Chapter 37
Harmony
The house was dim when we got back from the festival, the kind of dim that swallowed sound and made you hear your heartbeat in your own ears. Eric locked the front door behind us, his movements calm and too steady. Controlled in a way that made the hair on my arms rise.
I stepped out of my boots, rubbing my palms together to shake off the cold.
“I’m going to grab some water,” I whispered, already moving toward the kitchen.
“Harmony.”
My name stopped me mid-step.
Eric stood in the hallway, jacket still on, hands braced on his hips, shoulders stiff with something he hadn’t let out yet.
His eyes, which were usually warm even when worried, were darker and heavier.
The kind of heavy that said whatever was bothering him, he wasn’t letting this go. At least not tonight.
I swallowed. “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer immediately. He nodded toward the kitchen.
“Come sit down.”
My pulse fluttered uneasily. “Eric, I’m fine—”
“Harmony,” he said with a quiet tone that wasn’t sharp but hit harder than if he’d yelled. So I followed him into the kitchen. The air felt cold and smelled faintly of the coffee we’d left warming earlier. He gestured to a chair, but I stayed standing. I didn’t want to feel cornered.
He leaned back against the counter, arms crossed. “Can we talk?”
“That sounds ominous,” I tried to joke, but my voice landed brittle.
He didn’t smile, instead he exhaled slowly. “I need you to tell me the truth.”
I forced a light shrug. “About what?”
“About last night.” His gaze didn’t waver. “About the loft. And about today.”
My chest tightened. He saw right through me. He always did. And after everything my dad drilled into me: hide the weakness, hide the cracks, hide everything, being seen felt dangerous.
“I told you,” I said softly. “I just needed to grab a few things.”
“You lied, Harmony.”
The air left my lungs. He stepped forward slowly, not crowding me but giving me nowhere to run.
“You went up to the loft without me. You opened that laptop without telling me. You talked to someone. You got a message. And you scared the hell out of me.”
My throat burned. “Eric…”
“I’m not angry,” he said, voice lowering. “I’m scared. You walked into the lion’s den by yourself, and then shut down on me like it didn’t matter.”
“I didn’t want to drag you into more of my mess,” I pleaded. As it was, I had already disrupted his life and that of his family. They were kind and good people. But they didn’t deserve the danger I brought to their front steps.
“You don’t get to decide that alone.” His tone was softer now, like he could tell I felt like a cornered stray.
His words cracked like quiet thunder, but they were enough to tremble the ground under my feet.
I wrapped my arms around myself. “I didn’t want you to look at me differently.”
His brows pulled together sharply. “Why would I look at you differently?”
“Because you never looked at me like the rest of this town,” I whispered. “Not like a Bellerose. Not like someone dangerous. Or broken. Or untrustworthy. And I didn’t want to lose that.”
His expression softened, painfully so. He stepped closer, gently taking my hands, even when I tried to pull them away.
“Sunshine… I’ve seen you at your strongest and at your most terrified. None of it changes how I look at you.”
My eyes burned. He squeezed my hands, grounding me.
“But I can’t protect you if you keep shutting me out.” The words weren’t controlling. They bled with raw honesty, and that was scarier than any threat my dad ever trained me for.
I shook my head. “I’m not trying to shut you out. I just… I don’t know how to do this. Tell someone everything. Rely on someone. Trust someone with all the dark pieces.”
“You don’t have to tell me everything at once,” he said softly. “Just don’t lie to me. Don’t hide from me.”
A tear slipped down my cheek before I could stop it.
He lifted a hand, brushing it away with his thumb. “Hey. Don’t do that. Don’t cry alone.”
“I wasn’t crying alone,” I whispered. “Not this time.”
He huffed a soft, aching breath and wrapped his arms around me.
I let out a sound that wasn’t quite a sob, wasn’t quite a breath, it was something in between.
Something lonely that had been trapped in my chest for years.
He held me tighter, with a careful, gentle steadiness.
When he finally pulled back, he kept one hand at the nape of my neck.
“Now tell me,” he said quietly. “What scared you at the loft?”
My heart thrashed, but the dam finally opened.
“SableFox,” I whispered. “He was waiting for me. He knew I’d log in. He knew I was back in the loft. He knew about my mom and details he shouldn’t know. And today… at the festival…” I swallowed. “I felt watched. I think he wanted me to.”
Eric closed his eyes briefly, his jaw tightening, not in anger at me but at whoever was hunting me.
“Okay,” he said softly, opening them again. “Thank you for telling me. That’s all I needed. Your truth.”
A breath shuddered out of me. “I didn’t want to make you worry.”
“Harmony.” He framed my face in his hands. “You’re the woman I. . .”
He stopped himself, throat tightening. “You matter. I’m supposed to worry.”
I blinked up at him, my breath trembling.
His voice dropped. “We do this together. Or we don’t do it at all.”
Something inside me, some brittle place Marcel carved into shape finally loosened.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Together.”
Eric kissed my forehead, lingering there like he needed the contact as much as I did.
“Good,” he murmured. “Because I’m not going anywhere.”
And for the first time in a long time, I believed someone when they said that. Eric pulled me in slower this time, less urgency, more grounding. His thumbs brushed the tension from my jaw, and I felt my shoulders finally start to uncoil.
“Come here,” he murmured. “Sit with me for a minute.”
He tugged me gently toward the living room.
The midafternoon light filtered through the windows, soft and golden.
We sank into the worn leather couch together, his arm around my shoulders, my cheek pressed to his chest. His heartbeat thudded slow and steady beneath my ear.
It was a rhythm steady enough to make the panic finally loosen in my ribs.
“I hated seeing you scared today,” he said quietly.
“I hated being scared,” I whispered back.
He pressed a soft, lingering kiss to the top of my hair. “You don’t have to be brave with me every second.”
I let out a shaky breath. “Old habits.”
“Then we’ll make new ones,” he murmured. “Better ones.”
For a moment, the house felt calmer than it had in days. No shadows creeping. No messages pinging. No echoes of Nico or Noah hovering around the edges of our thoughts. Just the hum of the refrigerator, the distant rustle of the orchard trees outside, and Eric’s arm wrapped around me like an anchor.
“Eric?” I whispered.
“Yeah?”
I curled my fingers into the soft fabric of his sweater. “Thank you. For… not giving up on me.”
He breathed out a soft, incredulous sound. “Harmony, giving up on you was never on the table.”
A fragile smile tugged at my lips. He brushed my braid over my shoulder with gentle fingers. “You look exhausted. Why don’t we take a minute? Just… sit here.”
No pressure. No questions. Just presence.
I nodded, letting him hold me. Time slowed.
My heartbeat synced to his. The fear that had wrapped itself around my spine all morning finally loosened.
We stayed like that, curled together on the couch, the world outside pausing for a rare, perfect breath.
His thumb traced small circles on my shoulder.
“Whatever comes next,” he murmured against my temple, “we face it together.”
I exhaled a trembling breath. “Together.”
His forehead rested lightly against my hair. “Good,” he whispered. “Because I’m not going anywhere.”
As we sat there, quiet and wrapped around each other, Eric’s fingers stilled against my shoulder.
“Harmony?” he murmured.
My breath caught. “Yeah?”
His voice stayed soft and it almost broke me. “At the festival… when you looked toward the ridge… it felt like you were thinking about going somewhere. Or doing something. Something you didn’t want me to see.”
My stomach tightened, the truth flickering like static beneath my skin.
“I wasn’t going to run,” I whispered. “I just… felt like something was pulling at me. I don’t know what it is yet.”
He nodded once against my temple, accepting the honesty, even if it wasn’t a full answer.
“As long as you don’t go alone.”
“I won’t,” I said and, this time, it wasn’t a lie.
His arm tightened around me, protective but gentle.
“Good. Because whatever that pull is? We’ll figure it out together.”
My chest ached. In a good way. A new way.
“Together,” I breathed.
He closed his eyes like the word meant something to him, something big, something grounding. Only then did the last of the tension slip from my body.
The next few days passed in a strange, fragile rhythm of quiet mornings, tense afternoons, and nights where I stayed tucked against Eric, as if the world outside might shatter if I moved.
The festival crowds swelled, December crept closer, and Val-Du-Lys breathed in the first whisper of winter.
Thin flurries dusted the orchard, clinging to branches like cautious promises of deeper snow to come.
Becket’s updates from Montreal came in clipped phone calls and late-night muttering from the dining room. Marcel’s appeal was moving faster than expected. Documents sealed for over a decade were suddenly in motion, names resurfacing, case files shifting.
Every time that phone rang, every time a new filing hit the docket…I felt the storm closing in.