Chapter 3
three
Harper
IT'S NOT A GANG.
One bad turn, one reckless driver, and I was going fast enough that it’d be over in an instant. I think that’s part of why I did it. Riding on the edge. And if I tipped, well, that was that. It wouldn’t be my problem to deal with.
Everyone had a vice, some nasty habit that brought them a little comfort.
For my dad, it was alcohol. For my mom, it was pills.
I didn’t understand for a long time, why they would do things that were bad for them.
I understood it better now. Sometimes bad things made you feel better.
Momentary numbness. For me, it was speed.
It was all I had, really. After seeing my father’s anger when he drank, I didn’t want to touch alcohol, and my mom was basically a zombie, wandering around that big house with no purpose, popping pills so she could barely think.
I didn’t want to be like either of them.
I also couldn’t turn to sex like my brother allegedly had.
My dad was constantly reminding me we had to “protect our image,” and that we were always in the public eye.
If I tried to hook up with the only type I was interested in—men—he’d find out right away.
It was a blessing when my dad gifted me my own apartment a few months ago, right in the center of Harborview.
It was better for both of us to have the distance.
I didn’t have to deal with his constant disappointment, and he didn’t have to be reminded of Logan every time he looked at me. It wasn’t my fault we looked so alike.
Despite how this evening had gone, I was also grateful that I’d got to keep Matthew. I was closer to him than to my parents. He’d basically raised us, and now he was my personal assistant.
I sliced through the wind with how fast I was going, and it bellowed like it was trying to slow me down, but it failed.
The city blurred, steel, glass, and neon lights blending together, Lorens Industries logos on half the billboards. I dropped a gear and pushed further. Faster. Horns blared, but I was gone before anyone could do anything.
Traffic thinned, buildings got shorter. The air got colder and cleaner as I hit the open road, heading away from Harborview along the coastline that led to Port Skelton.
There was a lookout not far out of town.
It’s where Archer and I met up when we wanted to make sure we were alone.
Dad had been all for me forming strong “connections” with the Kovats family, until he realized I’d only befriended the family’s outcast. I hated them all except Archer, and I tolerated Henrik for his sake, but something about that guy was off. I didn’t trust him.
I eased off the throttle enough to give Archer a fighting chance at catching up before we reached the lookout. He managed to just as we pulled up.
“You have a death wish or something?” he shouted at me.
I rolled my eyes as I pulled my helmet off, running my fingers through the short strands. “Not my fault I’m a better rider than you.”
“Better. Ha. Interesting way of saying stupider.”
This far outside the city the water was lit only by moonlight, the ocean blending with the horizon. Indigo and black. I inhaled the coastal air. It smelled like freedom.
It was temporary.
“How was the party?” he asked, voice muffled by his helmet.
“Same as they always are. Why weren’t you there?”
“Had a fight with Dad.” He hesitated before reaching up to very carefully pull his helmet off. I realized why the moment I saw his face.
“Jesus, Archer. Did your dad do that?”
I wasn’t sure how he’d even been able to see with the way one of his eyes was almost swollen shut. There was a split on his lower lip and one on his eyebrow, and dark circles under both eyes from what was clearly a broken nose.
“I’m gay,” he blurted.
It wasn’t the response I was expecting. It took me a moment to process. “Okay,” I landed on eventually.
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s it?”
“What did you expect, a blow job?”
He laughed. “No. Just… something. Rejection maybe.”
“Is that why your dad hurt you?”
Archer sighed, looking out over the water for a while before he answered me. “He walked in on me and a guy. Lost his shit.”
I didn’t know what to say. My greatest fear was my father finding out that I was only attracted to men, but even if he did, I couldn’t imagine him hurting me like that.
“Andor Kovats wanted nothing to do with my brother and me when we were born. Children of the mistress. It was a scandal, and he paid my mother off to keep us well away from the “real” Kovats family. We lived with her in Port Skelton until just after we started middle school. Then he found out something about my brother and took us away from Mom. Brought us to Harborview to live with the family. But I know he always wanted Henrik, not me. This was just what he needed to push me out.”
Archer didn’t talk about his family often, and I knew better than to ask.
Lorens Industries made tech, from smartwatches to high-end surveillance gear, covering pretty much everything you could plug in, sync, or spy with.
To the general public we were phones, tablets, smart appliances, and nanny cams, but there was more to our company than that.
We made tracking software, biometric scanners, security drones, things that interested those who operated in the shadows: government agencies, private contractors, and certain others with old money and power like the Kovats family.
I didn’t know exactly what the partnership between Lorens Industries and the Kovats family involved, Dad hadn’t let me in on that information yet, but I knew enough to understand they had secrets that weren’t to be messed with and that they were dangerous people.
“I’m going to move back to Port Skelton,” Archer continued, clearly not wanting to dwell on his family’s history any longer.
“What’s there to do in Port Skelton?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I was thinking of doing my own thing.”
“Like?”
“Like maybe I’ll find some other people. I can form a group—guys who need a place to belong. Guys who are tired of feeling powerless and maybe interested in taking some of that power back? We can protect each other from people like my dad.”
“So… a gang?”
“It’s not a gang.”
“Sounds like a gang.”
“It’s not.”
“Okay,” I conceded, because I could see this for what it was. Archer was scared, and I didn’t blame him. With a family like his, like both of ours, you didn’t want to be on their bad side.
“So, will you join me?”
“Your gang?”
“Not a gang.”
I huffed. “Do I have to sell drugs, or break the kneecaps of people who owe you money?”
“It isn’t a gang, Harp.”
“I’m teasing.” I nudged his shoulder with mine, trying to lighten the mood. “I’ll join your not-a-gang.”
“It isn’t.”
“That’s what I said.”
He rolled his eyes at me, but his lips twitched up in a crooked half smile.
“What will we be called?”
“It’s not a gang, it doesn’t need a name,” he groaned.
“If you don’t name us, someone else will.”
“Let them.”