Chapter 10
The threat of rain hangs in the air on Sunday. It casts London into grayness that feels far too familiar by now and leaves the air humid. The streets are calm and quiet without the weekday traffic, and I let my foot hit the gas harder than I’m usually able to. Something inside of me relaxes as the speed increases.
Harper is silent in the passenger seat.
She’s dressed in an athletic getup—tights and an insulated jacket—but her hair is down. It falls in soft golden waves over her shoulders and is pushed back with a black headband.
A black headband that looks like the one she wore the first time I saw her at that college bar.
I glance over at her. In so many ways, she looks just like she had that night. Curious. Pensive. Gazing out the windshield, her mouth just slightly parted, hands clasped in her lap.
In other ways… everything has changed since then.
I tap my thumb against the steering wheel. I hadn’t seen her yesterday. Work had occupied most of my day, and she’d been doing errands. By the time I got home from an event I couldn’t get out of, the living room was dark and the door to her bedroom shut.
I walked right by it on my way up to my floor. Ignored the slight tingle in my hands, clasping them into fists at my side.
What she’d said at the bar…
It confirmed the suspicions I’d harbored since the night she, wearing her black headband, met Dean and their love story began. Suspicions that I could never discern from my own jealousy, but ones I couldn’t dismiss, either.
That she was wasted on him.
And then, she’d described the kind of woman she thought I wanted.
Harper looks out her window. “We’re not going very far?”
“No,” I say. “It’s close by.”
Her voice turns amused. “And I’m still not allowed to know what we’re doing?”
“You know it’s something off your list,” I say.
“Yes, but there are thirty things on it,” she says. “I still haven’t decided whether I’m okay with you having memorized everything on it in a span of a second.”
That makes me grin. “How long do you think it’ll take to make your decision?”
“I’m not sure. I think it depends on what we’re going to do today.”
I nod and hide my smile. “Of course.” The list had been a jumbled mess of highs and lows. From archery to staying out all night, to going to a tarot card reading, to having a threesome.
I slow the car to a stop at a red light next to Kensington Gardens, and the silence in the car feels thick with tension.
We both know that I’d seen it.
And what it means.
“It belongs in the box,” I say. My words don’t ease the strain enveloping us. If anything, it makes it worse, but the words had slipped out regardless. They sounded harsher than they should have.
Because it says something about Dean, too.
“How does it work, having a photographic memory?” Harper’s voice comes out a bit higher than usual. When I glance over, her cheeks are pink.
I wonder if they go that shade when she comes? What does she sound like? How does she look? Would her curls be wild around her face and her mouth half-open?
My hand tightens around the leather. “I can recall images in great clarity.”
She chuckles. “Yes, well, I think that’s the gist of it. But have you always had it? When did you realize it was something you could do that others couldn’t? And was school a breeze?”
Amusement tugs on my lips. “Didn’t know you were so interested in getting to know me better, Harp.”
“Come on. This is super cool. I’ve never met anyone with a photographic memory.”
“It’s not very common. It’s not even very well-studied.” I tap my fingers against the steering wheel again and glance at her out of the corner of my eye. “For me, it’s visual. For some reason, I can effortlessly, and very vividly, recall details from memory.”
“How was school for you?”
I chuckle. “Studying for tests was pretty easy, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
She’s angled toward me in the car, her lips stretched into a smile. “And when did you realize? How did you figure it out? I mean, you must have assumed everyone could do it.”
“Yeah. I thought it was normal.” The road ahead curves, and I move the car into the left lane. We’re almost there. “I realized it when I was nine.”
“That’s pretty young.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“How’d you figure it out?”
The image flashes in my mind, even after all this time. The five bottles of pills Alec and I saw on Mom’s vanity before she came in and ushered us out. The labels with miniature text warnings that looked like essays.
Realizing I could remember the names of each one when my brother couldn’t.
He made me write them down for him. The next day, after school, he went to the pharmacy to ask what they were. And that’s how we realized Mom was sick.
She passed away shortly after.
I turn the car into the parking lot. “My brother and I were playing around, and I realized I could remember more than he could.”
Harper’s voice is soft. “Oh. Was he jealous?”
“He’s not the jealous type,” I say. At least not of me. He’s too ambitious, too perfect, and too disciplined for that.
Pulling into a spot, I turn off the engine, and cautious silence settles in the car. For a moment I wonder if I should tell her the real answer. The pill bottles. The death sentence.
But I don’t want to detract from this moment. One week, I think again, and half of it has already passed.
“Is this… oh my God. We’re trying archery?” Harper’s voice is cheery with surprise. “That’s why I needed to dress like we’re hitting the track?”
“Yes.”
She opens the car door, rushing out to the parking lot. There’s color on her cheeks and a wide smile on her face. For a moment, I just lean against the side of the car and look at her.
“You like surprises,” I say out loud.
Harper’s smile turns to me. “Of course I do. I know some people struggle with them, but I never have. Come on. Let’s try this. Did you call ahead?”
“Yes. An instructor is waiting for us.”
She’s already halfway to the field where targets are lined up at equal distances. A small wooden building stands at the edge of it, and a few people are milling about. One of them is getting into a shooting stance.
“Nate,” Harper calls. Her voice is impatient and excited. “Come on.”
I lock the car and try to hide my smile. “Coming.”
Our instructor’s name is Calvin. He’s forty-eight and loves archery. All of this he makes explicitly clear in his little introduction, showing us how to hold the bow and explaining the physics of the draw. The bows are made out of light metal, and mine weighs almost nothing in my hand.
Harper is like a sponge beside me. I can feel it, her soaking up everything the instructor says.
When it’s finally our turn, Calvin comes up beside us, pointing out the individual targets for us to hit.
Above us, the sky has turned an even darker shade of gray.
“You go first,” I tell Harper
She looks at me over her shoulder with a small smile. The black headband she’s wearing is pushing her wild curls away from her face, but one has escaped, falling over her forehead.
She’s gripping the bow tight. “Watch me be victorious,” she says.
I grin. “Go for it.”
She releases the arrow. It flies straight, hitting the outer ring of the target that’s been pinned to a large bale of hay.
“I hit it!”
“Sure did,” I say.
She’s grinning at Calvin, too, and quickly nocks another arrow. Calvin corrects her form a few times, and then she’s shooting at a steady pace for a beginner.
I shoot a few times while Harper”s back is turned and she’s focused on her target. Calvin gives me an approving nod and moves off to the side.
“I’ll be just over there, should you need me,” he says.
Harper looks at me over her shoulder. “Wanna make a bet?”
“Oh, you’re feeling that confident now, are you?”
“This is so much more fun than I imagined. Look, I’ve only missed the circle twice.”
“Very impressive.”
She looks over at my target and sees the three arrows embedded in a semicircle at the outer edge. “You’re not looking so bad yourself, Connovan.”
“High praise.”
She gets into position again, her feet shoulder-width apart, her shoulders down, arms taut. Firing, she hits another arrow in the outermost circle.
We’re alone on the range now, and, in the background, I hear Calvin chatting to someone in low tones. I take a small step closer to her. “Yes, let’s make a bet, Harp.”
She nods, her curls bouncing. “I already know what I want if I win.”
“And what’s that?”
“I want you to answer a question honestly.”
The stab of fear is instant. As if she reached into my heart and squeezed. But it recedes with a few rational thoughts. There’s no way she knows.
I haven’t shown any signs of it.
I raise my bow and aim deliberately off-center. My arrow misses the target entirely. “You want me to accept the odds when I don’t even know what the question will be?”
“Yes.” Her tone is still excited, energy drumming beneath the surface. “Or are you scared?”
“You’re baiting me, but I’ll admit that I’m intrigued.” I line up another shot and deliberately put this one on the bottom of the target. Just barely hitting the outer circle. “All right. You’ll have your honest answer if you win… but if I win,”I say, lowering my bow, “you don’t move out at the end of the week.”
Harper lowers her own bow in surprise. “What?”
I reach for another arrow with calmness I don’t feel. “If I win, you won’t rush to move out.”
“Nate… I can’t impose on you indefinitely.”
“It’s not an imposition.” I raise my bow again and focus on the target, and not on the green eyes I know are resting on me. This time, I hit the upper edge of the target. Still far away from the bullseye. “If I win, you give yourself a month instead of a week.”
“A month,” she breathes.
“Yes. No stressing about moving out.”
Harper digs her teeth into her bottom lip. A small furrow lies between her pulled-down brows, and a shadow falls over her thoughtful eyes. I feel them trying to figure me out.
“Why?”
“Why not?” I ask in response. My fingers grip another arrow, holding the feather-light weight up in the air. “I’m out of the house most days. It’s good to have someone there to take care of it.”
“Like, water the plants?” Her voice is so incredulous that it makes me chuckle.
I spin the arrow around in my hand. Meet her gaze with a steady one of my own. I’ve been in plenty of negotiations. I’m more than capable of smoothing over awkward situations and convincing people to do what I need. What the company needs…what the family needs.
“I don’t want you rushing into another dumpster of an apartment, in an area known for its crime rate, with an hour-long commute.” I nock the arrow in the bow, aim, and take a deep breath. Shoot.
“Darn,” she murmurs.
Yeah. I hit it right where I intended… on the edge of the paper. Not even on the target.
“I can’t be responsible for your premature death,” I say with a drawl and lower the bow. “If I win, you take a month, and you search for something that’s safe and comfortable.”
Her eyes are narrowed, but then she glances at my abysmal performance with the bow and nods. “All right. It’s a bet.”
“Good.”
“Great.”
I smile behind her back. “Three shots, highest combined points wins?”
“Sounds good,” she says.
We retrieve the arrows we’ve already shot and head back to our starting positions. There’s an undercurrent of energy I can’t quite shake. It makes my skin feel tense, and my fingers fist tightly around the light handle of my bow.
“Ladies first,” I say.
She hits the middle ring and grins in surprise at her own success. It’s infectious, seeing this zeal. It’s the same intensity she’d had at the exhibition event at London Modern a few nights ago.
Happy.
“Go on,” she tells me.
I line up my shot. Breathe out, focus… and let the arrow fly. It hits the bullseye with a dull twang.
She inhales sharply. “Holy shit.”
“Lucky,” I say, and lower my bow. “Your turn.”
This time she hits the outer ring and curses softly as she tallies up the points. I feel her heavy eyes on me when I draw my second shot, too. It lands next to the first, right at the edge of the bullseye. But it counts.
Adrenaline makes me grin.
“Nate,” she says. “How did you just do that twice in a row?”
I rest both hands on the top of my bow, leaning the tip of it on the ground. “When I was a kid, my brother and I were regularly shipped off to various summer schools and summer camps.”
Anything to get us out of the city and out of Dad’s care. He’d had enough to handle with my little sister and the company that he’d dedicated his entire life to those first few years after Mom died.
Not to mention his grief.
“And you did archery.”
“Four summers in a row, yeah.”
“I hate you.” She breathes. “So the shots you made earlier, they were… what? Decoys?”
“It might have been a deliberate misdirection on my part.” Her look of outrage makes me laugh. “You already know I don’t mind false impressions.”
“Clearly.” She glares at her target and then at mine with obvious dismay. “You need to miss the target, and I need to hit a bullseye for me to have any chance of winning.”
I look around. Calvin is nearly out of sight, standing by the far edge with a thermos in hand, chatting with a bearded man.
Moving closer to Harper, I say, “Your stance is good. You’re doing exactly what he said… but lower this arm. Draw the bow.”
She does exactly that, holding it taught. Her left elbow is too high. I step in behind her and put a hand on top of her left biceps. Gently push it down until her shoulders are in a straight line.
“That’s it,” I say. A lock of her hair is teasing my cheek, and I try to ignore it. Fail to. “Pull it back, nock by your mouth… look at the bullseye, and take a deep breath…”
She inhales deeply, softly, and I let my other hand hold her right shoulder steady. Touching her like this is a bad idea.
But all of this is a bad idea.
“Aim… and let go.”
She holds a second longer before letting it fly.
The arrow hits the bullseye with a sharp sound, vibrating where it’s stuck.
Harper lets her bow drop and turns in my arms. “Oh my God!”
“You did it,” I say.
She glances at the target, blush coloring her cheeks. And I realize I’m still holding her shoulders. Slowly, reluctantly, my hands drop. Fall to my sides, where I let them fist tightly.
“I don’t know what magic you just performed, but thank you,” she says, looking back up at me. Her green irises have small flecks of gold in them. I never noticed that before, and I notice everything. It feels like an oversight.
Her smile softens. “You know, you just helped an opponent.”
“Mm-hmm. I know. Bad idea.”
“Terrible. If you miss the target now, I’ll know you don’t really want me to live with you any longer,” she teases.
I lift an eyebrow. “Moment of truth.”
“Yup.”
“What’s the question you want to ask me?”
“I can’t tell you unless I win,” she says.
I take a step back and reach for my bow. Weigh it in my hand, and with it, my options.
But as curious as I am, her safety sways the balancing act. And living with me is safe. Driving her back to some godforsaken-cardboard-box of an apartment, in the same city but light years away, isn’t an option.
So I walk to the target and pull out the arrows already embedded in my bullseye. “Got to make room,” I throw out to her over my shoulder.
She chuckles. “You’re that confident?”
I am. Because for the first time in what feels like forever, I’m playing to win with stakes that actually matter.
I line up. Pull my shoulders back, draw the bow. Breathe in… release.
The arrow hits the bullseye.
I exhale softly. “Look at that. You’re my roommate for a while longer, Harper.”
That’s when the first raindrops fall. The sky opens up, and the soft drizzle quickly turns into a downpour.
Harper laughs. “I can’t believe you made that shot. When did you do this last?”
“I was fifteen, I think, so… twenty-three years ago.”
“I hate you,” she says again. But she’s already lifting her bow to shoot again. “Teach me how to hold it steady again.”
I look at her determination, at the gentle smile on her lips, and the way her hair is already darkening from the rain. And she doesn’t care at all.
Grinning at her, I step in closer. “All right. Like this…”
She shoots a few arrows in a row, hitting the middle ring most times, and once, the outer circle. But her shots are steadier now.
The rain is pelting my face, dripping off my jaw. Rivulets run down her forehead and across her cheeks.
“It’s raining,” I finally inform her.
Harper turns to look at me. Her smile is wide, and it hurts to look at. “Are you afraid of a bit of water?”
“No. But I think everyone else is.” I glance around meaningfully at the now completely deserted shooting range.
“They must think we’re crazy,” Harper says.
I retrieve all of my arrows and glance at her, where she’s doing the same. My hands still tingle from when I touched her just a few minutes earlier. “Upset?” I ask her.
She looks at me and gives a tiny shrug. “No. I’m not too proud to admit that you have a beautiful home. The bed is divine, the water pressure… It won’t be hard to live there for a full month.”
The words make my lips twitch. “Good.”
“But I am puzzled.” She pulls out the final arrow from where it was embedded deep in the hay bale. “I wish I’d won the right to ask that question.”
I lean against my target. The scent of wet straw hangs lightly in the air, and the rain is cold, but I ignore all of it. “Ask the question, and I’ll decide if it’s something I can answer.”
Harper steps closer, gripping a trio of arrows in her left hand. The points leveled straight at me.
Her eyes narrow. “All right. Nate Connovan… why are you being so nice to me?”
It’s not the question I expected.
But it’s definitely not one I can answer.
I run a hand over my jaw, raising an eyebrow. Give her a pointed look and try to calm my racing heart. “That’s what you want to know?”
“Yes. I have a suspicion, but I don’t want it to be true.” She shakes her head slowly. “So I want you to tell me the truth.”
Her eyes are piercing. Demanding. And I should look away, swallow the damning truth, and make a joke. I don’t want it to be true. Surely she can’t suspect. Can’t know, couldn’t have guessed.
Dean never did.
But she’s so much more observant than Dean has ever been.
“You don’t want it to be true,” I say instead. The words come out more softly than they should, hanging in the humid air between us.
Harper gives a single nod. “If it’s because Dean told you to, because you think you can help the two of us get back together, I don’t want this friendship.”
Relief makes me momentarily lightheaded. It sweeps through me so fast that I smile and watch the corresponding frown on her face.
“It’s not,” I say. “I don’t think I can help you guys get back together.”
Trust me, I want to add, even as the guilt tastes like acid in my guts. It’s the last thing I want.
She nods, but the furrow between her eyebrows doesn’t completely disappear. “Okay. As long as that’s the case.”
“You have nothing to worry about.” I lift an arrow and spin it around. “Except winning against me.”
She smiles again. “Bring it on.”
It isn’t until I’m back in the car half an hour later, soaked from the rain and listening to Harper’s happy thoughts about the experience, that I realize I hadn’t, strictly speaking, told her the truth.
Dean did ask me to keep an eye on her.
But the reason I agreed had nothing to do with him.