but it’s a strange town. It attracts a lot of great people, sure. But a place like this summons the shitty ones too. It would quickly turn to chaos if someone weren’t here to protect it. Yates and his deputies certainly aren’t up to the task, and it’s not like Arthur can do it forever. Someone’s gotta take his place and look after Cape Carnage.”
“Don’t you find it exhausting?”
“Sure,” I say with a shrug. “Sometimes.”
“You look after Cape Carnage. You look after Arthur.” The weight of all his attention burrows into the side of my face. “Who looks after you?”
My swinging slows to a stop. My lungs stall around a breath. The scent of sandalwood and cedar still lingers in my senses. My thoughts leap in several directions all at once. When I turn to face him, Nolan is watching me intently. “I do,” I say.
We stare at each other for a long moment, neither of us moving. I don’t know what he makes of my answer. But I do know that no one has ever asked me that question before. Aside from Arthur, Nolan is the only other person who knows my true nature. But he also seems to understand everything else. The weight of this responsibility. The pain of the loss I’m powerless to stop. Nolan sees it all. He sees me. And he looks at me now as though he wants every piece of my broken soul.
Nolan rises from his seat on the swing next to me. His eyes never leave mine as he stops in front of me, blocking my view of the street and the sea and the moon that hovers in the sky behind him. The whole universe around us seems to fall away.
“Maybe you should let someone take care of you for a change,” he says.
My heart riots. I should leave, the rational voice says in my head like a repeating plea. But that voice grows quieter every second that he watches me, until it fades into silence. “Maybe. Any suggestions on who? Your version of ‘taking care of me’ might be tossing me into the ocean with concrete shoes.”
Nolan drops to his knees in front of me, gripping my ankles to keep me in place. His eyes shimmer in the dark. I could kick him off. Push him down. A dark thrill courses through my veins when I wonder if he’d pursue me. But I already know he would. He wouldn’t stop until he caught me. He would revel in every second of the chase. And he’d probably love punishing
me for it.
So would I.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says.
It might not be delivered as a promise, but I want to believe that. I want to trust him in this too. And if I could just tell him the truth, that I’m not who he thinks I am, maybe everything would be easier. I know I’m no saint, not after the things I’ve done. Not after I left him for dead. Even still, I wonder if he could forgive me for that if I were honest. But I will not break my promise to Arthur. “I’m not the person you think I am” is the closest I let myself come, and even that is only a whisper, as though anything louder will shatter my vow.
“You’re right, you’re not,” he says as he slowly pulls one of my feet away from the other, dragging it through the rubber mulch. “You’re so much more than what I thought you would be.”
He could mean anything by that, good things or bad. But the heat in his touch sets off an electrical storm in my veins. I can feel the dampness of my panties. My nipples tighten. A shiver trembles through my flesh, one that has nothing to do with the deepening dusk.
“I’m desperate for a taste of you, Harper.” He pulls my other ankle through the mulch, spreading me wide. “I’m fucking starving for it.” My breath comes in shallow pants as his hands travel the length of my lower legs, gliding over my knees. He grasps the hem of my skirt and slowly pushes it up my thighs. “It’s all I can think about.”
It’s all I can think about too. I don’t say the words, but he can see them in me, as though I’m projecting them into the space between us. His eyes are still fused to mine as he drags my skirt higher and higher until it reaches my hips. “Will you let me have just one taste?”
“No,” I say, and he goes as still as marble. There’s relief in knowing he will immediately stop without any hesitation. The earnest questions and concerns burn so brightly in his eyes that I nearly laugh. I might love his words and all the fantasies they evoke. But I love antagonizing him even more, perhaps because I know that he’ll never stop meeting whatever gauntlet I throw down. The wisp of fear that he’s crossed a line still lingers in his eyes until I lean a little closer with a devilish grin. “Not just one taste.
I’m not some fucking snack.”
I spread my legs wider. A ravenous shadow descends across Nolan’s face.
“If you start, you’re going to finish your fucking meal.”
