Chapter 35
Harper
The house is packed.
Music plays somewhere in the kitchen. Someone is laughing too loudly near the gift table. The smell of vanilla cake and barbecue sliders hangs in the air.
“Harper! You made it!”
Becca barrels into me, nearly knocking the wind out of my lungs.
“You act like I moved states,” I laugh.
“Wait.” Her eyes widen dramatically as she spots Micah beside me. “Is this the famous Micah?”
Micah stiffens slightly next to me.
“I’m so glad you’re here!” Becca grabs his hands like she’s known him forever. “Harper talks about you constantly.”
My cheeks go hot instantly. “I do not—”
“Yes, you do!” She grins wickedly and turns back to him. “She shows us your Instagram all the time. She also said you—”
“Okay!” I cut in quickly, grabbing Micah’s wrist and dragging him toward the dining room. “You have other guests to harass.”
Becca just laughs and waves.
I don’t stop walking until we’re halfway across the room.
“You talk about me all the time, huh?” Micah asks quietly.
There’s something in his tone I can’t quite read.
I shrug, trying to play it cool. “You’re very talk-about-able.”
“That’s not a word.”
“It is now.”
He studies me for a second, like he’s trying to decide something.
“You showed them my Instagram?” he presses.
“It was one time.”
He huffs a soft laugh, scanning the room full of people around us.
“Looks like Collin isn’t here yet.”
I blink. “What?”
“Collin.” He gestures vaguely. “He’s not here.”
“Why would he be here?”
He looks genuinely confused now. “You said this was a couples shower.”
“It is.”
“And he’s not coming?”
“He’s not friends with Becca,” I say slowly. “He wasn’t invited.”
The expression on Micah’s face shifts.
Something between confusion and frustration.
“But I thought—” He stops himself. Runs a hand through his hair. “I thought this was…you know.”
“What?”
He exhales sharply.
“A fake dating event. To make him jealous.”
Oh.
I stare at him.
“Micah,” I whisper. “I didn’t invite you to make him jealous.”
He goes still.
“I just…” I swallow. Why is this suddenly hard to say? “I wanted you to come.”
He blinks like I’ve spoken another language.
“You wanted me to come?”
“Yeah.” My voice drops. “I didn’t want to go alone. And I enjoy hanging out with you. It doesn’t always have to be strategic.”
He searches my face like he’s looking for the catch.
“We’re friends, right? Friends go to things together. It doesn’t always have to be—”
I stop.
It doesn’t always have to be fake.
The air shifts between us.
He looks almost…wrecked.
Not angry.
Not relieved.
Just undone.
For a second, I think I’ve said something wrong.
Before I can ask, Becca’s sister stands in front of the room. “Time to open gifts!”
Micah straightens instantly, that steady public composure sliding back into place.
But something has changed.
I can feel it.
By the time we leave the shower, I’m starving.
The cucumber sandwiches, and mini cupcakes weren’t exactly filling. Micah and I both pretended we were full, but the second we stepped outside into the warm April air, he looked at me and said, “Burgers?”
I didn’t even hesitate. “Immediately.”
Ten minutes later, we’re sitting in a vinyl booth at a burger joint just down the road, the kind with a buzzing neon sign and a jukebox that hasn’t been updated since 1998.
The food arrives fast. Greasy, glorious, life-saving food.
Micah takes a bite of his burger and studies me over the top of it.
“Becca really loves you,” he says.
I glance up. “She loves everyone.”
“No,” he shakes his head. “The way she talked about you—she thinks you’re going to be an incredible mom someday.”
The words settle over me like a blanket.
“She said that?”
“While you were getting another cupcake.” A faint smile touches his mouth. “She said you’re a natural with kids. That she sees it every day at school.”
He pauses.
“Do you want kids?”
The question hangs between us.
It shouldn’t feel heavy.
But it does.
This is the kind of thing fake boyfriends don’t usually ask.
Then again…nothing about today feels fake.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “I do. Like…a lot of them.”
His expression shifts—surprise mixed with something softer. Something almost hopeful.
“How many is a lot?”
“I want four.” I watch his face carefully.
Most guys flinch at that number. “Maybe more. I know that sounds crazy, but I grew up an only child and I always wished—” I stop, suddenly unsure how exposed I want to be.
“I always wanted a big family. The chaos and the noise, and the love that just keeps multiplying. I want that.”
He’s quiet for a long moment.
I brace myself for the usual response.
That’s a lot.
Wow.
Are you serious?
Instead, he smiles.
“I want six.”
I blink. “Six kids?”
“At least.” He shrugs like that’s perfectly reasonable.
“I’m one of four. Growing up, it was loud and messy, and there was always someone in your business, but I loved it.
I want that. The full house. Big holidays.
Soccer games where you need a spreadsheet to keep track of whose game is when.
” He leans forward slightly, his eyes brighter now. “I want the chaos.”
Something in my chest cracks open.
“Most people think I’m crazy when I say four.”
“Most people are boring.”
I laugh, surprised by how easily it bubbles out of me.
“Okay, but real talk—six kids? That’s a lot of diapers.”
“That’s a lot of everything,” he says easily. “A lot of diapers. A lot of college tuition. A lot of noise.” His grin widens. “A lot of love.”
“A lot of love,” I repeat softly.
The way he’s looking at me when he says it makes my pulse race.
Not like we’re joking anymore.
Not like this is hypothetical.
Like he can see it.
Like he’s picturing it.
Micah wipes his hands on a napkin and leans back in the booth, studying me with that thoughtful look he gets when he’s about to ask something deeper.
“So,” he says casually, “growing up an only child… what was that like? I bet you got all the attention from your parents.”
I let out a small laugh.
“You have no idea.”
He smiles. “Perks of being the only kid.”
I pick at a fry.
“Yeah,” I say slowly. “All the attention.”
He tilts his head slightly. “Why do I get the feeling it wasn’t a positive thing?”
I hesitate.
Because this is the part I don’t talk about.
“Yeah,” I admit quietly. “All the attention was not always ideal.”
I glance up at him.
His expression shifts immediately. Softer. More alert.
“What do you mean?”
I sigh and lean back in the booth, crossing my arms over my chest like I need something solid between us.
“My parents are good people,” I say quickly. “They really are. They love God. They love me. They provided for me. They never missed a recital or a game.”
I pause.
“They were just… strict.”
“How strict?”
“Very.” I let out a humorless breath. “Very religious. Very by the book. If there was a rule, we followed it. If there was a verse, we memorized it. If there was a gray area, we avoided it.”
He doesn’t interrupt.
That almost makes it worse.
“I wasn’t allowed to go to sleepovers. Or dances. Or youth group events unless my parents personally knew every parent in attendance.” I shrug like it’s no big deal. “No dating. Ever. Not even in high school.”
His brows knit slightly.
“That must’ve been hard.”
“It was normal,” I say quickly. “To me, at least.”
The music from the jukebox hums faintly in the background. The booth suddenly feels smaller.
“They believed holiness meant separation,” I continue. “From everything. From culture. From people who didn’t think like we did. From anything that might even look questionable.”
“And you?”
I swallow.
“I was the example at our church. The one who couldn’t mess up. The one everyone watched.”
His jaw tightens slightly.
“So yeah,” I say lightly, forcing a small smile. “All the attention.”
But not the warm kind.
The measuring kind.
The evaluating kind.
“I was always trying to be good enough,” I admit quietly. “Good enough for them. Good enough for church. Good enough for God.”
Micah goes still.
“And if you weren’t?” he asks carefully.
I stare at the table.
“You couldn’t not be,” I say.
The words sit between us.
Heavy.
I shrug again, defensive now. “It’s fine. They weren’t cruel. They weren’t abusive. They were just… intense.”
“And you think that’s why faith feels hard now?” he asks gently.
The question hits deeper than I expect.
“I think,” I say slowly, “that when you grow up being told exactly how to believe and exactly how to behave and exactly how to measure your worth… it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s just performance.”
The word hangs there.
Performance.
I didn’t mean to say it.
But I did.
Micah’s eyes search mine.
“You were never allowed to just…be,” he says quietly.
Something inside me tightens.
“That’s not fair,” I say automatically.
“To who?”
“To them.” My voice sharpens. “They were trying to protect me. They thought they were doing the right thing.”
“I’m not questioning their motives,” he says calmly. “I’m just asking about the impact.”
That lands.
I look away.
“It’s all in or all out.” I admit finally. “And I don’t know how to be all in without feeling like I’m twelve again trying not to disappoint someone.”
The confession feels like it scrapes something raw.
Micah doesn’t rush to fix it.
Doesn’t quote Scripture.
Doesn’t correct me.
He just sits there with me.
And somehow that’s the thing that undoes me most. Not the scripture he didn’t quote. Not the advice he didn’t give. Just—him, steady across a vinyl booth, holding space for something I’ve never said out loud to anyone, and not flinching from the weight of it.
I clear my throat. Pick up a fry I have no intention of eating.
“Okay,” I say, mostly to change the subject. “Your turn. Deepest, darkest secret. Go.”
He huffs a soft laugh. “Not sure I can top that.”
“You absolutely can. You went to space camp three times. There’s more where that came from.”
The tension in the booth shifts, not gone, but gentler. He steals one of my fries. I pretend to be outraged. The jukebox cycles to something old and vaguely country, and neither of us comment on it.
By the time we leave, the parking lot is dark, and the air has cooled to that particular mid-April temperature that can’t decide between jacket and no jacket. I pull mine tighter. Micah walks beside me toward where we parked, hands in his pockets, unhurried.
We stop at my car.
“Hey.” His voice is different. Quieter. The particular tone he uses when he’s been sitting on something and has finally decided to say it.
I look up.
“Can I ask you something?”
My stomach does a small, inconvenient thing. “Sure.”
He tilts his head slightly, studying me with that expression that always makes me feel like he’s reading several pages at once. “Why did you invite me tonight?”
“I told you, Becca’s shower, couples event, I didn’t want to go—”
“Collin wasn’t here,” he says. Quiet. Not accusing. Just true. “He wasn’t invited. There was no one here who needed convincing of anything.” A beat. “So why did you invite me?”
I open my mouth.
Nothing comes out.
The parking lot is quiet around us. A car passes on the street. Somewhere nearby, a wind chime goes off briefly, then stops.
Why did I invite him?
I reach back through the last two weeks, looking for the calculation.
Looking for the moment I thought through the logistics, weighed the optics, asked myself how Collin would read it if he found out.
That’s how this works. That’s how it has always worked.
Every event, every appearance, every call—there’s always been a reason that starts and ends with Collin.
I can’t find it.
I invited Micah because I wanted him there.
That’s the whole thing. I didn’t think about Collin once.
Not when I picked up my phone, not when I typed the message, not when I saw Micah walk through Becca’s front door and something in my chest did that stupid warm thing it keeps doing.
Not once during the whole afternoon. Not during the burgers or the kids’ conversation or the booth or the part where he just sat there and let me be a mess without making me feel like one.
Not once.
The realization lands in stages, each one slightly more alarming than the last.
“I just…” My voice comes out smaller than I intend. “I should go.” I reach for my door handle. “It’s late and I have a full week of…there’s a lot happening with my class right now and I need to—”
“Harper.”
“Thank you for tonight.” I get the door open, which is a victory. “Seriously. The burgers were good. You were right about the onion rings.”
“Yeah, of course,” he says, but his voice is gentle. Watching me go.
I get in. I close the door.
I don’t look at him through the window because I already know what I’ll find, and I cannot deal with whatever that expression is doing to me right now. I start the car, back out, and keep my eyes on the road pulling away.