Colton
My eyes track her glide through the club, smiling at patrons as hands clasp shoulders and lips press against cheeks.
She’s the same Harper she’s always been: commanding and unapproachable, but desired by all.
My eyes are not the only ones focused on her movements, Wade taking my place as her ever-present shadow.
How little he appreciates being so close to her. How much I took it for granted.
She has made good on her word—our conversations have been perfectly amicable. It’s been excruciating. I was prepared for ire and vitriol, for her to hate me for a time and rage against this thing lost between us. I was ready for a fight.
I wasn’t prepared for indifference, as though she spoke the truth when she said there was nothing between us.
I’ve spent four months watching her use that mask on others, wearing a blanket of calm until long after the opponent has fled.
Little by little, I watched her relax in my presence until she was as comfortable with me as she was with her own blood.
That foundation we built is crumbling at my feet, and I find myself once again desperate for a peek behind the mask.
“Stop staring. It’s creepy.” Speaking of her own blood.
“Hello, Sadie. Are you having a good night?” I ask, steeling myself for whatever barb she’s come prepared with. Harper might not want to fight, but her sister hasn’t pulled her punches. At all.
“Better than yours will be,” she replies, her voice laced with mischief—the kind that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand tall—as she concentrates on the tablet cradled in her crook of her arm. Sadie, I have come to learn, is the embodiment of sunshine. Until she isn’t.
She’s sneakier than I ever gave her credit for, appearing in places as though she walked through the wall, silent and menacing.
Sadie’s tactic is subtler than her sister’s, though no less effective.
In many ways, I think she might be more terrifying than her older sister, having learned from the best and twisted that dark monster within to bend with her skill set.
Harper saw the darkness within and let it consume her. Sadie tamed it.
Sadie turns to look at the main doors across the room, a smug smile blooming as they open. My eyes track where her stare is pinned, blood solidifying in its course as I make out the figure crossing the threshold.
“You used my past against me,” she sighs wistfully. “I thought you might like to see how that feels.” She walks away without another word, leaving me to stare as my ex-girlfriend steps forward to be greeted in a warm embrace by Harper.
I’ve crossed the expanse of audience seats before the two women can disentangle from what must be a fake show of affection.
I know for a fact that Vanessa loathes Harper.
Not that she ever knew anything about her to justify the feeling, but that never stopped Vanessa from passing judgement. On anything.
She shouldn’t be here. She isn’t a member. She can’t be here. My cover demands that she isn’t here. Though I know she barely listened to anything I talked about in the two years we were together, she definitely remembers what I do for a living, evident in the way her eyes now sweep over my costume.
She abruptly lets out a shrill laugh, waving one hand dramatically up and down my body, the other coming up to cover her mouth, doing nothing to smother the volume of her derision.
Harper, to her credit, doesn’t smile or show triumph. She merely looks between us, “Do you two know each other?”
Vanessa composes herself quickly, hands smoothing out the front of her pencil skirt.
“You could say that. He used to lecture me about my profession, clean my apartment, and drag me to family events I had no interest in,” she answers, minimizing what should have been a meaningful relationship into one annoyed sentence.
Harper simply tilts her head to the side, waiting for the rest of the explanation.
“We used to date.” She shifts attention from Harper to me, and I feel the weight of that stare like a warning.
“Though he seems to have taken his life in a different direction since then, haven’t you, Colton?
My my, how the mighty have fallen.” Her scoff is an ugly thing, not even trying to hide her judgement about those who work at an establishment she begged and pleaded to gain a membership to.
Harper, however, just lifts a single eyebrow, seemingly out of the loop on Sadie’s method of torture.
“Is that why I was suddenly approved as a member?” Vanessa steps close to me, hand running over my tie as she presses closer, completely ignoring Harper. “Did you miss taking your clothes off for me, handsome? It was the only thing you were good for, after all.”
Her words should hurt, but the only pain I felt at the loss of her in my life was for the time I wasted. I should have realized sooner she would never be the love I wanted or needed.
“Vanessa,” I warn, hand gripping hers to still its movement down my tie, wrenching it away. She sneers at me, never having liked being told no.
“So, what did you do to piss off your colleagues, to have fallen this low? It must have been bad,” she jabs at me, tactless as always.
But I’m not looking at her. My focus is on Harper, waiting for some semblance of a reaction to the insults Vanessa is throwing around carelessly about a place and people she loves so much.
“Oh, I know!” she exclaims, clapping her hands together.
“Did you quit because you weren’t named narc of the—”
“How about a drink?” Harper cuts her off, motioning to one of the bartenders who comes over carrying a menu, sweeping Vanessa into a conversation about vermouth and bitters. Harper turns back to me and takes a deep breath, eyes narrowed.
“Harper, I had no idea she would be here,” I whisper, hoping she believes that I had no part in getting her through the door.
“Take her to my office,” she hisses back.
I try to argue, but she just holds up a hand.
“It doesn’t matter why she is here. She is, and she is about two seconds from ruining everything in an effort to embarrass you.
Take her to my office. She can embarrass you just fine there.
Now.” She turns away, leaving me alone as she rejoins Wade, who stepped back when he had the good sense to smell blood in the water.