Page 107 of If I Stopped Haunting You

“Can you believe Daniela and I hooked up once?” Pen asked, not looking at him, scared of what she’d find there.

“Well, that explains what she said this morning.” He made a face.

Pen chortled. “What? Is she out of my league?”

Neil nodded solemnly and she punched him. Laughing, he said, “The opposite. You’re out of her league.” He paused, huffing. “You’re heavier than I remember.”

She shot him a glare. “Maybe you’re not as strong as you thought you were.”

“Already back to fighting, are we?”

“Not fighting, bickering.”

“There’s a difference?” he asked, tone flat.

“Yes, there’s a difference. Fighting is intentionally disagreeing, and bickering is much more playful.”

“If you say so.”

“I do,” she affirmed with a nod.

Pen’s eyes dragged along the portrait of Georgina as they passed it. The black dress, the thick lashes, the watchful eyes. She found it difficult to believe what they’d gone through to get here, even more difficult to understand the hardships that Georgina and Archie had pulled through. Love rejected by her father, pregnancy and secret marriage, war, death, and loss. So much loss.

“It’s okay to be sad,” Neil said as he helped her sit at the top of the stairs. “It’s not exactly a happy ending to a happy love story.”

Pen watched him quietly. She wondered why it felt so easy with him, why, after so many years of hating him, it had turned into something else in a matter of days. With a chuckle, she recalled the day at the castle ruins, how they were annoyed and huffy, both trying so desperately to find inspiration among the stones.

“What?” Neil asked, tilting his head.

Pen stood and leaned against the banister, looking out over the foyer. “I wonder if the only reason I ever hated you was because I didn’t think I was enough. By tearing you down, it made me feel…” She trailed off, struggling to find the right word.

“Stronger?”

She nodded. “It’s silly, isn’t it, that tearing down another Native author made me feel whole?”

“No, not that surprising. By limiting the number of Native books being published, we’ve been pitted against each other since the beginning.”

“Fuck the colonizers.”

“Fuck the colonizers,” he echoed.

Neil leaned against the railing beside her, arms slung out before him, the quill tattoo peeking out from beneath his sleeve. His eyes followed hers, the corners of his lips lifting.

“When did you get that?” Pen asked.

He sighed and pushed up his sleeve, turning his forearm toward her. “Do you remember that moment inThe Lies They Told Uswhen Winter used her grandfather’s quill to carve the phrase ‘I will speak only truth’ into her arm?”

“I mean, of course I do, I wrote the damn thing.”

“Well, it stuck with me so much I got this tattoo.” He smiled down at it. “I reached out to the cover artist forThe Lies They Told Usand got permission to get it inked.”

Pen opened her mouth and closed it. She didn’t know what to say. A man she’d reportedly hated for years had liked her book, hell, asingle momentin her book enough to get it tattooed on his arm. She traced the quill, understanding more than ever why she’d always felt so drawn to it.

“I can’t believe I never noticed,” she said. She sniffed, blinking away tears.

“I should have told you what your book meant to me,” he said, leaning forward to catch her tears. “I’ve read it so many times, just wishing I had as much talent and courage as you. And I was such an asshole to you. I shouldn’t have fought with you like that, and I should have stood up for you after.”

“God, you really were an asshole,” she agreed, laughing.