13. Harper
THIRTEEN
HARPER
I didn’t remember shutting down. One minute, I was staring at the ghost from my past who’d broken me completely. The next, I was coming to in his arms, soaked to the bone and freezing fucking cold. The boy who’d knocked me out and slit my throat, only to throw me to my death in the fucking river, had grown up into a big, strong man. His arms felt like safety, their thick, corded muscles wrapped around me like I might shatter if he didn’t hold me together.
He’d grown his hair out some, and now it hung in neat little twisted locs, falling around his face like some of the famous rappers these days. They fell just below his ears, bouncing as he shifted his head. I had to resist the urge to tug on them to get his attention.
He turned that smoldering stare on me, and it was like I forgot how to speak again. My heart did an involuntary somersault in my chest, remembering the first time he’d looked at me like that.
It was the first time I suspected he felt something other than a sibling bond for me. And it was the first time I looked at him—at any of them—in a non-sibling light. They made me second guess everything from then on out, and though we grew apart, I always knew I could come back to them, and they’d take care of me.
Until the day they didn’t.
Until the day they became the source of my pain.
Until the day they broke the old me and changed my life forever.
"Hey there, Harper—" he started, looking down at me like I fucking hung the moon in his sky, and I couldn’t take it.
Not from him. Not from any of them.
"Don’t fucking look at me like that," I spat, scrambling to escape his hold. He let me go, a hint of regret and sadness tinting his features before he managed to hide it behind that stony mask. "What are you—what do you want from me?"
"I don’t know," he whispered, staring down at his hands. "We didn’t get that far."
"We," I echoed, frowning as I realized I was wearing sopping wet clothes. "By ‘we,’ I assume you mean you and your brothers."
The slow nod confirmed my suspicions. "We have to talk about it. But you spaced out, and we kind of—I mean, I—fuck, Harper, you scared me. It was like the lights were on, but there was nobody home."
I stepped away as he reached for me, pain lacing his words, making me feel things I didn’t think I’d ever feel again. Things I didn’t want to feel ever again. Not for him.
"It’s called shutting down, Rowan. Ever heard of it?"
My words hit their mark because he winced, physically recoiling like he’d been slapped. They wounded him as if I’d stuck a knife between his ribs.
I refused to feel sorry for that.
"My mother used to do that when Father beat her." His words echoed quietly in the room, a whisper on the breeze that made me feel like shit for lashing out.
I remembered the horror stories Nash had told me about Rowan’s mother and her untimely death. I knew about Angel’s mother and her overdose. Nash didn’t know his mother well; she got in a car accident while fleeing her husband’s grip before he was even a teen, but he knew enough to feel abandoned, like a burden.
All these boys had a ton of buried trauma that made girls want to hold them and soothe all that pain away. It only served to alienate them from women in general. I knew Nash slept around in high school, Angel had short-term girlfriends who all left for one reason or another. Rowan had been the only one not actively dating in school. He’d always claimed disinterest, but I secretly wondered if he was afraid to become his father if one got too close.
That old feeling rose to the surface, and I shuddered, trying desperately to fight emotions I didn’t want to feel for a man who’d attempted to kill me twice now.
"You’re not him, you know," I muttered, hating myself for the need to soothe his pain, even considering all he’d done to me. "And I’m not her."
"I know that." There was anger in his words, but whether that was aimed at me, or himself, I couldn’t tell. "I know that."
"So what am I supposed to do now? Just stand around here in soaking wet clothes while the three of you talk it over and decide my fate for me?"
Apparently, he had forgotten I was dripping wet all over his carpet because he stared at me in shock and then leaped to action, rummaging around in his dresser for a shirt or something.
I knew damn well anything he gave me would just hang off my frame. Gone were the days when I could steal anything he wore and make it look good. His shoulders were broad, and his muscles defined. I couldn’t hold a candle to his hulking frame.
"I have clothes in my duffel bag if you grab it for me," I pointed out, jerking a thumb back at the door I assumed we came through to get in here. "No offense, but I’d rather not wear your clothes. You’re a fucking mountain now, and I’d drown in them."
"Never seemed to bother you before," he joked, and for a brief, fleeting moment, it was like I was looking at the old Rowan Blackwood, when our only cares were graduating high school and what we’d do with our lives.
The rose-colored glasses were nice to look through, as long as you didn’t forget yourself in their depths.
As he slipped from the room, I whispered into the void his absence left behind, hating the words even as they left my mouth.
"High school was a long time ago, Ro. And we’re lifetimes away from the kids we were back then. "
I heard movement on the other side of the door and briefly wondered if he’d heard me, but I didn’t have time to dwell on that. I couldn’t afford to. If I let myself dwell, I’d get attached, and getting attached to men who’d tried to kill me was obviously a Very Bad Idea.
Rowan opened the door again, my duffel thrown over his shoulder, a small, hesitant smile on his lips. "Here you go. I’m gonna let you get changed, but if you wanna take an actual shower, you’re welcome to use mine while we talk in the office."
I glared at him, displeasure etched into every line of my face. "Talk about me, you mean."
It seemed that some old habits die hard because I had to fight a wave of nostalgia as he sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. My brain reminded me of a time when I thought that was an adorable trait of his, a huge tell that he was trying to hide something.
Now, it just felt like opening an old school yearbook and finding an old friend who’d died a horrible death or grew apart from you in your time of need. The memories hurt, ached, like ripping open old scars best left alone.
It almost made me want to cry for the loss of the boy he was, the what could have beens that had been lost to time and circumstance.
"Yeah, we’re going to talk about you," he admitted, his eyes refusing to meet mine. "I’ll be back in a few; I’m sure this won’t take long."
I turned my back to him, showing him I wasn’t afraid when, in reality, the genuine fear that I might be about to die raced through my veins and had me so keyed up I wanted to jump around or run in place. "Oh, yeah, great to know that my life is such a trivial thing that it doesn’t warrant a long, thought-out conversation."
He hesitated with his hand on the door; I could see his reflection in the mirror across the room. I didn’t bother waiting for him to leave the room. I met his gaze in that piece of glass, stripped my shirt over my head, and tossed it to the floor at his feet with a sadistic smirk.
As my fingers danced at the straps of my bra, he skittered out of the room like a little boy caught peeping.
The second that door closed, I gave up on the pretense and collapsed to my knees in a silent sob of despair.