Harper
“Do you know why I like to work out in the morning before work, Sadie?” I ask, fingers gripping the door frame to her tiny bathroom as I watch her style one dark curl, twirling it around her finger before she flicks it over her shoulder, already in search of the next section.
“Hmmm, because you’re a masochist?” She grins, not bothering to look over at me.
“Because it helps me relax, so I’m pleasant to everyone.”
Now she does turn towards me, the last curl cascading down her back as she turns the curler off and grabs for the brush before she answers.
I swear to God, if she starts using the brush as a microphone, I will lose it.
“This is you relaxed?” she pauses, waving the brush at me. “And pleasant?”
“No, because I’m here instead of working out,” I grumble, hand tightening around the frame until my knuckles turn white.
“It wouldn’t have anything to do with the blond doofus that has been camped out at Cirque the last two weeks because I won’t return his outside access to the gym, would it?
” she asks, tone a little sharper in the accusation as she slips under my arm to rummage through her piles of clothes stacked around the apartment.
“I thought you were too evolved to hold a grudge?” I avoid the question, looking around her cramped space, wondering how she finds anything.
“Turns out, I’m actually not that evolved,” she scoffs, shrugging on a fluffy pink sweater that looks like she skinned a Muppet before sitting at her vanity to sort through the various makeup bottles and brushes that clutter the space.
“We are going to be late,” I deadpan, folding my arms over the pressed black pantsuit I have on. Unlike Sadie, who sets seventeen alarms just to snooze every single one, I’ve been awake for two hours and ready to go for one.
Sadie looks at me through the mirror as she contorts her face to sweep mascara through her lashes, batting her eyes dramatically at me, “No we won’t, relax.”
I did not relax. And we were late.
“Now I’m behind. I don’t have coffee and I had to hear about the difficulties of getting the perfect winged eyeliner,” I grumble as I shuffle into my office, bags in tow that I unceremoniously plop into the corner behind my desk.
“Did you know that the perfect wing is actually really simple?” I mock Sadie’s high pitched cheery tone as I drop into my office chair and bury my face in my hands, preparing myself for the barrage of emails that will greet me.
The door to my bathroom suddenly opens, making me jolt in my seat as I’m hit with a gust of steam and humidity. I stand immediately, ready to throw whatever I can get my hands on.
“Why are you talking to yourself?”
I’m so disoriented, it takes me a moment to realize who the voice belongs to, the clarity surfacing just as Colton saunters through the cloud of billowing steam towards me, a towel wrapped low on his hips. Hiding nothing.
My mouth waters, my whole body betraying me as my thighs involuntarily clench together as drips of water bead down his abs.
He lied to you, he betrayed you. Get it together.
“The staff showers are backstage. Wade can show you if you forgot where they are,” I say, gesturing to the door with a flourish.
“Oh, I know where they are, but I prefer yours. Holds a memory I like to revisit from time to time,” he smirks before reaching back into the bathroom for a bundle of clothes.
“Colton, you can’t—” my words stall as he comes to stand directly in front of my desk, dropping the towel and smiling.
It’s not his cock, heavy and hanging between his thighs, that I can’t stop looking at. It’s the black swirls of ink that span the width of one thigh and trace all the way across the other.
The crisp onyx lines show no signs of age or wear, the tattoo freshly inked on his unmarred skin. He doesn’t have any tattoos—I would know. I’ve traced every inch of his body with my tongue.
This is…new. And it’s for me.
“You…why would you…what were you…when?” I stammer, not sure where to start when the only thing I want to do is throw my desk to the side and trace the lines with my nail.
“Do you like it?” he asks, sounding sure of the answer.
He knows I do. How could I not? The ribbons twisted around the drama mask that flow from one thigh to the other, playing around the comedy mask before disappearing around the other side of his leg.
Cirque’s logo. But not the formal one that I hired a professional to do.
This is…mine. The sketch hastily drawn by a girl with a dream and no money that’s pinned to the back wall of a dingy bar.
His skin shows the messy lines of my success and failures, the struggles to get here, like reading a timeline of my life on his body.
I don’t know how he did it, how he managed to get the picture from the bar, or sneak it out past Gus. I swallow thickly, working overtime to bury all the ways this makes me feel. I should just tell him I hate it, that I hate him. Both lies.
“Why would you do that?” I ask instead, refusing to answer a question we both know the answer to.
He slides his boxer briefs up, followed by his pants, before stepping up to the opposite side of the desk from where I lean forward. He lays both palms flat on the surface, bringing his face only inches away from mine as he leans down.
“You said there was nothing left. I don’t believe that.
I refuse to believe that. You were already a part of me.
Now I've just made it official.” He tilts my chin up with a single finger, drawing my gaze away from where his slutty little thigh tat is covered to his face.
“There is no future for me that doesn’t have you in it.
If you want to be my enemy, that’s fine.
I will keep loving you. You want to make my life hell?
Fine, I will keep loving you. I don’t know how to stop, and I don’t want to learn.
Loving you is the best thing I have ever done, and I won’t make another mistake by pretending I don’t want to be madly, deeply, in love with you.
” He takes a long breath before he continues, taking my silence as permission.
“I have lied about a lot of things to a lot of people. But not that. Never that.”
He straightens, pulling his shirt on as he turns toward the door.
“Colton?” I say, still in the same position, not trusting myself to move yet, afraid my legs might give up and let me tumble down into a puddle at his feet.
He stops, turning around, eyebrows high with anticipation.
“I like it,” I clear my throat, gesturing to his legs. “Keep it clean. If you die from an infection, the DEA will have my head on a spike.”
He smiles as he opens the door, colliding with a broad chest on the other side.
Wade has his hands on his hips, looking down the few inches that separate the two men with a frown.
Colton laughs, squeezing through the barely there space Wade left between himself and the wall, reaching up to pat him on the cheek as he makes a great escape.
Wade watches him leave with wide, shocked eyes as I start to chuckle until he registers the sound, head whipping back to me. The laughter dies in my throat at the look he sends my way, not in anger, but concern.
As much as I want to believe he is this angry at my broken heart, I think it has a little more to do with the blond singer walking around with a small limp.
Nothing was broken when Agent Bronly shoved Stella backstage, evidently trying to stop her from destroying evidence, when she tried to pull something from her vanity during the raid.
A rolled ankle that needed some ice and rest, but that hasn’t stopped Wade from watching her as she moves through the club, always there if she looks unsteady on her wobbly foot.
He never interferes, staying a respectable distance away, but always ready.
“Careful, Harper,” is all he says as he closes the door to my office. It’s all it takes to feel a fresh wave of guilt and anger sweep through me.
He betrayed me.
He lied to me.
He loves me.
He hurt me.
He played me.
He loves me.
I don’t know how long I sit there, fighting with the voice in my head, trying to remember if there was ever a time that I believed love was enough. That love was the best medicine, and time could heal all wounds.