CHAPTER 38
harley
Widow’s Drop had changed the mood between Maverick and me.
Something intangible hung in the air between us.
I shouldn’t have brought up Aidan. I should’ve just taken what he said about my life and left it at that.
His assessments were accurate after all.
That would’ve been the smart thing to do, but I wasn’t exactly thinking straight today.
Late in the afternoon, I braced for the backlash as I walked back into my mother’s house. I looked like hell—I knew that. My hair was disheveled, and my clothes were wrinkled and dirty. I was covered in sweat and dust, but I just didn’t care. I was too stuck in my head for that.
I wasn’t happy.
Something about saying those words out loud to him had unlocked something inside me.
Cracked it wide open with no dam to hold it back.
I wasn’t happy. Not even a little bit. The last few weeks with Maverick had been the happiest since…
well, since we were eighteen and ditching school. The correlation wasn’t lost on me.
I found myself teetering on the edge of what I was supposed to do and what I wanted to do. Who I was versus who I wanted to be.
“Clifford,” I whispered as a way of greeting as he opened the door. He only nodded tightly. I dared to ask, “How upset is she?”
“I’d rather wrestle a hungry lion than be you right now,” he answered under his breath. Well, at least he was honest. “To be—”
“Clifford!” The shrill snap of my mother’s voice from the living room had me flinching. Yeah, this was going to be a disaster, and I’d done it to myself.
“I’m sorry if I get you in trouble,” I said quietly to Clifford before drawing in a deep breath and heading to the living room.
Vivienne sat on the couch, her ankles crossed and expression impeccably poised as she watched me. Just her existence irked me. The idea of her being in my life was miserable to say the least. But I didn’t have the chance to focus on her as my mother strode right past me.
“The office,” she bit out. “Now.”
The emphasis on that last word sent my heart lodging in my throat.
I braced myself as I followed her. There was no way to avoid the fallout.
All I could do was work through what I wanted to say.
What did I want to say? Lying about where I was wouldn’t do me any good.
She knew by this point. I couldn’t talk myself out of this.
And truthfully… I didn’t want to.
“Where were you?” she demanded the minute I shut the door.
“I was out,” I said. I kept the door to my back, putting as much distance between her and me as possible. Her anger was palpable and suffocating as it filled the room.
“You were out!” she repeated, her voice rising significantly. “What kind of idiot do you take me for, Harley? I know you were out. What I want to know is where were you?”
“I was with Maverick. I spent the night with him,” I told her.
The words hung there between us as she processed them. Something dark and inexplicable crossed her expression—something colder than anger.
“I have been more than patient with your little experimentation phase with that boy—”
“It’s not an experimentation phase!” I exclaimed, the words flying out of me before I could stop them.
“—but enough is enough, Harley!” she snapped over me, completely ignoring me. “I’ve had it with your childish behavior. Your father insisted we let you work through it—insisted you’d come around—but clearly that’s not happening!”
That last sentence was a slap to the face. He… what?
“He what?” I asked, my voice quieter and barely audible. I was stuck between confusion and disbelief. The idea that my father had tried to stand up for me… I struggled to believe it. “What do you mean—”
“The man was as foolish as you are,” she cut me off. “I should’ve nipped that behavior in the bud the minute you started hanging out with that ridiculous boy!”
“He’s not—”
“Do you even understand what you’re doing? What you risk every time you go running around with that boy? Do you know what people would think?”
“I don’t care,” I admitted a little too honestly. They weren’t people I wanted to appeal to. The only person whose opinion I cared about was Maverick.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the smartest thing for me to say to her.
Her expression twisted into something livid and dangerous.
I did my best to hold my ground, keeping my chin lifted, even as every instinct screamed at me to back down.
My heart hammered wildly—so loud in my ears that it wouldn’t have surprised me if she could hear it too.
“You listen to me, Harley Christopher Lowell,” she began, her tone dark, as she moved closer. “I have spent your entire life turning you into exactly who you are supposed to be to run this family business—”
“I don’t like that person!”
“I don’t care what you like or don’t like!” she shouted over me. “What you like doesn’t matter! You have an obligation! To this family! To our business! To me!”
“I—”
“Now, you are going to go out there and apologize to Vivienne for wasting her time.”
“I thought she was here for you—”
“And then you’re going to go upstairs and make yourself presentable,” my mother continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “You will not screw up this partnership with your pathetic whims and wiles. Vivienne is a smart match for you. She won’t tolerate your flippancy and indecisiveness.”
My mind worked to wrap around everything she was saying. It was all so definitive—all choices made without my permission. Whatever bold thing that had taken over me still held as I pushed forward.
“I don’t… I don’t want to be with someone I don’t know. I don’t want…” I said with the barest of shrugs. “I don’t want to… I don’t want to leave Wilde Bay.”
“We’ve discussed that sacrifices are needed,” she clipped.
“I won’t be leaving Wilde Bay,” I said, doing my best to sound confident in my decision to stay.
“You won’t,” she repeated, her eyes narrowing. “And what are you going to do, Harley? Stay here with that boy? Be poor? Live in that ridiculous trailer of his?”
I remained silent as anxiety clawed its way through my chest. I didn’t have an answer for that. As far as plans went, I had none. This was the first time I’d ever dared to speak up, and it certainly wasn’t going well. What the hell had I been thinking?
“When are you going to learn?” she demanded. “When are you going to listen? He doesn’t want you. He doesn’t understand you. He’s just a desperate thief using you for your money!”
“He’s not a thief.”
“Their whole family is! His father was a deadbeat! His mother was a deadbeat! His brother is a deadbeat! Do you really think he’s any different?
They’re all a drain on society, and you’re playing right into their hands.
That boy will take you for everything you have and then move on to someone else,” she said.
Every word chipped away at something inside of me, hitting places that were already cracked and breaking.
“You are better than him. You will always be better than him. You need to get that through that pathetic head of yours before you regret it.”
I opened and closed my mouth, words failing me. Regret it. Those two words stuck with it. I didn’t want to regret Maverick. I didn’t want to regret anything anymore.
“Do not go down this road, Harley,” my mother warned, her voice dropping as she stepped closer. “You won’t like how it ends, and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”
Without another word, she pushed past me and left the door open as she left. But me? I just stood there as I grappled with the dread and panic bubbling up inside me.