Chapter 31
HARVEST
Harper
I STAND ON THE CLIFFS not far from the lighthouse and look out at the sea, the water churning in the storm.
My lungs fill with the salty air. It feels like drowning.
Choking on something I can’t escape. No matter how hard I try to force it away, the loss of the man I thought Nolan was brings me just as much grief as it does pure, undiluted rage.
I thought we were happy. I thought he loved me. Just like I loved him.
And it had looked so real.
Even at the end, when he was on his knees, the illusion had felt real. Pain. Panic. Longing. I saw them all in his eyes. But I was looking at a mirage. He’s nothing more than a mirror, reflecting the things I felt back to me.
There’s only destruction behind the polished glass.
My gaze lowers to the object in my hand, rain dripping across my brow to land on my cheeks like tears. It’s more than just metal and screws and points of bone. It’s a relic, with a history bound to its sharp edges. And it’s a weapon that was wielded against me.
The fact is, Nolan hasn’t killed anyone who was actually responsible for the crash.
Harper Starling died that night, because I’m the one who killed her.
The others—Marc, Trevor, Dylan—they were just passengers.
Pieces of shit, maybe. But none of them were behind that wheel.
They left Nolan and his brother on the road.
Just like me.
The facts are unyielding. Only Nolan would have taken this bone.
He’s the only one who knew where to look, the only one with the motivation to twist it into the garden like a knife into my heart.
And he’s the only person with the opportunity and access to teach Morpheus a name that only two other people in Cape Carnage know.
With one final glance at the bone in my hand, I toss it into the roiling sea. Just like I should have done the day that we met.
I sigh, wiping my eyes from the flood of tears that creep up on me without warning.
For a long while, I just stare at the water, wondering why Nolan would have risked himself to pull me from its depths.
Maybe that was just part of his game. I don’t know.
Like everything else, his panic and relief, his care when he stayed with me at the hospital—it all felt so real.
But that’s the most terrifying part. I promised myself I would never allow another psychopath to slip through my defenses.
And I didn’t just let my guard down. I knew Nolan was dangerous, and that was part of the attraction.
What is wrong with me? It’s as though I saw the blade waiting to cut me, and yet I ran straight for it.
How could I let this happen?
I ask myself this on a loop that never ends. Only when I finally check my watch and realize it’s nearly nine-thirty do I start walking back to Arthur’s Jaguar to pick up his prescription refill from the pharmacy.
It’s such an unsettling morning with the wind and thunder and the driving rain, like the storm is an external part of me.
I didn’t feel safe staying at the cottage last night after the confrontation with Nolan, but I didn’t really have anywhere else to go, so I slept in one of the guest rooms at the manor house with the gun beneath my pillow.
Arthur didn’t even know I was there. After I checked on him in the evening, I just slipped into one of the bedrooms he never goes into, and—let’s be real—cried myself to sleep.
Now, I feel hollow. There’s a static haze where my thoughts should be.
A constant ache in my chest like my heart is being crushed in a fist. I dip quickly into the pharmacy to pick up the Aricept and Risperdal that Arthur must have somehow misplaced this morning before I came downstairs to make his breakfast. We searched the kitchen together for twenty minutes before I gave up and called the pharmacy for a prescription refill.
When I near A Shipwrecked Bean, I consider going in to grab a coffee, but I just can’t do it.
Not when it reminds me of the first time I met Nolan.
I should probably head to the Capeside Inn. See if Nolan’s car is there or if he’s already fled Cape Carnage. There are probably plenty of things I should be doing. But I just can’t bring myself to do any of them at all.
When I get back to the estate, I drive straight through the main gate that leads to the manor house.
The garden is being pummeled by the storm, some of the flowers losing petals across the mulch.
My focus pulls toward the foxglove, so beautiful but so deadly.
Maybe for you and I, hate and love were always two sides of the same blade, Nolan had said.
Maybe the signs were there, and I just never saw them.
Just like every time I told Nolan he was wrong about me, he didn’t understand.
Maybe we’d both left out the most important parts.
Now we’re just like the ouroboros tattooed on his arm, consuming each other without end.
And that is the last thing I think as I park the car and run through the rain, lurching to a halt on the front porch of the manor house.
For a moment, all I can do is stare at the open door, opera music drifting from inside.
I glance over my shoulder. Pan my gaze across the drenched garden. There’s no sign of Arthur. A sudden burst of fear floods my veins that he might have continued our earlier search for his medications and wandered outside in his confusion.
I glance up at the camera beneath the overhang, wanting it to tell me something. But the lens just stares down at me, indifferent to my concern.
I open the door a little wider.
“Arthur?”
The music of Puccini’s Tosca is the only reply.
I follow the melody of Maria Callas’s voice, flowing from the direction of the kitchen. I cross the lobby. My damp shoes squeak across the polished floor.
“I’m sorry it took me so long,” I call out as I head down the hallway. “I lost track of . . . ”
Time.
Time stretches long enough to burn every detail into memory—the crimson slashes of blood, Arthur’s unseeing eyes, the scent of iron in the air. The echo of my scream clawing up the walls.
I stumble toward him, my hands shaking, heartbeats thundering in my ears to dampen the sound of the opera swelling around me. I drop to my knees in the blood congealing on the floor.
Arthur lies face down on the stone tile, his eyes fixed on the space behind me.
There’s a long slash across his throat. His hand is outstretched toward me, like he was trying to reach for me and I wasn’t there to reach back.
His features are slack in death, but there’s an echo of expression haunting the lines that crease his brow.
Conviction, perhaps. Maybe defiance. But I’ll never get the chance to know.
“Arthur . . . ” Tears fall into the crimson pool that fans from his neck. My fingers tremble as I graze his cheek where dots of blood have dried on his cooling skin. “No . . . ”
I know he can’t come back. And still I plead with him to wake up. I beg him not to leave me here alone. But his parted lips never answer me back.
I cast my gaze around the horror that surrounds me. Arthur’s cane lies discarded on the floor. There’s no weapon I can see. I glance behind me and my eyes catch on something that doesn’t belong. A message written in blood on the wall.
Time demands its toll.
The memory strikes like a match that ignites the last cinders of my heart, burning them to ash. I can see the piece of paper in my hand. The familiar script. I’d traced the letters with my fingers before I placed it in the drawer with all of Nolan’s other notes.
I saw this just after I got out of the hospital. It’s the oldest piece of written music—called “The Song of Seikilos.” The words kind of stuck with me, and now they remind me of you:
While you live, shine
Fear no grief at all
Life exists only for a short while
And time demands its toll
~N
I drop my hands to the floor, something sharp piercing into the heel of my right palm. But I barely notice the pain. Not when I’m being cracked wide open.
I scream. And scream. And scream. I don’t stop until my throat is raw and I taste blood on my tongue.
A single truth remains. I’ve fallen in love with the enemy.
And Nolan Rhodes must die.
That is the one thought that stays lodged beneath my skin. When I call the police, it’s there. When Sheriff Yates and Deputy Collins and the paramedics show up, it’s there. When I’m sitting at the station with blood on my hands and Lukas rushes in with tears in his eyes, it’s there.
Nolan Rhodes must die. Police. Tears. Questions. Answers. Who could have killed Arthur? I say that I don’t know. Because there’s no justice in the world that will ever be enough for what Nolan has done. Not unless I deliver it with my own two hands.
It’s nearly midnight when I’m standing in the bathroom at Lukas’s house, staring at my reflection.
I’m not even sure I know what happened in the last few hours.
I hardly recognize myself. My eyes are bloodshot and haunted, my bottom lip bitten raw.
I looked so healthy and alive just a few days ago.
I remember sitting at my vanity, doing my makeup before the dance, and realizing I looked happy.
Now I’m just a shell of that woman. I don’t look like Harper Starling at all.
I’m just Autumn Bower with dark hair and fresh grief stitched into her skin.