Chapter 23 Harper
HARPER
Ican’t believe he actually left.
I sit there in my room, shocked into complete stillness, tears pouring unchecked down my cheeks, and I watch the door, sure he’s going to come back at any minute.
He has to come back.
I have no idea how much time has passed when Emma appears in the doorway. Sympathy fills her eyes. “Sweetie,” she begins, stepping towards me.
“No.” I hold up a hand. I don’t want her comfort. I don’t want anything but Nate. Why hasn’t he come back?
Then Mason appears behind her and all the pain I’m feeling suddenly finds a target. “How could you do this to me?” I scream at him.
He shakes his head, approaching my bed with outstretched hands. Unlike Emma, he ignores my demand that he stop. “You deserve better than that, Harpy.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I do,” he insists. “I’m twelve years older than you and—”
“God damn it, Mason.” I push at his chest, not wanting him near me. “Are you ever going to treat me like a fucking adult?”
“Maybe if you acted like one,” he snaps back. “But this?” He gestures at my tearstained face. “Obsessing over your professor? Risking your future over a guy? That is not the behavior of an adult. It’s the behavior of a spoiled child.”
I stare at him, the echo of those words settling deep inside me.
Ever since my parents died, all I’ve ever wanted is to please my older brother. To make him proud. To make him feel like all the sacrifices he made for me were worth it. To make him feel like I was worth it.
So this—the acknowledgment that he’s disappointed in me, the look in his eyes that tells me he’s disgusted by my behavior—it should bring me pain. Make me ashamed. Make me feel like I’ve failed him.
I don’t feel any of that. All I feel is rage, deep down in my chest.
“Get the fuck out.”
He stares at me, shocked.
“I said get out,” I repeat, louder now. “Get out of my room. Get out of this apartment. I don’t want to see you.”
“Harper—”
“Get out!”
He shakes his head, like he has no idea how to deal with me. All of a sudden he looks much older than his thirty-four years, tired and despondent in a way I’ve never seen before. “We’ll talk later,” he mutters, striding to the door. “When you’re feeling better.”
When I’m feeling better. That’s such a fucking joke. How am I ever going to feel better without Nate?
I don’t notice Emma leave the room with Mason but she must have, because she reappears a few minutes later with a mug of something hot in her hands.
“Drink this, sweetie,” she murmurs, and I think I might hear tears in her voice.
I look up at my best friend but I can’t see if she’s crying—the tears in my own eyes blind me too much. “He left,” I tell her.
“I know,” she says, voice soft, heartbroken for me. “I’m so sorry.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” I mutter, staring down at the mug in my hands. Tea, I’m pretty sure. The thought of drinking it makes my stomach hurt. “Everyone leaves.”
“That’s not true,” she tells me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “I’m right here.”
And I’m grateful for her, more grateful than I can ever express. But I also know the possibility of her eventually leaving is high. She’s going to get a great job after grad school, move to a bigger city, New York or LA, and have the big exciting life she deserves. I want that for her.
But she’ll be one more person I love who can’t stay with me.
And there will always be a part of me that wonders if it isn’t my fault, at least a little.
I’m too clingy, too needy. Maybe that’s why Mason has never been able to stop being a parental figure for five minutes to just be my brother.
Maybe it’s why Nate left today—he didn’t want to be saddled by the pathetic little girl who would be so silly as to give up her education for him.
And maybe it’s why my mom decided to stop her treatments to follow my dad. Because I was too much to deal with, not as worthy of her love as he was.
“Everyone,” I say again, more to myself this time, and I feel my heart break just a little bit more. “Everyone leaves.”
The next several days pass in a blur of pain. Mason calls constantly. I don’t answer, not ready to talk to him.
Nate doesn’t call. Not even once.
I don’t know what I would do without Emma. She forces me to eat and get out of bed. She’s unable to convince me to go to school when the weekend ends, but at least I’m not wallowing under the covers for days on end.
Even that small feat feels like a huge accomplishment.
On the sixth day, Wednesday, Mason shows up at the apartment.
I instruct Emma not to open the door, forgetting that he holds the lease and therefor has his own key.
He doesn’t usually use it, always respectful of our privacy.
In fact, the only time I can remember him coming in without knocking was the morning he showed up to surprise me with coffee and pastries.
The morning he ruined everything.
He knocks for a solid ten minutes. “Harper, come on,” Emma says. I think she’s starting to get exasperated with my constant moping and she’s definitely sick of the knocking. “He’s your brother. It’s been nearly a week. You’re going to have to talk to him eventually.”
Before I can argue with that, the lock rattles. Mason is letting himself in. Damn it.
I’m tempted to dash across the room to engage the chain lock, but days of wallowing on the couch have slowed me down. Before I can even get up, Mason is striding into the room, his expression tight.
“You didn’t hear me knocking?” he snaps.
“I didn’t want to talk to you,” I snap right back. He glares at me for a long moment before sighing and turning to Emma. “Can you give us a minute?”
“Sure thing,” she says quickly, clearly not eager to get in the middle of our sibling squabble.
“Traitor,” I mutter as she darts out of the room.
Mason takes a seat on the armchair across from me and I pull myself up into a sitting position. There’s not much I can do about the pajamas I’m still wearing at two p.m. but I refuse to face off with my brother laying down.
“Why aren’t you at school?” he asks.
“Why aren’t you at work?”
His glare returns. “I’m not at work because I’m here, checking on you.”
His unspoken words ring in my head. My little sister, always a burden.
“I didn’t ask you to do that,” I say softly, looking down at my blanket. I might be pissed at him, but I still hate to see the disappointment in his eyes.
“Harpy, you can’t go on like this. You have responsibilities.”
I don’t know how to explain it to him, the way that it feels like nothing matters anymore. School, my friends, the research I’ve been doing. All of it is meaningless without Nate.
I open my mouth to put some of this into words, but something else entirely pops out. “Why didn’t you send me to boarding school?”
He stills. “What?”
“After they died. I know you considered it—I heard you talking with Uncle Jim after the funeral.”
Mason shakes his head, looking lost. “I did consider it,” he says, his expression more than a little bewildered. “Mainly because I didn’t think that I could do a very good job with you. But in the end…” he shrugs. “I couldn’t go through with it.”
A little light starts to flicker in my chest. Could it be true that he really did want me around?
His next words dash that hope.
“You were my responsibility, I wasn’t going to shove you off on someone else.”
And there it is. The core of my brother’s moral code. Responsibility. Doing the right thing. Of course that’s the reason he stepped up. He saw it as his duty.
“I’m grateful for that,” I mutter. “I really am. But it would have been nice…” I swallow. “It would have been nice if you kept me around because you wanted me there, not because you felt like you had to.”
His mouth drops open. “Harper—”
I stand, feeling how sore my muscles are. Maybe I have been sitting on this couch for too long. “I’ll try to go back to school tomorrow,” I tell him. “Sorry to worry you.”
“Hang on,” he says, standing. “We need to talk about—”
I hold up a hand, somehow managing a small smile. “I’ll be fine. You should get back to work.” Then I walk to my room, lock the door, and curl up in my bed, feeling more alone than I ever have.
Something seems to shift in me after seeing Mason.
The pain in my chest sharpens, burning away some of the numb fog that’s been hanging over me the last few days.
Ever since Nate left, I’ve felt sapped of energy, unable to do much more than lay on the couch or in my bed.
But now the thought of wallowing holds no appeal.
In fact, thinking about it makes me feel on edge, desperately antsy and unsettled.
I can’t sit in this apartment for another minute.
Getting drunk at a bar doesn’t sound all that terrible, but Emma is working at a new restaurant opening her firm is promoting, so I can’t beg her to take me out somewhere.
I could go out by myself—you don’t really need company to get wasted.
But I have a feeling that even massive amounts of liquor won’t do much to take the edge off.
You could go to the club, a voice in my head whispers.
The club. It’s painful to imagine myself being there without Nate.
At the same time, I yearn to be anywhere that reminds me of him.
There are so many memories of us together there, Nate slowly introducing me to a world I never could have imagined on my own.
I’ve rarely felt closer to him than I did at Club Wyld.
I could get in on my own, if I wanted to. As his submissive, Nate secured me a permanent guest pass, only one step down from full membership. I had hoped that someday soon I’d earn that membership. Now that probably will never happen.
Suddenly, I’m pissed. Nate changed my whole world when he took me behind that steel door at the club all those weeks ago.
He opened up my eyes to a lifestyle I always yearned for, yet had never fully understood.
I’d been struggling for years to come to terms with my desires, with the guilt they inspired in me.
And just when I was starting to feel okay about it, to feel like maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with me after all, he went and ripped the rug right out from under me.
“Fuck that,” I mutter, standing. I’m still hurting.
I’m sad and I’m confused and my mind feels all over the place.
In the past few weeks, I’ve learned that the best way to quiet too-loud emotions is to turn myself over to someone else.
That was supposed to be Nate’s job, but he’s made it very clear he’s no longer interested in the position.
But that doesn’t mean someone else couldn’t do the same thing for me. That doesn’t mean I have to do without the release he taught me to crave.
Maybe it’s time I find another dom to satisfy my needs.