Chapter 2
I’d always been impulsive, something my dad loved to remind me of whenever we had our weekly Facetime phone calls.
But the truth was, I hadn’t been that impulsive, wild girl in years. Truly, not since the summer we moved to Maple Grove.
I mean, sure, I still had moments of acting on impulse when I was in high school. But, it was more: Order the triple decker ice cream fudge sundae vs. Drink myself into a stupor and begin an insane business plan that includes moving back to my hometown.
My little puddle jumper plane landed in Manchester, NH after an extremely long flight that included three different layovers and getting poor Jules through two different country’s customs.
In my carry-on, I kept all the rare books with me, not letting them out of my sight for even a second.
Unfortunately, thanks to Jules’ bladder, the soiled copy of Pride and Prejudice reeked of cat piss.
And therefore, so did I.
I got every dirty look imaginable from people on that plane.
Yep, that was me. The crazy cat pee lady.
Maple Grove was only about an hour away from Dartmouth, but I assured my father that I didn’t need a ride. The university had arranged for someone to pick me up and apparently I had negotiated housing as part of my fee.
Drunk Harper is a badass boss bitch.
While I don’t recommend making multi-thousand dollar purchases while intoxicated, I had to hand it to myself… this time almost seemed to work out.
As long as I can get the ammonia smell from Jules’ pee out of the paper fibers of this book. Otherwise, I was totally and completely screwed.
I inhaled deeply as I stepped out into the cool, early spring air of New Hampshire. I’d almost forgotten that smell that I loved so much. England always had this dampness in the air, but New Hampshire was crisp, even as the sun was up and starting to warm the chill out of the dying winter air.
Exhaling a relieved sigh that I’d finally made it, I set Jules’ cat carrier on top of my rolling luggage and pushed them gently curbside of the pickup area, waiting and looking for any sign of someone from Dartmouth. I had no idea how I was supposed to recognize them.
“Harper!” a voice called out to me from somewhere to my left. I swiveled around to look and six cars down, I could just barely make out a man waving from beside an Audi.
I waved back and grabbed my bags, rolling them toward his car.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but there was something so incredibly casual about the way he just shouted out to me. I couldn’t see his face anymore, because he’d walked to the back of the Audi to open the trunk.
As I got closer and closer, I could see the dark dusting of hair on his forearms, peeking out from beneath the light blue cashmere sweater pushed up to his elbows.
A head of dark hair curled around his ears, but was cropped short at his neckline. A blazer was draped across the backseat with suede elbow patches.
He popped out from the back of the car, hopping onto the sidewalk. “Harper,” he said, blue eyes bright. “My God. It’s good to see you.”
I froze midstep and my heart, my poor aching heart fluttered against my ribcage.
“Adam?!” I hissed.
It couldn’t be. I was hallucinating, right?
“What… what are you doing here?” I managed to ask, despite the frog lodged in my throat.
He blinked with momentary confusion that morphed into irritation. “What are you talking about? We discussed this.”
“We did?”
“Yeah! For like an hour and a half when you called the library two nights ago.”
Wediscussed this.
Me and Adam… the night I called the Dartmouth library.
The ninety-eight minute phone call. I was talking with Adam that night.
Is that how I got this gig? Because my stupid ex-boyfriend who I hadn’t spoken to in seven years felt bad for me and tossed me a lifeline?
This seriously couldn’t get any more humiliating.
Holy shit. I knew he’d gone to Dartmouth, of course. But that was years ago, for undergrad. I had no clue he was still there. “Are you… like, a PhD candidate or something?”
His face twisted. “I finished my dissertation last year,” he snapped. “As I told you on the phone.”
Oh God. Oh fucking fuckity fuck.
This was bad. I couldn’t remember our conversation from the other night because I was too damn drunk. I only knew what Daphne had filled me in on and what the Dean had confirmed in an email to me the following day.
And I couldn’t admit any of that to Adam without him potentially walking away from this whole deal leaving me with massive debt and a $7,000 litter box for Jules.
I cleared my throat. “I guess I thought I would be dealing directly with Dean Walters since that’s who had confirmed everything with me via email yesterday.”
I held my breath, waiting for his response.
Finally, his stony expression softened, just the slightest bit.
“Yeah. I, um, tried to get Dean Walters as well as the head of my department to take the lead with you… but since the fire was my fault, they said it was up to me to fix this mess.”
Fire. What fucking fire? What was he talking about?
“Never in a million years did I think Harper Meyer would be my knight in shining armor, coming to save the day.” He gave a self-deprecating chuckle that was so familiar, it nearly cracked my chest right open. Then, he shoved his fingers through his hair, raking it back from his forehead, just like he used to do nervously in high school, too.
I gulped, not really sure how to respond. I hadn’t touched Adam in seven years. Not since the morning after I’d lost my virginity to him when I gave him a vacant kiss goodbye.
Reaching out, I patted his arm, awkwardly. “It’s gonna be okay,” I said quietly. “I’m really good at my job. I haven’t lost a client yet.”
Technically that was true, even if I was omitting the part about Dartmouth being my first ever client.
A smile ticked up the corner of his mouth and he gestured toward my bag, silently offering to help with it.
I lifted Jules’ carrier off of my luggage and in a swift motion, Adam lifted it like it was weightless, dropping it gently into the trunk of his SUV.
Muscles strained against the fibers of his thin cashmere sweater. Holy crap. Gone was the teenage boy who was all gangly limbs and goofy proportions.
This Adam was all man. It was like someone had taken the statue of the Adam I once knew and carved more and more into it, chiseling, defining. I could still see remnants of the high school Adam I knew. The slope of his nose was the same. The full, pillowy lips. But the cut of his biceps, the sharp lines of his muscles were thicker, broader. The lines around his eyes and mouth, deeper and more distinguished. He was all man now. And I had to squint to recognize the face of the boy I once knew.
“I owe you one, Harper. I really do,” he said, gently shutting the trunk and crossing around to the driver’s side of his car. I opened the backseat, sliding my carry-on bag and Jules inside as he finished his thought. “... Even if you are just doing it because you feel guilty.”
I froze, bent across the back seat, my spine going stiff. “Excuse me?”
He blinked in surprise as though he had no concept of how insulting that last statement was. “I just mean, whatever your motives, I appreciate it.”
“No,” I shook my head, and slammed the backseat door shut before I slid into the passenger side and buckled up beside him. “You said that I feel guilty. What the hell do I have to be guilty about?”
“Look, I didn’t mean to bring up the past. Just forget I said anything, okay?”
“Absolutely not. I want to know what you mean? What should I feel guilty about?” I pressed.
I knew what he was about to say. We’d never had the fight. The final blowup about him leaving months early for summer classes at Dartmouth.
We never had any fight, actually. We just sort of vanished like steam into the air.
“You’re joking, right?” he snorted. “Harper, we lost our virginity to each other and then you never returned my calls. Not once.”
“I did return your call. I returned the call when you finally left me a message telling me the truth about your summer school here at Dartmouth! Until you admitted to me that you were leaving, I didn’t want to hear from you.”
Adam drew back a little, the corners of his eyes tightening. “You knew about that?”
“Yeah. I knew about that,” I whispered. I wasn’t about to go into what all I knew or that horrible conversation I’d overheard with his dad.
“Why didn’t you just tell me you knew? Why didn’t you talk to me like an adult, Harper?”
“Because I wasn’t an adult, Adam! Neither of us were. I was eighteen and hurt. And it wasn’t just about you leaving for Dartmouth early.”
“Okay then what else was it about?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. This was not the conversation I’d planned on having today. Especially not after a twelve hour flight and very little sleep. “Does it really matter?” I asked quietly. “It was years ago. We’re different people now. Just know… I don’t feel guilty.”
His jaw twitched. Yet another muscle that hadn’t been nearly as defined seven years ago.
There was a knock on the driver’s side window that caused us both to jump. Airport security stood there, twirling his finger. “Keep moving,” he said, voice gruff. “You can’t idle here.”
Adam gave him a wave through the window. “You got it, we’re leaving now,” he said as he turned the ignition and started the engine up.
“Just one more question, Harper,” he said, pulling out into the slow crawl of traffic.
“Okay,” I said, as I slid my gaze toward him with raised eyebrows.
“What the hell is that awful smell?”