Chapter 30
Harmony
Sleep came in fragments. Every time I drifted close to it, my mind pulled me back to the glow of my phone in the dark, the way his body had gone still beside me as he read the message.
He hadn’t said much after that. Just held me tighter.
Just told me we’d deal with it in the morning.
But even wrapped in his arms, my body never fully relaxed.
Somewhere between the quiet of the house and the storm gathering outside its walls, I knew the night hadn’t really ended.
At some point, Eric shifted carefully and reached for my phone again.
I felt the subtle change in him, the alertness sliding back into place.
He checked the screen once, then set it face down on the nightstand without waking me.
No new notifications. No follow-up. That almost made it worse.
Whoever had sent the message didn’t need to press harder. They already knew they’d been heard.
When dawn finally began to soften the dark, the fear receded just enough to let exhaustion take over. I felt Eric leave the bed, but sleep had beckoned and pulled me under. The threat hadn’t vanished. It had simply gone quiet. Waiting.
Morning light filtered through the curtains, warm and soft, brushing across my skin before I even opened my eyes.
For a moment, I simply breathed slow and steady, wrapped beneath the weight of Eric’s arm.
His body was tucked along my back, solid and warm, the kind of closeness that made the world outside feel far away.
Last night came rushing back in a slow, heated wave. His hands. His mouth. His voice saying my name like it meant something. It wasn’t just the intensity. It was the way he held me after. The way he looked at me, like I was more than fear and shadows. I shifted slightly, and his arm tightened.
“You’re awake,” he murmured, voice low and raspy with sleep.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Just… thinking.”
He moved closer, lips brushing my shoulder in a soft, unhurried kiss. “Dangerous thing to do first thing in the morning.”
I smiled1 faintly and rolled onto my back so I could see him. His hair was a mess, his face softer than I’d ever seen it. Without the tension and the guarded expression, he looked younger. Lighter. And that small, unguarded version of him made my chest ache.
He swept a strand of hair from my cheek. “What were you thinking about?”
I hesitated. Not out of fear, but because saying something that mattered always carried weight.
“Us,” I said quietly.
His hand stilled.
“Last night… it wasn’t casual.” I swallowed. “Not for me. And I don’t want to pretend it didn’t mean anything.”
His gaze deepened. “It hasn’t been casual for me either.”
The words spread warmth through me, slow and steady.
I took a breath. “Then what are we doing, Eric?”
He didn’t rush to answer. He didn’t pull away. He cupped my face gently, his thumbs brushing soft, deliberate lines along my jaw.
“We’re figuring it out,” he said. “But I want you to hear something from me without any doubt.”
My breath caught.
“I want you,” he said quietly. “Not because you’re in danger. Not because you’re under this roof. I want you because I’ve wanted you for years. Being with you again only reminded me how hard I tried to move on… and how badly I failed at it.” Warmth and something tender twisted through my chest.
“Why did you try to let it go?” I whispered.
His gaze dipped for a moment, vulnerability moving across his expression.
“Because I haven’t felt like myself for a long time.”
That surprised me. I pushed up onto my elbow, searching his face. “Eric… what does that mean?”
His jaw tightened the way it always did when he was wrestling with something heavy.
“You asked me in the cabin why I still bake,” he said. “I brushed it off because I didn’t want to get into it. But the truth is… I’m not happy running the bakeries. I love the orchard. I love the land. But the rest?” He gave a small shake of his head. “It was my family’s plan. Not mine.”
“What was your plan?” I asked softly.
He exhaled. “Firefighting. Search and rescue. I wanted the academy. I wanted the adrenaline of doing something that felt like it mattered. I completed most of the ENPQ training. I used to drive to Saint-Hyacinthe for long days of smoke drills and ladder climbs before coming home to prune apple trees.”
Understanding settled over me.
“And you stepped in when your family needed someone,” I whispered.
“Yeah.” His smile was small and tired. “I stepped in. It feels like the right thing, but not my thing.”
The honesty in those words made something inside me soften.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” I asked.
He swallowed. “Because it felt selfish to talk about my dreams when you were dealing with so much. You needed safety and stability, and I didn’t want to make it about me.”
My throat tightened. “I want you to tell me. I want all of it. Even the parts you think don’t matter.”
He looked at me with an openness I hadn’t seen in him before.
“You matter,” I said. “Your dreams matter. What you want matters.” He stared at me like I’d said something sacred.
Then he leaned in and kissed me. Slow, gentle, grounding. The kind of kiss that didn’t ignite fire but steadied the heartbeat.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested against mine.
“I’m falling for you,” he whispered.
The world stilled.
“And I think you’re falling for me,” he added softly, not as a question, but like he already knew.
Emotion rose in my chest, warm and impossible to deny.
“I am,” I whispered. “I tried not to. I really tried.”
He brushed my cheek with the back of his hand, eyes warm and quiet. “Then let’s not try anymore.”
I let out a shaky breath, pressing my hand over his heart, feeling the slow, steady thrum beneath my palm.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said again. “Together.”
When he kissed me this time, it wasn’t hungry or urgent. It was soft. Certain. A promise forming piece by piece.
For the first time in a long time, I believed in something steady. Something real.
I curled against him, living in the quiet of the moment we were allowed. For now, we were Harmony and Eric, two people choosing each other in the quiet.
Eric walked me downstairs an hour later, our fingers brushing together in a quiet way that felt new and familiar at the same time.
The Thorne house smelled like coffee and voices drifted from the kitchen.
Normally the warmth of this place soothed me.
Today it made my chest tight. I had just told Eric truths I hadn’t planned to say for months.
And he had given me his truths in return.
It should have made me feel lighter. But something in the air shifted the moment we stepped into the hall.
My gaze snagged on something unexpected. . . my phone was in Pierre’s hand.
“I gave it to Dad this morning when you were still asleep.” Eric shrugged. “Sorry I didn’t ask.”
“It’s fine. Thanks for looking out for me.” I smiled, despite the heaviness that surrounded me, because Eric cared and that gave me a feeling I hadn’t known much in my life.
“I wanted your device monitored in real time. Nothing would come through without us knowing,” Pierre explained.
A chill slid down my spine.
Pierre’s expression hardened. “We received something.”
Eric stiffened beside me. “What?”
Becket looked up; his expression unreadable. “Harmony… you should see this.”
My stomach dropped.
Eric stepped in front of me slightly, like a shield, as Becket turned my phone around.
A single image filled the screen.
A photo.
My breath caught.
It was taken in the community center parking lot yesterday.
The angle was high, as if the photographer stood behind one of the large pine trees near the sidewalk.
The camera focused directly on us as we walked out the doors together.
Eric’s hand was on my back and my body was angled toward him.
We looked close. Connected. Intimate. There were dozens of kids around that parking lot every day, dozens of parents coming and going.
And yet somehow the lens found us with surgical precision.
Eric inhaled sharply. “When did this come in?”
“Thirty minutes ago,” Becket said. “Encrypted. Same signatures as the other messages. My contact is tracing it now.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the image. At first it looked like a simple picture, but then I saw the detail that made bile rise in my throat.
On the far right edge of the frame, blurred but unmistakable, was the same dark blue car that circled the community center yesterday.
The one with the tinted windows Mara noticed first. A fresh wave of cold slid through my bones.
Pierre said quietly, “Read the text beneath it.”
Eric took the phone from Becket before Pierre could hand it to me. He scanned the message, his face darkening, then looked at me with the kind of controlled fury that never raised its voice.
“It says,” he growled,
You look comfortable, Harmony.
Enjoy it while you can.
The room tilted.
Pierre’s voice steadied the air. “This confirms deliberate surveillance. They were close. Far closer than we believed.”
Becket swore under his breath. “This wasn’t random. Someone wanted her to know they were there.”
My fingers trembled where they gripped the banister. Eric moved toward me, cupping my cheek with a gentleness that cracked something inside me.
“Hey,” he whispered, “look at me.”
I did.
His gaze burned. Protective. Terrified. Steady.
“No one is taking what we’re building. Not from you, and not from us,” Eric said, and the words hit me with the same power as the photo. One terrified me. The other held me together.
Pierre cleared his throat. “We need to talk logistics. Safety plans. Immediately.”
But my eyes were still on the photo. On us. On the shadow in the background.
And the realization that whoever was watching… was not losing interest. They were closing in.