Chapter 5 #2
“You act like I already know your whole story. But I don’t, Harper.
” I set my cutlery down, letting a quiet beat linger between us.
“Sam might have known more about your secrets than I do. We can’t be sure KnightofTruth isn’t far behind him.
Since you’re not willing to leave Cape Carnage, maybe now might be a good time to think about letting me in, just a little, so we can plan for what happens if or when they discover who you really are. ”
“Am I seriously to believe you didn’t google the shit out of me when you weren’t dismembering bodies to put in my bird feeder or following me around town with drones?”
“It was just the one drone, actually.”
Harper snorts a laugh and takes a sip of her coffee. “I don’t think we have time for my entire life story before you go searching and rescuing people who are already dead.”
“I’ll make time for just a piece of it.”
Harper’s jaw tenses. Silence drapes over our table like cloth.
We eat without talking. She has trouble meeting my eyes.
I don’t know how much to push without making her feel like I’m shoving.
I don’t know how to navigate being a fucked-up person who can’t pry obsession from love.
And I don’t know how to love someone who is so afraid to receive it.
We’ve both faced fear and grief and done terrible things.
But I haven’t seen and survived the same evil she has.
Maybe when you claw your way free of that kind of horror, you put yourself in a maze.
You make yourself untouchable by love and all the loss that comes with it.
And over time, it’s hard to even find yourself.
“I don’t want your whole life story, Harper,” I say.
I reach into my pocket and pull out something I’ve been wanting to give back to her but was waiting for the right time.
I turn her hand over and place the silver bracelet on her palm.
A2BC, the engraved panel says. It’s the bracelet she or Adam must have worn, the one Morpheus dropped in the sink a couple of weeks ago as a gleaming gift for Harper.
She stares down at it, her features pinching, her eyes glassy when they meet mine.
“I just want a little bit of you for myself.”
I close her hand and squeeze it before rising with my plate and cup, taking them to the kitchen. “I’ve gotta go,” I say, glancing at my watch. “Thank you for breakfast. I should be back around—”
“It was my fault.” Her voice is barely more than a whisper, but it stops me like a dart to the chest. “Harvey Mead.”
When I turn to face her, she’s laid the bracelet on the table and is moving it in a serpentine pattern. The ouroboros on my arm tingles as though she’s tracing it. She sniffs, swiping violently at one of her cheeks, punishing herself for the tears.
“He broke both of Adam’s legs when we tried to escape. And the days just went on and on . . . They said it was three weeks. But it felt like years in the dark.”
I take slow and measured steps back to the table, my eyes never straying from Harper as I sit back down in my empty chair.
“I um . . . ” She shakes her head, fat tears sliding down her cheeks to drop on her plate.
“I woke up that final day and Adam had a fever. It was cool in the cellar. Harvey had stripped us of our clothes when he tossed us in there, and we were always cold. But that day, Adam was burning. Sweating. Suffering. So I pounded on the iron door.” Her fist hits the wooden table, a sudden shock of sound.
Cutlery rattles on her plate. “He’s got an infection.
” She hits the table again. “We need medicine.” Another strike.
“Please let him go.” Another hit. Another.
She delivers strike after strike. And I don’t stop her.
Not when I can see the cracks in an unhealed wound finally splitting, poison seeping from their edges.
I just rest my hand on her knee beneath the table and let her keep smashing until she’s done, her eyes swollen with tears.
“And then the monster came, just like I asked,” she whispers.
“He came and took Adam away, and I couldn’t fight back hard enough to save him. ”
She dissolves into sobs, utterly crushed by horror and guilt only she can see.
And I don’t pull her to me. It’s Harper who pushes back her chair.
Grips the table like it’s a lifeline. Climbs onto my lap and into my waiting arms to unleash despair so deep I feel like I’m drowning in it. Like it’s a sea I can’t save her from.
“The chainsaw . . . Mead tore him apart,” she says. “They were right above me. I could hear pieces of Adam falling to the floor. The screaming. Mead laughing. And if I’d only waited. Just a little bit longer . . . ”
“What happened is not your fault. You were just trying to help him,” I say, running a hand over her hair.
Harper shakes her head against my shoulder. “But they would have gotten us out. It wasn’t even an hour. If I’d just waited one hour.”
She repeats herself. If I’d only waited. They would have gotten us out.
But that doesn’t make sense. Autumn Bower walked herself out of Harvey Mead’s derelict farm after burning it to the ground. Seven miles. Barefoot.
. . . Or that was the story she told the police?
“Who?” I ask. “Who would have gotten you out?”
When I pull her back enough to look into her eyes, she’s almost unrecognizable.
Not just because of the red blotches on her skin or the streaks of tears or the puffiness around her eyes.
It’s the hopelessness in them. There’s no hint of the defiance that’s come to define her.
There’s no snarky quip illuminating her features, ready to be unleashed by her sharp tongue.
She suddenly seems so delicate. So terrifyingly breakable.
“Was someone else there?” I ask. “Did someone—”
“Harper.” There are three sharp raps on the glass of the back door.
I glance over just in time to see the wolf’s head of Arthur’s cane as it taps a final time.
A flash of fury burns on my tongue at the interruption.
I swallow a sharp curse. “Harper. Did you take the portafilter from the espresso machine?”
Harper wipes her eyes with the heels of her hands, and when that has little effect, she tries the hem of her T-shirt instead.
It doesn’t make it any less obvious that she’s been crying.
The deep breath she takes isn’t cleansing—it’s a reset.
She’s slipping her armor back into place.
“I’ll be there in a minute to help you look,” she says, loud enough for Arthur to hear.
“Also, the cinnamon. What did you do with the cinnamon?” he calls from the other side of the door, but at a distance, as though he won’t come closer than a cane’s length away.
“Just give me a sec—”
“And also the soy.”
“So, you’re missing basically all the ingredients to make a latte,” she calls out as she slides off my lap and heads to the kitchen sink.
“No. I have coffee. I need . . . everything else.”
“I’ll be right there, okay?”
“Yes, yes, fine. I’ll wait,” Arthur says, and honestly, I can’t tell if he’s extra disgruntled by the delay of his latte, or if this is just a standard Arthur level of grump.
Harper doesn’t sigh or complain, she just turns the cold water on and splashes her face.
But me? I struggle to clamp down on my protests.
I stand but stay where I am, fighting the urge to rush out the door and take him back to the house myself, so she can have a little time to regain her composure in privacy.
I just want to step in and fix something I know I’d only break.
Harper dabs her face dry with a handful of paper towels, and when she turns to face me, more of her mask has clicked back into place.
But not all of it. Her eyes are haunted, still red and weary.
“I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved,” she admits.
She doesn’t take a step closer, and neither do I.
“Even Arthur. Sometimes, he doesn’t remember who I am.
” Harper breaks her gaze away, and when it returns, it shines once more with tears.
“I am afraid to love you, Nolan. I don’t think I could survive losing you. ”
Maybe my heart should be cracking with her words. But it soars instead. She’s not saying she won’t love me, or she can’t, or even that she doesn’t already. “That’s okay. I understand.”
There’s a little relief in her features. But only a little. A question lingers in the worry that furrows her brow, one that’s intertwined with her fear: Is that really enough for you?
I finally come closer, stopping near enough to touch her, though I don’t. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met, Harper. Especially when it comes to me.”
I lean forward, press a light kiss on her cool, damp cheek, and then I leave.