Chapter 36
HARLOW
The last day of school before winter break should have felt liberating, but it didn’t. I walked across campus with my heart lodged somewhere in my throat, my brain running a thousand miles per hour, and my stomach doing things that I really hoped were just nerves and not... the other thing.
Tomorrow morning at six a.m., we were flying to Vegas.
I was going to marry Owen Taylor in less than twenty-four hours.
The thought sent a giddy thrill through me, immediately followed by a wave of terror so intense I nearly tripped over a crack in the sidewalk. A girl passing by gave me a weird look, probably wondering why I was grinning like a maniac one second and looking like I might vomit the next.
Welcome to my life. It’s a whole thing.
Three weeks of winter break that would include a secret Vegas wedding, a trip to Tennessee to face my family, and potentially life-altering news delivered via a plastic stick I’d been actively avoiding.
The pregnancy test was still sitting in Owen’s bathroom cabinet, unopened, taunting me every time I brushed my teeth.
We agreed to wait.
But God, the not knowing was driving me insane.
Every morning I woke up nauseous, and I couldn’t tell if it was because my body was growing a tiny human or because I was so anxious about everything that my stomach had simply given up on functioning normally. I wanted to rip that box open and take the test.
One more week. By the time we found out, we would be married.
Mrs. Owen Taylor.
Harlow Taylor.
I tested the name out in my head for the thousandth time, and it still made me want to giggle like a twelve-year-old with a crush.
My car came into view across the parking lot, and I picked up my pace. Owen was waiting for me at home. We had a checklist to finalize. Bags to pack. A marriage license to obsess over.
Just normal pre-elopement activities.
My phone rang, cutting through my racing thoughts, and I fumbled it out of my bag with a smile already spreading across my face. It was probably Owen calling.
I didn’t even check the caller ID.
“Hey, you,” I answered. “Miss me already? It’s been like three hours.”
“Harlow.”
Not Owen.
Syn.
I stopped walking so abruptly that a guy behind me nearly plowed into my back. He muttered something rude and swerved around me, but I barely noticed. Something about Syn’s tone made my veins crystallize with ice.
“Syn? What’s wrong?”
A pause. The kind of pause that comes before bad news, the kind that stretches long enough for your imagination to spiral through every worst-case scenario.
“Has Owen told Jax about you two yet?”
The ice spread from my veins to my chest, freezing my lungs mid-breath. “No. We’re flying out at the beginning of next week. We were going to tell him and Kaia in person.” The words came out too fast, tumbling over each other. “Why? What’s going on?”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“Syn. You’re freaking me out.”
“Jax knows.”
Two tiny words that detonated like a bomb in the middle of my carefully constructed plans.
“What? How? We’ve been so careful…”
“I came home early from the shop.” Syn’s voice was tight, controlled in that way she got when she was trying not to make things worse. “I heard him on the phone. He was... Harlow, he was furious.”
No. No, no, no.
“What happened? How did he find out?”
“Someone sent him a video. A text, I think. You and Owen were making out at some party or something.”
The frat party.
Someone had recorded it.
Someone had sent it to Jax.
“Oh shit.” I pressed my free hand to my forehead. “Oh shit, shit, shit.”
“Harlow, breathe.”
“I can’t breathe.” I started walking again, faster now, practically jogging toward my car. “How mad is he? Scale of one to ten?”
Syn was quiet for a moment. “Maybe a twelve?”
“That’s not helpful.”
“You asked.”
I reached my car and fumbled with the door handle, my hands shaking so badly that I dropped my keys twice before managing to unlock it. “What exactly did he say?”
“I didn’t catch all of it. But from what I heard...” She sighed. “He’s mad because Owen is supposed to be his best friend, and he’s been lying to him.”
My stomach dropped. It was actually months that we’d been lying. “We were going to tell him…”
“I know. But he doesn’t know that.”
She was right. We should have told him sooner. We kept finding excuses, but at the end of the day, we’d been lying.
And now it was blowing up in our faces.
“Thanks for the heads up,” I said, already jamming my key into the ignition. “But I’ve got to go. I need to warn Owen and see if we can get ahead of this somehow.”
“Harlow, wait…”
“I’ll call you later. Love you.”
I hung up before she could say anything else, my heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my temples. The engine roared to life, and I threw the car into reverse, nearly backing into a Honda Civic that had the audacity to be driving through the parking lot at that exact moment.
“Move,” I shouted through my closed window, which accomplished nothing except making me feel marginally better.
I pulled out onto the main road and called Owen.
It rang once. Twice. Three times.
Voicemail.
“Are you kidding me?” I ended the call and tried again. “Of all the times to not answer your phone, you pick now? Now?”
Voicemail again.
“Owen, I swear to…”
I tried a third time, weaving through traffic probably faster than was strictly legal, my knuckles white on the steering wheel.
Voicemail.
“Answer. Your. Phone.”
I was shouting at no one. In my car. Like a crazy person.
This was fine. Everything was fine.
Except nothing was fine. Nothing was even remotely close to fine. Jax knew about us; he was furious, Owen wasn’t answering his phone, and in approximately fourteen hours, we were supposed to be boarding a plane to get married in secret.
A secret that was no longer a secret.