Chapter 24 Harper
twenty-four
Harper
SOMEONE TO LISTEN.
“We won’t be able to meet the updated project deadline unless we work through the weekend.”
I glanced up from my screen to face the head of the hardware and prototyping labs. Normally, she’d be reporting to my father, but I’d taken on extra projects and responsibilities as I’d increased the number of hours I spent in the office over the past six months.
“So, work the weekend,” I told her.
Her smile was strained. It was the kind people gave my father. “Yes, sir.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
I waved my hand to dismiss her. The rest of the afternoon passed as it always did, until a pop-up message on my screen told me my father wanted to see me.
It was best not to keep him waiting.
I never knew quite what to expect when my father called me to his office. Never knew which fault of mine he’d pick at, or in which area I was failing to meet his expectations. What I’d expected least, however, was the smile he greeted me with as I walked through the door.
“Harper, take a seat.”
I sank down into the leather chair across from him, trying not to let my suspicions show on my face.
“How are you?” he asked, and I really didn’t know what to do with that.
“Fine,” I answered cautiously.
A notification pinged on his screen, and he turned away from me to type for a few minutes. When he turned back, he was smiling again. “I wanted to talk to you and say I’ve noticed a change in you these last few months.”
My chest tightened. Was he worried? I knew I didn’t look myself.
The nights without sleep had caused permanent bags under my eyes, and the days without food had me needing to get my clothes tailored again.
The sickness inside me was spreading. It was reaching the surface.
Matthew had commented on it already, so many times, but I never thought my father would notice.
“I like it.” Three words and my chest caved in. “You’re present. Focused. Keep it up and I’ll bring you in on some of our higher-level contracts.”
I was suffocating. Drowning right in front of him. I was self-harming and using this place, this company, to do it. And he liked it.
Was this my future? Was this how I ended up just like my father?
“Sometimes I fantasize about jumping from the top of this building. It would only take six seconds to reach the ground. Did you know that, Dad?” My tone was flat. Emotionless.
His smile faded. His brow dropped. My father stood from his chair and briskly marched over to the door to close it.
“Have you lost your mind?” he yelled in a whisper.
“Don’t say things like that where people can hear you, unless you want to end up just like your mother, too medicated to remember her own fucking name most days. Is that what you want?”
I stared at him for a long moment before shaking my head.
“Then never speak of that again. You are the future of this company, Harper. If you look unstable, then it will look unstable. Do you understand?”
My mouth was dry as I tried to swallow, but my mask was still in place. I nodded.
“Get out. And if I hear anything like that coming out of your mouth again, there will be consequences.”
I stood, and pushed my chair back to where it belonged. “I understand.”
He opened the door, standing by it with a much more familiar expression on his face as I walked past. He shut the door behind me.
It was almost midnight by the time I finished work, and past it when I got back to my apartment.
Sometimes I didn’t know why I bothered coming back home.
It wasn’t like I slept much anyway. There were showers in the Lorens Tower gym, and I could keep some spare clothes in my office.
The girls would be fine for a few nights here and there if I didn’t come back to them.
I’d hoped the void in my chest would ease with time, but six months after I’d last seen Benny and it only seemed to get worse.
When I was able to sleep, I’d see him, or Logan, or Tristan. I didn’t know which was worse. Tristan hurt more in the moment, but Benny and Logan hurt afterward, when I was awake again and I remembered they were gone. I was alone.
My fingers worked the knot of my tie loose.
The lights were always on, so I didn’t notice Matthew until he cleared his throat from the living room.
“It’s late, Matthew.” My voice was as exhausted as the rest of me. “You should be asleep.”
“Yes.” He frowned. “Well, I might say the same to you.”
“I will be soon.”
“Will you?” he asked. “The same way you will eat the food I make for you? The same way you will take time to rest on the weekends?”
This again? Matthew had tasked himself with personally seeing to my well-being.
He’d inserted himself into my life as if he wasn’t my personal assistant but my dietitian, my doctor, my sleep therapist, and whatever else he deemed was his business on any given day.
Everyone else had fucked off and left me alone. Why couldn’t he?
“I don’t have time for this.”
“You don’t have time for anything,” Matthew responded quickly. “You’re always busy, always working. You are more than that company, Harper.”
I huffed. “Am I, Matthew? Where? Tell me where I exist outside of that building. Tell me what else I have.”
He stood and marched over to me. “You haven’t allowed yourself to have anything.”
“I don’t have a choice!”
“You always have a choice!” Matthew had never yelled at me before. I didn’t know what to do with it. “You are killing yourself!”
My mask faltered, the facade cracking. “So what?”
The rage in his features faded, hurt replacing it. “What do you mean so what?”
“I’m going to bed.”
“No you aren’t.” His long legs covered ground twice as fast as mine until he was standing in front of me.
“Talk to me. Please. Because I can’t do this anymore.
I can’t sit and watch you starve yourself and wither away to nothing.
You’re punishing yourself for something.
I can’t let you keep doing it. Whatever has happened, it’s enough now. ”
My eyes burned. “It isn’t.”
His filled with tears. “Please. Tell me. Let me help you.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because… because you’re the only person left who I care about. I can’t lose you too.”
His tears fell as he stepped in closer. His hand found my shoulder, and he pulled me into him. “You could never lose me, Harpy.”
The nickname burned me. Hooked the Benny and Logan that haunted me at my core and dragged them to the surface, out of the shadows and into the light. “You can’t say that.” My voice trembled. I refused to hug him back. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Matthew’s hand rubbed my back. It was the most anyone had touched me in six months. “I was never fortunate enough to find a wife or have children of my own, but that doesn’t bother me. Do you know why?”
I shook my head.
“It’s because I had you and Logan. When I started working for your mother, you were so small.
You should have learned to talk, but you hadn’t yet.
You wouldn’t. Your parents tried to get you to, and you just wouldn’t.
So I would talk to you. I’d let you show me things in the way you wanted to, and then you spoke to me and I was so happy.
And I thought maybe you just hadn’t spoken yet because you didn’t have anyone who would listen to you. ”
My mask crumbled. My arms wrapped around Matthew, clinging to him as I’d wanted to all this time.
“I was listening then.” He sniffed, his fingers running gently through my hair. “And I’ll listen now. Even if no one else will listen, I always will.”
I didn’t remember any of that. I’d known Matthew had started as my mother’s personal assistant, and that he’d been pushed into being a nanny when Logan had become attached to him.
Mom hadn’t known what to do with children, even before all the pills.
She still didn’t. But Matthew had been there for us more than either of our parents.
I wanted to tell him. I wanted to let him in. I wanted him to accept me despite it all.
“Come.” He pulled me toward the sofa and sat me down. “You stay here. I’ll be right back.”
I brought my knees up to my chest and hugged them. A short moment later and Matthew returned with a yellow plush blanket. “Where did you get that?”
“I bought it for you when you moved in here because it reminded me of Celestine. I put it in the linen closet in the hall.”
I hadn’t opened that. I didn’t wash or change my own bedding or towels, so I’d never felt the need. Matthew pulled the tags off and wrapped it around me. It was warm and soft, and it made it harder for me to hold in the tears that wanted to spill out.
He took a seat beside me. “I’ve always tried not to push you into things you don’t want to do, but I really must insist that you talk to me this time.”
My fingers weaved through soft fur as I considered that. I didn’t know how to tell him anything. How could I confess to being a murderer in any way that was acceptable? In any way that wasn’t ugly and disgusting? It wasn’t possible. But I wanted to tell him anyway.
“Tristan,” I whispered. The name was a curse that cooled the room. I pulled the blanket up higher.
Matthew didn’t speak, and I didn’t look at him. I was afraid of what I might find if I did. His arm wrapped around the back of my shoulders. “Do you know where he is?”
“Not exactly.”
“But you know what happened to him?”
I nodded. Matthew’s hand rubbed up and down my arm. “He’s dead.”
Matthew’s hand paused, only for a moment before he continued the soothing motion. “Did he hurt you?”
I exhaled shakily. “He hurt Logan worse.”
Silence. And then his other hand was on me, cradling my head and pulling me into a tighter embrace. “Then I’m glad he’s dead.”
As if it were that simple.
“I killed someone, Matthew.”
“I know.” He held me tighter. “I know. I’m sorry you’ve had to carry this on your own for so long. But you have me now.”
I cried. I cried like I’d wanted to for weeks, months. Because there was someone to listen. Someone to comfort.
When I was done crying, my head throbbed and my eyes were heavy.
Matthew’s hands kept gently scratching my scalp.
He was in no rush to move me along. He had time for me.
I didn’t want it to end. The weight on my soul had eased, even if only a tiny bit.
Sharing my secret with Matthew had given it less hold over me.
“There’s something else.” I sniffed, sitting up from where I’d been resting against him. When I met his eyes, I didn’t see judgement, or disgust, or anger. He was looking at me the way he always looked at me.
“You can tell me anything.”
My breath escaped me. My head throbbed harder. Anxiety prickled over my scalp and chest. If being a murderer didn’t faze him, then maybe it was safe to tell him more, to tell him everything. To finally be able to tell someone.
“I think I fell in love with someone.”
Matthew smiled. “That’s wonderful.”
I shook my head. “No. I can’t… I… it’s… a man.”
I expected Matthew to be surprised to some extent, finding out I was in love with a man, but his smile didn’t fade. “That’s wonderful,” he said again.
“You know what my dad is like. You know it isn’t possible.”
Matthew nodded softly, his smile turning wistful. “What I know, is that you’re twenty-four and you have your whole life ahead of you. There’s so much more of the world than the small piece he’s given you, and I know that you’re strong enough to reach for it, when you’re ready.”
I shook my head again, emotions swirling together and bubbling up inside me. “I can’t. I’m not strong at all. I can’t be anything but what he wants me to be.”
“My dear boy, you’re already so much more.”
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to argue. The longing for more and the fear of the unknown both fighting for center place. It hurt. I didn’t know how to fix it, or if I even wanted to.
I was so tired from the effort it took just to exist. How could I ever fight for more?
“Tell me about him,” Matthew asked, his thumb smoothing over the crease in my brow.
That was less difficult.
“His name is Benny.” I sniffed. “Forrester.”
Matthew scowled. “He’s that boxer.”
I huffed. “Close. MMA.”
“They’re all the same.”
I didn’t agree, but I wasn’t going to argue with Matthew over it.
“He treats you well, though?”
“He did. But I didn’t treat him very well.”
Matthew shook his head. “I know that isn’t possible. You’ve always been the hardest on yourself.”
“I hurt him. He… told me he had feelings for me… and I just ran away. I left him. He’ll be better off without me.”
“You speak about yourself like you’re this cruel, irredeemable thing. But you’re not. You’re just young and learning how to love. It’s going to be messy sometimes, it always is, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing.”
My eyes flicked down to the blanket, watching as my fingers twirled through the fur. “I can’t. And even if I could, you know what I’ve done. I can’t keep that a secret from him, and I can’t tell him either.”
“You told me.”
“You made me.”
Matthew chuckled. “Yes.” His hand covered mine. “But you’ve always been perceptive. It doesn’t take you long to figure people out. You’ve been like that since you were small. Trust yourself. If it feels right, then trust him too. And if he betrays you… then I’ll be a murderer as well.”
I laughed and rolled my heavy eyes. “I won’t make a murderer out of you, Matthew. Besides, I’m not going to speak with him again.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, you have my full support. And if you want to fight for him, then I’ll fight with you.”
I shook my head. “No. If you do anything, my father won’t tolerate it. He barely tolerates me. Your job would—”
“It’s just a job, and you never have been to me. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
My head hurt from the number of emotions I’d been through in one day. Each time I’d believed I’d been emptied of them, somehow more would emerge.
I hugged Matthew, and he hugged me, his hand rubbing my back soothingly. “I am so very proud of you.”
No one had ever said that to me before.