Shooting Scars

Book 2: The Artists Trilogy

by Karina Halle

Genres: Erotic & Steamy Romance; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Suspense

Synopsis

The USA Today Bestseller!!

A Dangerous Kind of Love . . .

When Ellie Watt offered herself to her thuggish former lover Javier to save Camden's life, she never imagined the twisted game Javier had planned for her. Trapped by him and his entourage of killers, Ellie is forced to commit a dangerous, heinous crime-or Javier will kill Camden. Now ex-con artist Ellie must find a way to stay ahead of the game . . . before it destroys her and the only man she ever loved.

Camden McQueen can't forget Ellie Watt. Seeking revenge and pursued by the authorities for a crime he didn't commit, the talented tattoo artist does things he never thought himself capable of to save Ellie. As Camden straddles the line between love and retribution, he vows to do everything in his power to get her back. But if Camden unleashes his dark side, will Ellie still love him?

"I knew from the moment I began chapter one that Karina and I are kindred spirits. Fans of her Artists series will not be disappointed with this second installment and will no doubt be left panting for the third."
--- CJ Roberts, USA Today bestselling author on SHOOTING SCARS

"I'm officially addicted to Karina Halle's writing, but I don't plan on seeking a cure for this obsession anytime soon."
--- New York Times bestselling author Chelsea M. Cameron on ON EVERY STREET

"Karina Halle has done it again with this violently beautiful tale of love, pain, revenge & loss that will rip you apart, piece by piece, and put you back together again."

--- New York Times and USA Today Best Selling Author S.L. Jennings on SHOOTING SCARS


Shooting Scars is Book 2 in Karina Halle's bestselling, Artists Trilogy.

Approx. 100,000 words.

Release date: August 20, 2013

Publisher: Forever

Print pages: 419

Sample

“You wanted me to catch you, didn’t you?” Javier’s voice cut into my thoughts like a drill. I blinked at the dry, rough desert of Arizona as it flew past my window, trying to remember what was happening. This wasn’t a dream, this wasn’t a scenario; this was real. I was in the back of an SUV driven by a thuggish man and the ex-boyfriend of my nightmares was right beside me. I had given Camden a second chance at life, at love, at everything by taking a step backward with mine. I was Javier’s prisoner now, his six years of chasing after me having finally come to a close.

I was trapped with a man who would either love me or kill me. There was no middle ground with Javier Bernal.

“Didn’t you?” he repeated. Out of the corner of my eye I caught him wave his hand dismissively, his watch catching the sun that streamed in through the tinted windows. “Oh, it doesn’t matter. I know.”

I didn’t want to take the bait. I wanted to keep looking out the window, pretending this didn’t exist. I wanted to ignore the anger that started to prick at my toes, rising up my limbs, and the disgust and defeat that was about to sink in my chest.

He had found me.

“You tracked my cell phone,” I said, my tongue sticking to the roof of my dry mouth.

He chuckled. The hair on my arms stood up.

“Seriously? Your cell phone. Angel, you aren’t Jason Bourne.”

I wanted to laugh derisively at the way he pronounced Jason and sneer at the use of my old pet name, angel. I had been angel six years ago. That angel had died on broken wings and with a broken heart.

He continued, “I can’t track your phone unless I have physical access to it.”

“Then you were tracking the car,” I said, still to the window.

Another chilling laugh. “Tracking that car all this time? I had people looking out for it—you took quite a big chance driving around in a flashing find-me sign. But no, there was no tracking device in the car. Why would I plant one in my own car?”

“Someone might steal it.”

“Only you, my dear.”

His voice lowered over that last phrase, twisting in a curiously compassionate way. I brought my eyes over to look at him and immediately regretted it. I realized that up until that moment, I’d been trying to see through him, as if he were a hologram.

Javier’s hair was longer now, but just as thick and dark. His face had thinned out a bit over the years and his build was somehow wider, stronger. He looked like a citron-eyed lion in a white linen suit, a creature larger than the sum of his parts. The more I stared at him, the more the space around me became smaller.

He smiled at me, his eyes glinting. It wasn’t a kind smile, and I quickly cast my eyes downward, feeling that the less eye contact we made, the better it was for me. I caught a glimpse of his Wish tattoo on his wrist, partially covered up by his watch.

“Ellie Watt,” he said smoothly. “It didn’t take me long to figure out your real name. In fact, it was almost like your name came floating in my window one day. So, you must realize that when you’re on the run and using your real name, well, any fucking idiot can track you down.”

I blinked hard and turned my head to the window again. I’d been so careful with Camden’s name, going through all the steps to make sure he could never be found as Connor Malloy. I didn’t do the same for myself. The minute we knew that Javier and his men were after me in Palm Valley, the minute we headed for Nevada, I should have been more cautious. I should have concentrated more on myself than on Camden. Javier had tracked me to the resort in Laughlin, and after that I thought I was playing it smart by taking on an old persona.

I hadn’t been smart enough.

“I had people waiting in Las Vegas, you know,” he said, and I could sense him examining his fingernails. “It wasn’t hard to figure out that’s where you’d be going next, that you needed to keep laundering your money. You were cocky enough to stay on the Strip. One of my men saw your car—my car—driving through. Followed you to your hotel, where you went through a halfhearted attempt to hide it.”

I swallowed hard. Disgust was beating out defeat at the moment.

“I realize now, angel, that I didn’t know you very well at all. I don’t know who I knew. But I do know you’re not an idiot. You wanted me to find you. Perhaps you’ve been asking for it since you ran away.”

“Where are we going?” I said, trying to keep my breath from shaking.

He sighed. “I told you. To the past.”

“I have many pasts. Pick one.”

He leaned back in his seat, his legs splayed, the tip of his knee touching my leg for a brief second. Just a tap. His way of reminding me where I was. I eyed the rocky landscape flying past and wondered when jumping out of a moving vehicle could be considered too reckless.

“Child safety locks,” he whispered, and I wished he’d get the fuck out of my head. “And our past. Do you remember it?”

“No.” It wasn’t that much of a lie. I’d had so many pasts that it was easy to bury them all with each other. After I’d left Javier all those years ago, I remembered the pain he brought me, the humiliation and deceit, only for as long as I needed to. For as long as I needed to become someone else, to never make the same mistakes again. Then I let it go.

“Now you’re just trying to hurt me.” He couldn’t have sounded less sincere.

I cleared my throat. “I’m thirsty. Do you have any water?”

“Later. First we have something to discuss.”

I turned my head and shot him a deadly look. “We have nothing to discuss.”

The corner of his wide mouth twitched up into a smile. I wondered how I ever found this man charming. I must have been out of my mind.

My phone rang, jarring me. I reached for my jeans pocket but Javier was quicker. His fingers wrapped around my wrist, twisting it painfully away from me while he deftly got the phone out with his other hand. He held my arms down, pinning me against my door, and checked the screen. His eyes blazed for an instant before he punched the button for the window to go down and then chucked my cell out of it.

In a second, the window was back up and he was sitting in his seat like he never moved and my wrist was left aching in my lap. He smoothed his hair back behind his ears and grinned to himself. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you a new phone.”

I looked down at my wrist, the red marks from his fingers quickly fading. He’d never used force on me before, at least not in a nonsexual way, and to tell you the truth, it was sobering. For the first time since I’d gotten in the car, I was actually afraid.

What had I gotten myself into?

“So, tell me about this Camden McQueen.”

My heart rattled in my chest. “I’m sure you know more about him than I do.”

“I found out a lot, yes. But you… you seemed to be intimate.”

Acid burned along his words, seeping through his smooth facade. I really didn’t want to discuss my relationship with Camden, although I felt like doing so out of spite. It bothered him, somehow, after all this time, that I had been with another man. And I guess somewhere, somehow, I still held a grudge.

“I fucked him, if that’s what you mean,” I said bluntly. I told Camden I loved him too, I thought to myself, playing with the sentence like a hand grenade but deciding it was safer keeping it inside.

Javier stiffened beside me for an instant. “So crude.”

“Yeah, well,” I said. “It is what it is.”

“Nothing more?”

Against my better judgment I glared at him. “What is it that you want, Javier? I’m sure it can’t be whether I got nailed by Camden or not, because you have your answer.”

“I want,” he said slowly, drawing it out. He licked his lips. “I want you and me to work together.”

I nearly laughed. In fact, a small snort escaped from my lips.

He raised one perfect brow and tilted his head toward me. “You find this funny?”

My fingers were splayed against my collarbone. “I find this horrifying.”

“Eden,” he said, then squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “Ellie. You don’t think you’re here just for the sake of being here, do you?”

“You tell me. You fucking kidnapped a mother and child in order to get me. You paid I don’t know how much money. You have me now. For whatever you want. And you’re telling me, after all these years, you found me because you want us to work together?”

His eyes were on me, growing more golden in the light. Steady. Not blinking. Unnerving if I wasn’t so sure this was a test. He who looks away first loses. I wasn’t losing yet, not when I was unaware of the prize.

I stared right back.

“Yes,” he said after a few beats. He licked his lips again, and it made me realize how thirsty I was. “I could have found you long ago, if I really wanted to. I would have let you go. The car, the money, the lack of answers—”

“The lack of answers?” I repeated.

“You just left. No note, no phone call. No answers.” He slowly broke into a grin and then turned his attention to the window where a truck was thundering down the highway, dirty exhaust in its wake. “You know I love my answers, angel. You left me as high and dry as my mother’s bedsheets.”

My mouth gaped, tongue fumbling for something concrete. “What the fuck are you talking about? I left you high and dry…”

He shrugged. “No matter, it’s the past.”

It was the past. The past he was totally wrong about.

“You cheated on me!” I spat out, instantly ashamed at how much passion there was in my voice.

“Right,” he said. He raised his hand in the air as if to shut me up. “I did. I forget that sometimes, that what I did was wrong on some accounts. But that’s nothing.”

It wasn’t nothing. What he did, me finding him in bed with some ginger-haired bitch, it shaped who I was. It ruined my heart, my ability to love, to trust, to… live. He scarred me just as much as Travis had done. It wasn’t nothing. Maybe, maybe it should have been.

I took in a deep breath, knowing he probably loved the fact that I was getting so riled up. “Okay, so it was nothing. You could have found me years ago, so you say. Why now? You’re lonely, is that it? Having a lot of money not getting your dick up enough?”

His eyes fastened into slits. “I’m not the person I was six years ago, my dear. And, I can see, neither are you.”

He was right about that. Javier had obviously changed for the worse. Had I?

Stupid question.

“I can understand why you think I’d pursue you for, uh, delicate reasons,” he continued. “But that’s not the case. We both want the same thing. And for once, I think you have the upper hand in getting it.”

My forehead scrunched. “Don’t tell me you need lessons in being a con artist.”

I saw the first genuine smile yet stretched briefly across his face. “You’re a lot better at other things, Ellie. You have something that I don’t. You have access, contacts, and in some cases… womanly charms. Jesus knows how I fell for them once.”

His eyes glided up my body from my jeans-clad legs to my bare arms. To where the tattoo, his tattoo, wrapped around my bicep like an anaconda, squeezing the life out of me.

“And what if I won’t help you?” I said, rubbing at my parched throat. I was thirsty, and the more I thought about what Javier might do if I ever refused him dried me out even more.

“I don’t think you’ll refuse,” he said with total confidence. He leaned forward and tapped on the tinted glass that separated the driver from us. “Agua, dos,” he said, and the bald driver leaned down and brought out two water bottles. Javier handed one to me and the window went back up.

I quickly unscrewed the cap and took a large swig. It was cool and strangely sweet and took a lot to quench my thirst.

“And if I refuse?” I repeated, wiping my mouth.

He slowly sipped his water, his eyes on me, far too intimate, far too observant. “I have ways of making you see the bigger picture. Now, drink up.”

At that, I immediately brought the bottle away from my lips.

“So suspicious, Ellie,” he crooned. I felt the bottle slipping out of my hands as I tried to grasp it. He plucked it from me and pressed down on my shoulder so I was back against the seat. His fingers were rougher than I remembered but hot, as if fueled by a radiator. Everything was starting to go loose and numb. The interior of the car swirled.

“Naturally,” he went on, leaning forward and peering into my eyes, “you have a right to be so. Eden White was far too trusting.”

My head had lolled back onto the seat. I could see the lightning jags of gold and green meeting his pupils, the tiny lines that formed at the corner of his eyes, the one strand of salt-colored hair that dared to show its face at his widow’s peak. Javier had aged. There was nothing scarier.

“Sleep well, my angel.” His voice came to me on a wave of vibration. There were swirls of light and then everything went black.

She’d lied. She fucking lied.

I should have seen it coming, should have known this wasn’t going to end easily. I should have known the minute Javier called that there was no way he’d let her go once he had her. He wasn’t weak like me, I’ll give him that. He wasn’t the one left in the rock garden, two assfuck thugs’ meaty hands wrapped around him, holding him in place as he watched her leave. No, that was me, Camden McQueen.

I had to watch her leave again, but this wasn’t high school and this wasn’t a hallway.

She left me in a cloud of dust, a swirl of crushed cherry blossoms that choked my heart.

I must have been screaming in the aftermath, outside of my body with my old friend rage. I hated this part of being me—when I lost it, lost myself—the blackness that settled into my bones, that took over and booted my brain out of my skin. I was seeing everything from another angle, and it looked just as fucked from up here.

And there was crying. My beautiful son, Ben, just three years old, was crying in his mother’s arms and I knew I needed to get control back. Screaming, fighting, it wasn’t going to solve anything. I had to think about him and my ex-wife, Sophia. I had to think about getting us out of there or getting Javier’s men out of my tattoo parlor, Sins & Needles. I needed control.

I shut my mouth, nearly clamping down on my tongue, as my heart ached and crumbled and slowed in my throat. The tunnel vision ended and suddenly the desert sky was as bright as it had ever been.

The SUV—Ellie—was now long gone.

“Get your fucking hands off me,” I snarled, jerking out of the men’s grasp. Their stupid, thick fingers finally let go. I turned around and finally got a good look at them. They were both built like linebackers, large heads with nothing inside, programmed to do Javier’s bidding. Pussies to the core.

“Are you going to leave or do you want me to call the cops on you?” I asked, knowing I wasn’t about to get my father involved. As the sheriff of Palm Valley, he was someone who could easily out-asshole them while grinding me down in the process.

The men exchanged a look but were silent.

“That won’t be necessary,” Raul said from behind me, the stairs creaking as he came down. I’d forgotten he had been there, hovering behind Sophia and Ben during the whole transaction like a yellow jacket in a fancy suit. “That is, unless they’re already on their way because of the scene you just caused.”

I swallowed down the volcano in my chest and exhaled sharply through my nose as his skinny, catcher’s-mitt face came closer. “If you think that was me making a scene, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

His smile was wry; it belonged to a prick with empty power. If I hadn’t been certain that the thugs were carrying guns, I would have kicked his teeth in.

“We’re leaving,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. My eyes focused on the scar at his jaw and for a painful second I saw the ones on Ellie’s leg, felt them under my tattoo gun, under my hands, under my tongue.

“Are you?” he continued, snapping me out of it before I could drown further.

I glared. “None of your fucking business.”

He shrugged like Javier Jr. “If you were a smart man, you’d leave this place. Take your wife and your kid and your dirty money and get out of here.”

Ex-wife, I wanted to say, but the dirty money comment stung even more.

“Or what?” I challenged stupidly. I should have shut my mouth again, just kept it all in and gone, but I felt like being an annoyance, if anything.

He raised his brow. “Or nothing. We”—he nodded at the thugs and their blank, bloated faces—“are done with you.” He jerked his head to the street, where people were driving past like lives weren’t being threatened and ruined and changed before their eyes. The men nodded and the three of them walked past me, out of my trampled rock garden where plants would continue to thrive even when I left the shop to cobwebs and dust. Because I had to leave, though not on account of Raul. I had to leave because I’d made my decision weeks ago.

Raul stopped on the sidewalk, the heat rising off of it. He took a pair of shades out of his jacket pocket and handled them for a moment, his eyes two dark dots in the harsh sun.

“But,” he said louder, his voice thick, “just because we are done with you doesn’t mean Javier is. Don’t go looking for her, whatever you do. Or it’s your funeral. And hers.”

He slipped the sunglasses on his face and he and the thugs disappeared down the street toward whatever getaway they had planned.

Although I believed him when he said he was done with us, it didn’t make me feel any safer. I slowly turned around and looked at Sophia and Ben. She was holding on to his hand, my boy leaning up against her leg. In her other hand was the briefcase full of money. She held on to that just as tightly.

Our eyes met, perhaps really, truly, for the first time today. Man, even with her in the shade of the porch, I could see her eyes blazing, full of fire, and not the type I wanted to go up in. Fuck it, there was no avoiding it. I’d avoided this for way too long.

After everything—everything—I’d gone through, it was ridiculous that I’d feel the slightest bit scared of my ex-wife. But I was. I could admit it. I’d admit to anything at this point. I was afraid of what she was going to make me feel, of what she couldn’t wait to make me feel.

Meanwhile, Ellie was in a car with Javier. Was she afraid too? Was she afraid of what Javier could possibly make her feel? Or was that fear exclusively mine?

I brushed it out of my thoughts like a loose strand of hair and walked up the stairs to them, my fingers flicking past one another, trying to disperse the nervous energy that was building up.

I stopped in front of Sophia, on the last step so I was at her level. She was petite, not so much in shape but in height. She was always a foot smaller than me though her hips and thighs had weight to them, something that lured me in all those years ago.

“I’m sorry,” I said thickly, my eyes on hers, and meaning it.

I never thought she’d let go of the briefcase. And when she did, it landed on the porch with a bang that echoed in the overhang. The next thing that happened was her open palm meeting my face. She hit me fast, a quick draw, one side of my cheekbone, then the other with the back of her hand, catching the corner of my lip. It stung like hell and I sucked in my breath. Getting angry would do me no good—getting angry was the reason she was my ex-wife.

“I deserved that,” I said quietly, avoiding her eyes.

“Shut up!” she cried out, spittle falling out of her mouth. Ben, bless his innocent heart, whimpered and hugged his mother tighter, refusing to cry. “You shut up. You asshole! You…”

She trailed off and just when I thought all of this was too much for her, she hit me again. Then she burst into tears, her head hanging down, briefcase at her feet. I couldn’t help but look at Ben, my son, who was looking up at me like I was not only a bad man, the bad man that made his mother cry, but a total stranger. I was a stranger to both of them, and it didn’t matter how many letters I wrote. We were all lost to each other.

“Hey,” I said softly, and wrapped my arms around her. She stiffened but let me hold her. I stretched one hand down and placed it on Ben’s head and we stood there for a good few minutes, a family by blood, not heart, while she continued to cry.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” she said, her voice muffled into my tear-soaked chest.

“I did a stupid thing,” I told her, figuring it was better to attempt it than not.

“I know,” she said, the edge returning to her voice. She raised her head, her face inches from mine. I remembered how hard it used to be for me to not kiss her and how easy it was now. The bruises around her eye and cheek where someone—Javier?—had hit her were blooming. It made me feel sick all over again.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and she pulled out of my grasp. “I had the best intentions for Ben in mind throughout all of it. I wanted to escape this life, the life your… brothers… put me in.”

She wiped hard at her tears like they burned. “You put yourself in that life. You—”

“I hit you,” I said. Even she looked a bit shocked at the way I admitted it after all this time. I placed my hands on her shoulders and held her firmly, lowering my head, eyeing her closely. “I hit you. There’s no excuse. I’m done excusing myself. I hit you and I hate myself for it and I hate that it ruined what we had. A family. I can never take it back and I have to live with it. I’m sorry, Sophia. Really, truly sorry for what I did to you.”

She sniffed, seeming to take it in. I didn’t expect her to forgive me and I didn’t even care if she did. As I said to Ellie once, I didn’t regret the consequences of my actions but I did regret the action. And I had been making excuses for it all this time, blaming Sophia for something that was entirely my fault. My temper, my anger, my old friend rage—I wanted to finally kick it to the curb. I wanted to own it, destroy it. Wasn’t that what second chances were about?

I crouched down and pulled up the briefcase. I put it in her hand. “I didn’t earn this money. I didn’t ask for it. I hate what it stands for. If it can give us a second chance, then maybe it’s not all for nothing.”

“Who said I wanted a second chance with you?” she said. She was right. I never assumed she would.

“Because it feels like the right thing to do, to try. Listen, Sophia. I can’t let you go back to the way things were. Your brothers… they turned you over to a fucking madman. That life, that wasn’t a life, that’s not a family. I can be your family.”

“Even though you’re in love with another woman,” she pointed out. “Who was she? Who was this woman who was worth all of this?”

“An old friend,” I said simply, ignoring the nails in my heart. I didn’t even want to say her name, not now while we stood there in Palm Valley, where I could almost feel her getting farther and farther away. I had to focus on what I had right in front of me: Ben and Sophia. Money for a new life. I had to make sure they were safe first before I could even indulge in thoughts about Ellie.

I hated that I had to choose.

“Please, let’s just get out of here. Somewhere safe. We can lay it all out, discuss our next move.”

She turned and looked behind her at the shop, my beautiful shop, built on lies and ink. “This isn’t safe? It’s your home.”

“This will never be safe. And it’s done being my home.”

She nodded, seeming to understand. “So what, you’re going to leave right now, like this? Your father…”

“I’ve already left, Sophia. I shouldn’t even be here.” I shouldn’t have been so careless to think a man like Javier wouldn’t go after me and take the things I loved. He had given some of them back to me, and I had to make it work.

I looked at the GTO, the car that Ellie named Jose, sitting in the driveway. It had seen so much already. It was time for it to see more.

I grabbed Sophia’s hand and tried to grab Ben’s but he pulled away from me. Would he recognize himself inked on the back of my leg? Would he one day realize how much he meant to me? I wanted to feel like a father again. I wanted him to feel like he had a dad.

We had just reached the car when I heard someone call out from the street.

“Camden!”

“Shit,” I swore under my breath, and turned to look. It was Audrey Price, one of my clients. Her pale skin glowed under the hot sun like skin cancer waiting to happen. On her arm was the sleeve of cherry blossoms I had partly filled in a few weeks back. The day I met Ellie. The same cherry blossoms I would later add to Ellie’s leg.

“Who is that?” I heard Sophia whisper.

“A client,” I said, and put on my most charming smile as Audrey approached us. “What’s up, Audrey? How’s the tat?”

She stopped in front of us and quickly glanced at Sophia over her retro shades. She took her in first, then Ben, who was still as quiet as a mouse. Finally she looked to me.

“I came to see you the other day. You were closed,” she said uneasily, and slid her shades back on.

I shrugged as casually as I could muster. “Going on a vacation with my family.”

She frowned, then her head swung to Sophia and Ben again for a better look. Her mouth dropped open. In the stark light, it wasn’t obvious off the bat that Sophia had been knocked around. “Family? I… I had no idea you were… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I told her, knowing that Audrey was running over a few scenarios in her head. She’d always had a female hard-on for me, that much was obvious. It didn’t help that I tattooed her ass late one night and in turn she sucked my dick. Now, all of that, combined with what seemed like a hidden wife and child and obvious case of spousal abuse, probably made things seem that much more wrong.

She never really knew Camden McQueen, did she?

She smiled tightly at me and I went on, trying to put her at ease. “I’m just going off for a bit, need some quality time, that’s all. I’ll reopen when I return. Did you want another session? Let me take a look.”

I reached for her arm as I would normally do, to inspect my work, just to see how it was holding up and if it had somehow gotten more beautiful as it melded with the skin, something I’d noticed time and time again. They say tattoos are permanent, but in my eyes they adapt, ever changing.

She jerked her arm away as if my fingers were needles themselves and shot me another one of those awkward smiles. “I should be going.”

I swallowed my fear, the kind that would paralyze me and keep me here to make sure I wasn’t given a bad name, so no one would think ill of me. “All right. Well, drop by in a week or so.” I could see now I was no longer the hot tattoo artist but something more sinister. In a week, she wouldn’t return. And I wouldn’t be here anyway.

Audrey gave me a vague nod, turned, and quickly walked away, her sex heels echoing on the sidewalk.

“Are all your clients that awkward?” Sophia asked as she moved over to the passenger’s side door of the car.

“I guess none of this looks very good,” I said with a forced shrug.

“It’s beyond looking good,” she said, throwing the briefcase inside and squinting at me gravely. “Because this is all very, very bad, Camden. I don’t think you realize how bad this all is.”

Oh, the thing was, I did.

I took one last look at Sins & Needles and got in the car, not even feeling the heat that only an old car can hold.

*     *     *

I’d been driving for only twenty minutes before the depraved finality of everything settled in. Beneath my hands was the wheel of a car that wasn’t mine and wasn’t his and wasn’t hers, but i. . .