Chapter 15 – Harper
The waiting is the worst part.
I sit on Patty’s couch with a mug of tea I’m not drinking and a book I’m not reading, my body tightening every time I hear an engine on the street.
Patty sits across from me in her armchair, knitting with the steady rhythm of someone who’s been doing it for years without looking down.
"He'll be fine," she says without looking up.
"I know."
"Do you?"
I set the book down. "No. Not really."
She nods, like that's the answer she expected. "Ronan's been handling worse than entitled ex-boyfriends since before you met him. He'll be fine."
"It's not Ronan I'm worried about."
That makes her look up. "You're worried about Derek?"
"I'm worried about what Ronan might do to him." I wrap both hands around the mug even though the tea's gone cold. "Derek will press charges. He'll call his lawyers. He'll make this into something that follows Ronan for years."
"Only if there's evidence," Patty says mildly. "And Ronan's smarter than that."
I want to believe her. I do believe her.
But I know what Derek is capable of when he feels like he’s losing control.
The last time I tried to leave him, he showed up at my work and made a scene in the parking lot.
Told my boss I was unstable, that I needed help, that he was just trying to take care of me.
I lost that job three days later.
My phone buzzes on the coffee table. I grab it so fast I nearly knock over the tea.
It's Rosa: You ok? Heard there was something happening.
I type back: I'm fine. At Patty's. Long story.
Her reply comes immediately: Need me to come over?
I smile despite everything. No. But thank you.
Text me if that changes. I can be there in 5 min.
I set the phone down and Patty's watching me with that expression she gets, the one that sees too much.
"You've made good friends here," she says.
"I have."
"Good man too."
I don’t answer. I can’t, really. I don’t know what Ronan and I are beyond his cabin, beyond the way he looked at me in this kitchen and said stay here like it was the only thing that mattered.
It hasn’t been long since he stepped between me and Cal with that flat, certain voice that made a drunk man back down. Now I’m sitting in someone else’s house waiting for him to come back from confronting my ex like this is normal. The terrifying part is that I accept it.
With Derek, I spent years making myself smaller, learning how to keep the peace. With Ronan, I don’t know how to make myself smaller at all. He looks at me like he sees everything and wants it anyway.
The sound of a motorcycle cuts through my thoughts.
I’m on my feet before I realize I’ve moved.
Patty looks up. "That's him."
I don't ask how she knows. I just go to the window.
Ronan’s bike idles at the curb, and he sits there a moment with his head slightly bowed before cutting the engine and standing.
Even through the window and the dark, I can see he’s unhurt. No blood. No limp. Just Ronan, solid and steady, coming up the porch steps with that deliberate pace.
I open the door before he knocks.
He stops at the top step and we look at each other. His jaw is tight, the scar catching the porch light, dark eyes searching my face for something I can’t name.
"Is it done?" I ask.
"Yeah."
"Is he—"
"He's fine." Ronan's voice is flat. Even. "Alive, unhurt, exactly as entitled as he was when I got there. But he understands the situation now."
I step out onto the porch. Close the door behind me. Patty doesn't need to hear this.
"What did you do?" I ask quietly.
"I talked to him."
"Ronan."
He looks at me for a long moment. Then, "I put my hand on his throat. Didn't hurt him. Just made sure he understood that his money doesn't work here. That you're protected. That if he comes back, I won't stop at talking."
My breath catches.
Not because I'm afraid of what he did. Because I'm not. Because some part of me that I don't fully recognize is glad, fiercely, dangerously glad, that Derek finally met someone he couldn't buy or intimidate or smooth-talk his way around.
"Harper." Ronan steps closer. Not touching me, but close enough that I can smell leather and night air and him. "I need you to understand something."
"What."
"I meant what I said to him." His voice is low. Certain. "If he comes near you again, I will hurt him. Badly. And I won't lose sleep over it."
I should be horrified. I should tell him that's not okay, that violence isn't the answer, that there are legal ways to handle this.
But I'm not horrified.
I'm standing on Patty's porch in the mountain dark with a man who just threatened my abusive ex-boyfriend on my behalf, and all I feel is safe.
Safer than I've felt in years.
"Okay," I say.
He blinks. "Okay?"
"Okay." I step closer. Put my hand on his chest, right over his heart, the way I did when everything was different and the same.
"I'm not going to tell you that was wrong, Ronan.
Because it wasn't. Derek doesn't respond to polite.
He responds to power. And you just showed him he doesn't have any here. "
His hand comes up and covers mine. Warm. Solid.
"He's going to leave," Ronan says. "Judge is watching the lodge. If Derek's still there in an hour, we escalate. But my read is he'll go. Men like him don't stay where they're not in control."
"And if he doesn't?"
Ronan's jaw tightens. "Then I'll make sure he wishes he had."
We stand there in the porch light and the dark, and I think about the man I left fourteen months ago, the one who made me feel like I was always one wrong word away from something breaking.
And I think about the man in front of me now, who handles everything with that controlled, deliberate certainty, who hasn't made me feel small or scared or less-than once since I met him.
"Thank you," I say quietly.
"You don't need to thank me."
"Yes, I do." I look up at him. "You didn't have to do this. This isn't your problem."
"Yeah, it is."
"Why?"
He looks at me for a long moment. His hand tightens slightly over mine.
"Because you're mine," he says.
Four words. Flat. Certain. Like a fact he's stating, not a claim he's making.
And the difference, the specific difference between Derek saying something like that and Ronan saying it now, is everything.
Derek said mine and meant property.
Ronan says mine and means protected.
I reach up and pull him down and kiss him.
He makes a sound low in his throat and his arms come around me and for a moment we're just that, wrapped up in each other on Patty's front porch while the mountain dark settles in around us and Derek Sutton packs his bags two miles away.
When we break apart, Ronan's forehead drops to mine.
"Come back to the cabin," he says.
"Ronan—"
"Just—" He stops. Recalibrates. "I want you where I know you're safe. Until Judge confirms Derek's gone."
I should argue. Should tell him I'm fine here, that Patty's house is perfectly safe, that I don't need him watching over me like I'm something fragile.
But I don't want to be here.
I want to be wherever he is.
"Okay," I say.
He kisses me once more, soft this time, almost careful, like he's handling something that matters.
Then he steps back and I go inside to get my things.
Patty looks up from her knitting when I come in.
"You're leaving," she says.
"Is that okay?"
"Honey, you're a grown woman. You don't need my permission." She sets down her knitting. Looks at me with those sharp eyes that see everything. "But for what it's worth, I think you're making the right choice."
"Do you?"
"That man just went toe-to-toe with your ex-boyfriend to keep you safe. And he didn't ask for anything in return. Didn't make it about him." She stands. "That's rare, Harper. Don't let it go just because it's fast."
I hug her. Quick and tight.
"Thank you, Patty."
"Anytime, sweetheart."
I grab my jacket and walk back out to where Ronan's waiting by his bike.
He hands me the helmet without a word.
I put it on and climb on behind him and wrap my arms around his waist, and when the engine starts and we pull away from the curb, I don't look back.
I just hold on.
And let him take me.