Chapter 34 – Wes
THIRTY-FOUR
WES
My texts to Harper have gone unanswered all day while I’m at practice, but when I pull up to the house and see Jules and Ava’s cars parked out front, I’m slightly appeased, knowing she probably got caught up in an impromptu girls’ day.
Except, when I step into the house, I don’t hear raucous laughter in the living room like I normally do when the girls convene here. I check the kitchen and the dining room, finding nothing before I head upstairs to find my wife. Finally, I hear voices coming from Harper’s design room and make my way there.
“Uh, hello?” I ask, leaning into the doorway, a mix of confusion and relief coursing through me when I see Harper and the girls there. Three heads poke up, but a voice continues on, a voice I now realize is Willa Stone’s.
Set aside on a table are the remnants of a delivery lunch and multiple cups of coffee, like they’re hyped up on ideas and excitement. I smile, happy that Harper’s out of the creative funk Jeremy put her into.
“Oh, you’re home, good. We have to talk,” Harper says, looking at me, shifting the notebook in her hand to the side and crossing her arms on her chest.
“I can see that.” I step further into the room and toward the cork board that looks decidedly different than I’m used to. “Hey, ladies,” I say, waving to Ava and Jules.
They return the favor, but my wife continues to glare at me. I’d be a bit worried about that, but I can’t seem to focus on that too long, because now that I'm closer, I can see the cork board better. Harper seems to have taken everything off of it, replacing it with lists and ideas and, more alarmingly, a printout of her ex’s face, pinned to the board and seemingly used as a dartboard , pens sticking into the photo.
Although I’m glad to see my face isn’t pinned to her cork board, I realize that combined with her glare, something clearly happened.
“Hey, Wes,” Willa says through the phone sitting on the table.
“Hey, Willa,” I say distractedly, reading the notes pinned to the board. It looks like a crime scene investigation board, and I’m surprised she hasn’t put up red string connecting things.
Find proof of Jeremy's cheating, is pinned on, with contact PI underlined beneath it.
Is blackmail illegal? is on a note card, and a sticky note with what I think is a US legal code on it is stuck underneath.
How do you prove blackmail? is beneath that. Also on the board is a copy of what I recognize as the contract she signed at the police station, handing over the designs to Jeremy, with notes in the margins.
But most alarming on the cork board is the list that says Ruin Jeremy Vaughn.
I think it’s the one she showed me on her phone that we then added to, though some of them are crossed out, and already accomplished, and the women have clearly been busy adding more to the bottom.
“Are you guys fucking with Jeremy again?” I ask with a sigh. Jules and Ava look at one another, clearly having a silent conversation, something I decide probably isn’t great.
No one gives me an answer, and Harper continues to glare at me, which is an answer in and of itself. “What happened?” Suddenly, anxiety takes over as I realize they wouldn’t be acting like this out of nowhere. Something happened to once again reignite their taste for vengeance.
“We have to talk,” Harper repeats, standing this time, and with this new view, the words feel foreboding.
“That doesn't sound good,” I say as she walks toward me.
“You’re in the doghouse,” Ava says with a delighted smile. It’s a good thing, I suppose, that she’s smiling and not planning revenge on me .
“Come on,” Harper says, walking past me without a second glance and out of the living room. I follow her until we’re in our bedroom, where she closes the door behind us before turning to face me, jaw tight and eyes burning.
Yeah, Harper is definitely unhappy with me.
“What’s going on?” I ask. I reach for Harper, desperate to touch her, especially now that I’m on a different footing, but she shifts back, crosses her arms on her chest, and gives me a glare.
Fuck.
“I have to ask you a question, and it’s important to me that you tell the truth.” I open my mouth to tell her I’ll always tell the truth, but she keeps talking. “The whole truth. No omissions, no nothing.” Now I'm nervous because the way she says it makes it clear she believes that I’ve done the opposite recently.
“Of course, Harper.”
She closes her eyes for a moment, taking in a deep breath to center herself before they open again, and her eyes are locked on me. “Did you have a private investigator look into Jeremy?”
That takes me back, but slowly, I nod.
“Well, yeah. I...right after you told me about what happened with your designs, I got in touch with one.” I knew even then that Jeremy definitely had skeletons in his closet, and after he fucked with Harper, I wanted to make sure we knew what we were working with, just in case. Harper didn’t want to do anything to fuck with him, but at the very least, I didn’t want us to get blindsided with anything. I stare at her, my brow furrowed as I try and pick through what I know so far and understand what’s happening. “How did you know about that?”
“Does it matter?” she asks, attitude leaking into the words.
“Well, yes, because the point of a PI is to be private, and now you’re looking at me like you hate me, and I don’t like that at all. If part of that reason is because they told you something they found and it upset you, that’s going to be a problem.”
“Why were you hiding that from me?” she asks, disappointment and hurt lacing in her words, almost indistinguishable beneath the anger.
“I wasn’t—” I start, then remember her request that I not lie and realize I almost just did. I sigh and run a hand through my hair. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up or for you to think we’d find something to get back at him. In my defense, while I agree I should have told you, it’s not like I was going to great lengths to hide it from you.” I reach out to push her hair back, desperate to touch her, but she steps away from me, putting her arms across her chest. “Harper?—”
“Don’t touch me,” she says. “I need to stay focused.”
“What?” I ask, fighting the small smile dying to come out because even now, angry and clearly out for blood, she’s fucking cute.
“If you touch me, it’ll mess with my head, and I won’t be as mad at you as I am.” She pauses and glares. “And I’m really mad at you, Wes.”
“You’re mad at me?” I ask, though it’s obvious she is, I’m just not super clear as to why or how.
“Of course, I’m mad at you! You broke my trust, Wes.” My heart drops at her words, at the mere thought that I hurt Harper when I thought I was helping. “You didn’t tell me about the investigator, and that put me in a shitty position when Jeremy cornered me.”
The air in the room changes instantly as my gut twists and my blood starts to heat.
“You talked to him? Why would you talk to him? Why didn’t you tell me you were going to talk to him? When was this?” My own anger is rising to match hers because I don’t like the idea of that man breathing the same air as her, of her willingly putting herself in his presence, much less doing it behind my back.
She sighs and shakes her head before sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Not on purpose. I went out to grab coffee today, and he was there.”
“Why was he there?”
She shrugs. “To talk to me, I think. It was like he knew I’d be there somehow.”
“Is he following you?” I ask, sharp panic rushing through me at the idea of him following Harper or keeping tabs on her in any way. My mind moves through options to ensure she’s safe without suffocating her, already planning a call to Jaime to get a man on her. Though, it seems she got there before me.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so, Jaime didn’t find anything on my car, but I’m having him go through my phone in the morning to make sure there’s nothing hidden on there where he could track me. If you called me and I didn’t answer, that’s why.”
“Jaime knows about this?”
“I needed things from him, so yeah,” she says nonchalantly.
I decide I can tackle her talking to Jaime before me later, instead focusing on the issue at hand. “So you talked to Jeremy at the coffee shop?”
“Not willingly. He forced me to sit with him because he told me he knew everything. He knows about you hiring a private investigator, about our marriage not being real.” I open my mouth to argue, but she keeps speaking. “He knows about Riggins and Stella’s baby. About their fears that the media would take it too far, that Stella is high risk.” I can feel the blood leave my face, making my head feel light with the panic of what she’s saying. Jeremy having anything over Harper is bad, especially with my gut feeling that he wasn’t going to just leave her alone after getting those first designs.
I can see it mirrored on her face: the panicked feeling of being backed into a corner. I can only imagine how she felt being sideswiped with this in public, where there were probably eyes on her, and she had to keep her cool. Guilt floods through me, but I force myself to push it aside to get through the rest of this conversation.
“How does he know?”
“Laurel,” she says, hatred taking over her face. “She called him after she was fired.”
My eyes close and I take in a deep breath. “I should have fucking listened to you about her.” Harper told me she was trouble after the first time she met her, but I didn’t listen. Laurel always seemed loyal, but it seems that was a facade. I’ll have to call my lawyers, since she violated her NDA and a dozen other clauses in her contract, but even if I sue her to high heaven, it won’t change the fact that Jeremy knows some of my—and my loved ones’— best kept secrets.
“You live and you learn. Next time, when your incredibly intelligent, beautiful, funny wife tells you someone is a red flag, you’ll listen.” I suppose her joking is a good sign, even if she’s doing it to cover the hurt and anger she clearly feels.
“He said if you don’t drop the PI and if I don’t step out of the limelight, he’s bringing it to the press. He wants us to get divorced because he thinks you’ll stop digging if we end things.”
“Absolutely not, Harper.”
“He’s going to say the tour is delayed because Riggins is drinking again, that Stella is leaving him, or some other bullshit that will cause mayhem.”
I listen to her, trying to piece it together with what she’s telling me, to understand what it means, but I don’t. I shake my head at her.
“But that doesn’t matter. They’re telling everyone soon anyway. There’s an article already being written, and photos have been taken. They’re?—”
“That’s what I said.” She takes in a deep breath, letting it out slowly before she meets my eyes again. “And then he threatened Ava and Jules again. Apparently, there’s still a police report, and he’s been adding to it after our most recent antics. He has some buddy on the force or something who he’s been talking to, keeping it on the back burner. It wouldn’t be him pressing charges but the city. If I don’t do what he wants, he’s going to hit everyone: you, Stella, the band. Ava and Jules and me.” Suddenly, her face changes, a guard coming over it as she looks at her hands. “You were right. I think he always had this as a plan, Wes. There was nothing we could have done to stop it. He was always going to try and come for more.”
My brow furrows with confusion. “More?”
“He saw your post that went viral. He wants the final design.” My jaw goes tight, my teeth aching with the force, but then she finishes. “And the new ones I’ve been working on.”
“Harper, no,” I say instantly, shaking my head. Panic courses through me as I try and think of a way out of this. The PI said he has some leads, but he hasn’t found anything solid yet, at least not that I’m aware of. Clearly, though, there’s something there, something Jeremy is afraid we’ll find, or he wouldn’t be so adamant about having the investigator back off. I’m racking my mind for ideas and plans, ways to solve this for Harper, but then pause with confusion as a triumphant smile spreads on her lips.
“I’m not giving it to him, of course. We have a plan.”
“We?”
“Me, the girls. Willa. I have a meeting with Leo tomorrow. I want to meet with the PI, too, if we can make that happen, though Jaime wants to make sure he wasn’t compromised first and that it was Laurel who told Jeremy about everything.”
“Laurel made the appointment with the investigator for me, so she definitely knows. You have a meeting with Leo? When did all this happen?”
“The Jeremy stuff was this morning, and I called the girls on my drive home. They met me here soon after. We’ve been working on it since.” It’s six now, so we’re probably looking at at least seven hours since Jeremy cornered her.
“Fuck, Harper. Why didn’t you call me?” I expect her to look at me with a hint of guilt or embarrassment, but instead, she tips her chin up, shoulders going back.
“I needed time.”
“Time? For what? I’m your husband, Harper.”
“Exactly. You’re my husband, and you should have told me you hired a PI.”
I throw my hands up. “So you would get annoyed that I’m digging into this when you wanted to just let it go?” Her jaw goes tight, and I know I’m digging a deeper hole, but right now I don’t actually care. I shake my head. “I knew you wanted to move on, but I wasn’t taking the chance that something like this was going to happen. And it did. Now we’re ahead of things, and I have someone already digging into it.”
A moment passes, and she closes her eyes, taking a deep breath before opening them again and looking at me. I’m taken aback by what I see, the anger pushed aside, the irritation and indignation gone, and all that is left is the hurt.
Fuck.
“That’s not how this works, Wes,” she says softly. “I was in a relationship where I trusted blindly and where I was kept in the dark on things, and I didn’t like how that felt. You know that. You know how I struggled with stepping into the sun and realizing how deeply misguided I was. And you did the same thing. I needed time to come to terms with that, to gain an understanding of why, to catch my breath. Because no matter what I feel for you, I won’t let that happen again, won’t let someone make decisions for me, and keep secrets. It’s not the relationship I want, and it’s not something I’ll stand for again. You can’t break my trust like that, not if you want this to work long-term.”
“I didn’t break your trust—” I start, but when I see the flash of hurt on her face at my denial, the way her eyes water, I stop and really listen to what she’s trying to tell me. I force myself to set my well-meaning but possibly self-serving intentions to the side and see things from her point of view. She is fresh out of a relationship where she was manipulated, used, and lied to, and then I turned around and moved in that same direction.
“You don’t get to decide if you broke my trust or not, Wes. You don’t get to decide when you cross my lines: I do. And if you can’t respect that, then tell me now, because I’m not going back to being the person who accepts that treatment.” She’s serious, her face stern and her shoulders back. Even though I see the hurt in her eyes at the thought of stepping away from this, I know she’ll do it if she has to.
I’m so fucking proud of her.
“You’re right,” I say, taking in a deep breath. I want to step to her, to pull her into my arms, but I need her to decide if I deserve that.
“I am?” she asks, slightly confused.
“Of course you are. You’re an adult. You’re strong, and I don’t have to move around you with kid gloves, to manipulate the truth to do what I think is right. I should have talked to you. This is a partnership, not a dictatorship. You have a say in how these things go, and I need to respect that.”
“Oh,” she says, her brow furrowing, clearly confused.
“What, did you expect me to argue?”
“Well, yeah,” she says with a small smile.
“You spoke your case. I listened. I don’t like that you didn’t call me immediately after you left that coffee shop, but trust and respect goes both ways. Next time, I’ll tell you if I’m hiring a PI to look into your shithead ex, and I’d appreciate a call if you get blackmailed.”
“Deal,” she says with a small smile.
I sigh and shake my head. Relief runs through me when she steps forward, putting an arm around my neck and letting me pull her into my arms before I gently press my lips to hers. My body loosens just a bit at her nearness, and I come to the understanding that so long as I have this—so long as we have this — we can tackle anything.
Ava and Jules let out a laugh that makes its way down the hall, reminding me we’re not alone in the house and she’s been partaking in some kind of planning session for the better part of the day.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask, reaching up and pushing a lock of copper hair that fell out of the clip at the back of her head behind her ear. When she gives me a cringe of a smile, I know instantly I am not going to like whatever it is she's about to say.
“We have to break up,” she says bluntly.
“What?” I move to step back, but she holds on tighter, not letting me leave. She gives me a shrug as if that’s all the explanation I’ll get. “We are not breaking up, Harper.”
“He knows everything and is going to come after Ava and Jules if we don’t, as well as you guys.”
“You try and break up with me, Harper, I’m dragging you onto a plane and hiding away with you for days, weeks, months, until you see things my way, until all of this blows over.”
She smiles wide, putting a hand to my cheek and smiling wide. “You’re so handsome when you get all angry and self-righteous.” I open my mouth to argue, but she shakes her head. “It’s happening. Not forever and not for real, just to appease Jeremy while we enact phase two of Project Ruin Jeremy Vaughn. Now, are you going to keep arguing with me, or can we sit down and figure this out? Together.”
I let a small smile tip on my lips, knowing I’d do anything for this woman.
“Fill me in and give me my marching orders.”