Chapter 6 Orion #3
“It’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine…” She waved a hand.
“But anyway, I never knew my dad, so I feel that absence you’re talking about.
Like there’s a part of me that will always be a huge mystery to me too.
” Harper turned to me, her eyes liquid dark in the dimness.
“Maybe you playing the piano is trying to… I don’t know.
Feel into that absence and fill it with something beautiful. ”
Bloody hell, her soft words slammed into my chest, and then sank into my heart, making it ache with grief for something I never had, and long for something I wanted at the same time.
I swallowed hard. “It’s just not in the cards for me,” I said gruffly. “My brothers and I are part of the company. That’s what we’re going to do.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
A silence fell, and I cleared my throat.
“Now that we’ve thoroughly exhausted the subject of me,” I said, “we’re going to even things up and spend approximately fifteen hours talking about you.”
Harper puffed her cheeks. “I don’t know if the subject of me would fill up fifteen minutes, let alone fifteen hours.”
“Bollocks.”
“Seriously. I’m almost eighteen, but I haven’t done anything yet. I’ve lived in Pittsburgh and now Rhode Island, so that makes a grand total of two places I’ve been to in my entire life.”
“Really?”
“Really,” she said. “I have an empty passport because some friends and I once planned a road trip to Canada, but my mother had a work emergency. I had to stay home and take care of my little brother.” Her gaze went to the sand at our feet. “She’s had a lot of emergencies.”
I sensed the gulf between her experiences and mine stretching as wide as the ocean before us.
She glanced up at me. “I’m whining, right? Sorry, I just feel like… Nothing, never mind.”
“Tell me.”
“No, it’s dumb.”
“Hey,” I said. “I don’t know you all that well, but I can safely say ‘dumb’ is not a word I’d ever associate with you.”
“Are you trying to flatter me into telling you something personal?”
“Did it work?”
“Seems so.” Harper looked out toward the ocean.
“My whole life has been nothing but stress. It runs through me like a current, all the time. I feel like I’m sitting in a sling shot and one day it’s going to snap.
I’ll go flying into a bright, brilliant future of my own making, or straight into the ground.
So I spend every waking hour on the lookout.
Planning, studying, being vigilant. Because if I am going to get smashed to bits, I want to be prepared.
As if it won’t hurt as bad if I see it coming.
The only thing worse than being smashed to bits is not seeing it coming.
” She shook her head. “That feels like death.”
Her words hung in the cold air, but her trust in me at that moment was soft and warm.
She’d laid something deeply personal—and real—into my hands for safekeeping...
but I didn’t have the first idea what to say.
I wanted to tell her I knew how she felt.
That I had the smallest iota of understanding, but I couldn’t.
Any tightrope I walked had a safety net below it a mile wide.
It’s why I was going into the family business. Because it was safe.
And piano isn’t.
The silence became too much. Harper hunched deeper into my jacket. “So anyway…”
“Doesn’t matter,” I blurted.
“Sorry?”
“It doesn’t matter if you’re catapulted into the dirt,” I said. “You’ll pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and go again. But for what it’s worth, my money is on the brilliant future.”
Harper studied me, gauging my sincerity. I held her gaze, the space between us growing shorter, the air warmer. Only the crashing of the waves on the shore and the moonlight. We both started to speak at the same time.
“Go ahead,” she said.
“No, ladies first.”
“I don’t know what I was going to say,” she said with a small laugh.
“Me, neither.”
“You? At a loss for words?”
“Yeah, that was a lie…” My eyes roamed her delicate face, her large eyes fringed with long lashes, her full lips. “I was about to say that I’m glad Bandit stole your money.”
“You are?”
I nodded.
“We would’ve met in chemistry class,” she said.
“It wouldn’t have been the same,” I murmured. “In the hallway, it was perfect.”
My words disarmed her, defenses down, her beautiful face open. Her mouth too, lips parted, and I wanted to kiss her. Badly. Severely. A needy desire that wasn’t born of lust but something else. Something real. For the first time, my heart seemed to be reaching for something real. Her. This girl…
Harper sat back and quickly looked away. “We shouldn’t.”
“Why not?” I blurted like a dope. Rejection wasn’t something I encountered often, if ever. I was off my game. She threw me off my game because I liked her, and I never liked anyone.
“Why not?” She fixed me a look, her eyes glassy, fighting sudden tears. “Are you making fun of me too?”
“What? No, of course not.”
“We just met, for one thing. And for another, I know the score. You’re super rich and popular and I’m not.”
“I don’t care about any of that.”
“I’m sure you believe that’s true, but…” Harper stopped talking and looked at me, and I could see all the ways she’d been hurt this week reflected in her eyes. “You’re a good guy, Orion. But I can’t be some girl you hook up with on Saturday night and ignore on Monday.”
I ran a hand through my hair, a knot of words tangled in my throat. Which had never happened to me with a girl before. I’d never felt anything for a girl before.
Harper smiled at my obvious struggle, but the sadness shone through, like cracks in the armor.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she said. “I get it. Believe me, I get it.”
“What? No, I was just—”
A shrill voice cut through the air. “Orion. There you are.”
Harper and I jumped off the log as if it were on fire. Elowen Blake came bounding up, drunk and unsteady. She threw her arms around my neck and planted a sloppy kiss on my cheek.
“What are you doing over here?” she said, her eyes on Harper. “We’ve been looking all over for you. Tucker wants to go on a packy run. Are you cool to drive?”
I should’ve gotten rid of Elowen. I should’ve told her to fuck off. I should’ve asked Harper to go with me somewhere quiet and private so I could tell her she was the first girl I shouldn’t have tried to kiss right away, and that’s why I tried to.
Try explaining that one…
“Sure,” I heard myself saying instead. “I can drive.”
“Let’s go.” Elowen eyed Harper up and down. “Can I help you?”
“Jesus,” I muttered. “There’s no need to—”
“It’s all good,” Harper said sharply. “I was just leaving.”
“Harper, wait—”
Too late. She strode off, leaving me with Elowen, who was so drunk she could barely stand.
Fucking brilliant.
“Hey,” Elowen breathed wetly in my ear, running her finger along my jawline. “You want to get out of here?”
“Yes, love. I’m taking you home.”
“Mm, yes, please, love,” she purred, and her fingers began a migration down my chest, southward.
“Keep to yourself, please.” I removed her grabby hand. “I’m driving you home to sleep it off.”
“Come on, Orion,” she whined. “You’re torturing me. Let’s make us a thing already—”
A scream pierced the night.
I turned in time to see Jack Wallace, Emery’s older brother, pull his fist out of the bonfire, his hand a flaming torch.
Elowen and I froze. It seemed as if the entire student body around the bonfire froze. Only Dean, Harper, and Emery rushed toward Jack. Before I even knew what was happening, the three of them had gotten Jack off the ground and were taking him to the parking lot.
“Holy shit,” Elowen said. “Did you see that?”
“Yeah, I saw that.”
Even from this distance, I saw Jack’s burning hand. I saw his grimace of pain in the dancing shadows cast by the fire. And I’d seen the stony, impassive look on Harper’s face when Elowen had staked her claim on me.
I’m not sure which was worse.
Are you making fun of me too?
Goddamn, straight to my heart.
As I disentangled myself from Elowen’s octopus grip, I saw my jacket lying in the sand. Harper must’ve slipped out of it when she walked away.
“What is that?” Elowen asked, swaying slightly.
“That,” I said, picking up my jacket and shaking the sand out of it, “is what literature calls symbolism.”
“Huh?
“Nothing,” I said, gripping her around the waist before she fell down. “This bloody night is over.”