11. Maddox
MADDOX
Ispot them from the entrance. Booth in the middle of the room, good bottle open on the table, Sophia holding court the way she always does with Lorenzo watching her like she personally invented conversation.
Raphael is on the outer edge of the booth and Harper is beside him and she’s laughing at something and she looks warm and loose and easy in the way she gets when the professional armor is down for the evening.
She doesn’t see me come in.
Raphael does. His expression falls immediately, making me grin.
I cross the room and slide into the booth on Harper’s other side without announcing my arrival and without asking, because the invitation already happened over text and I don’t require a second one.
She turns at the movement and her eyes find mine and something moves across her face, quick and bright, before she arranges it back into something more neutral.
“You came,” she says.
“Told you I was.” I reach across her for the wine bottle and top off her glass without asking and then pour myself one from the spare glass Sophia has already materialized from somewhere.
I settle back and my arm finds the back of the booth behind Harper’s shoulders, easy and unhurried, like it belongs there.
It doesn’t move.
Sophia beams across the table at me. “Uncle Mad Max. What are you doing here?”
“Harper texted me.” I look at Harper beside me.
She meets my eyes.
“She did?” Sophia asks, but I’m still looking at Harper. The way her eyes seem to absorb all light, yet glitter gold near her pupils.
Harper picks up her wine glass and looks across the table instead of at me.
I stay exactly where I am.
The evening is easy. Sophia is in rare form and she’s talking about Rosé’s pace and Lorenzo is adding things and Raphael is laughing and Harper is engaged, occasionally saying something that cuts straight to the point of whatever Sophia’s circling and Sophia points at her every time.
My arm doesn’t move from the back of the booth.
Raphael looks at it twice. I notice both times. I don’t acknowledge either.
At some point my fingers find the end of Harper’s hair where it falls past her shoulder and I start turning the ends around one finger, slow and idle, not making a thing of it.
She goes very still for exactly two seconds.
Then she exhales and lets her shoulder drop back against my arm and I feel that small surrender all the way down my spine.
She’s still looking at Sophia. Still nodding at whatever’s being said about accent walls and inventory display flow. Completely composed.
I keep my face straight too.
Raphael looks at it a third time. He picks up his drink.
I wait until there’s enough noise at the table to have a private conversation in plain sight.
“I thought I told you to use my number for emergencies,” I say, low, near her ear.
She turns her head just enough. Her mouth is right there. “Considering how hard you three have been keeping Raphael away from me, I figured he qualified.”
“Ah.” I pull the strand of hair I’ve been holding and let it fall. “So you’re using me as a solution to a problem I created.”
“Seems efficient.”
“I do like efficiency.” My fingers find her hair again. “Is it working?”
Her eyes cut to Raphael across the table. Back to her glass. “Somewhat.”
I smile and say nothing and the evening keeps moving around us.
It’s past ten when Lorenzo leans toward Sophia with that quiet thing he does and the table’s energy shifts.
“We should probably get to bed,” he says.
“We really should,” Sophia agrees immediately.
She looks at me across the table. “Maddox.”
“I know.”
“Don’t let her get into anything too wild.”
“I’ll take good care of her.”
Harper makes a sound beside me. “I’m right here.”
“We know,” Sophia and I say at the same time.
Harper looks between us like she’s deciding if it’s worth the energy. She decides it isn’t.
The three of them get up. Sophia hugs Harper across the table and says something in her ear that makes Harper close her eyes briefly like she’s asking for patience. Lorenzo shakes my hand. Raphael stands and looks at Harper.
“I can walk you back,” he offers.
“I’m going to stay for a bit.” No hesitation. No apology in it.
Raphael nods and takes it clean and says goodnight and follows Lorenzo and Sophia toward the door. Sophia turns back once and points at me with two fingers, both eyes. I raise my glass. She leaves.
The booth goes quiet.
“Raphael looked devastated,” I say.
“Raphael looked fine.”
“Harper.”
She laughs low and tips the last of the bottle into her glass. “Okay. Maybe a little devastated.”
Asher comes through from the kitchen about twenty minutes later, chef coat sleeves rolled up, the particular energy of a man who has been on his feet since six a.m. and just reached the finish line. He spots us and crosses over and drops into the seat across from us.
“Good celebration?” he asks Harper.
“Very. Sophia outdid herself.”
“She always does.” He pours from the bottle, finds it empty, signals the bar for another. “How are you finding the event side of things?”
“Good. Mallory is incredible. I’ve been making notes on where I think there’s room to expand the programming.”
“You tightened the service path on the Saturday run-of-show.”
“The bottleneck was going to cause problems during the board changeover.”
“I know. I’ve been looking at it for two weeks.” A beat. “You caught it on day one.”
Harper shrugs, but she’s pleased.
A new bottle arrives. The restaurant has gone mostly quiet around us, tables emptying, staff moving slow toward close.
“I met Evelyn today,” Harper says.
I exhale through my nose. “And you survived. You’re tougher than you look.”
“She’s not that bad,” Asher says.
“You’re only saying that because you’re still infected by Monica.”
Asher’s jaw tightens. He picks up his glass.
“Who’s Monica?” Harper asks.
Neither of us answers immediately.
I see Asher’s focus shift before I follow it. The dining room door has opened. Evelyn comes through first, silk and gold, that walk. Monica is a half-step behind her in deep green, hair dark and perfect, already scanning the room.
Her eyes find our table and then Asher.
Fuck.
Asher starts to rise. It’s instinct, just his palms pressing to the table, the first inch of standing.
“Don’t, Ash.” I say it quiet, without looking away from the door.
He stops. Stays seated.
Harper looks between us. “What? What’s wrong?”
They reach the table before I can answer.
Evelyn stops at the edge of the booth and looks down at us with the particular expression she reserves for things that have disappointed her without surprising her. “It’s rude to stay seated when a woman is standing.”
“The only woman here is already sitting, Evelyn.”
She holds my gaze for a moment and then decides to let it go and takes the chair at the end of the table. Monica stays standing, eyes still on Asher, and then she shifts them to Harper.
Harper looks back at her. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look away, and then she extends her hand across the table. Clean and direct.
“Harper Brooks,” she says. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
Monica looks at the hand.
She doesn’t take it.
“Monica Leigh,” she says, and her eyes move to Asher and back to Harper with a smile that doesn’t reach anything. “It’s good to see Asher making an effort to move on.”
The air at the table shifts.
“Monica is Asher’s ex,” I say.
Monica tilts her head at me. “Could have been yours too, Maddox.”
“Not even blackout drunk, Monica.”
Something cold flashes across her face before the smile returns. She pulls out the seat next to Asher and sits.
Harper hasn’t moved. She’s sitting straight between Asher and me and I can feel the shift in her, not fear, not shrinking, something more like the stillness of a woman recalibrating the room she’s walked into and deciding what to do about it. Her shoulder is still warm against my arm.
I leave my arm exactly where it is.
Evelyn glances at Harper with that measured, gracious expression. “I must say, you’ve made yourself quite at home since you arrived. Killian, his event planning, his closest friends.” Her eyes move across the table and back, unhurried. “A smart girl cultivates goodwill where she can, I suppose.”
Monica makes a small sound.
“Evelyn—” I start.
Harper sets her glass down.
Both hands flat on the table after. Spine straight. Her voice, when it comes, is perfectly pleasant.
“You’re right,” she says. “Not everyone can afford to be selective.” She tilts her head at Evelyn. “Some of us had to earn the rooms we walk into rather than marry into them. Different skill set. But it tends to stick around longer.” One beat, light as air. “The goodwill, I mean.”
She turns to Monica with the same pleasant expression.
“And it’s so nice to finally put a face to the name. I’ve heard it come up a few times since I arrived.” She doesn’t say how. She doesn’t need to. “You have a beautiful dress.”
Monica stares at her.
Harper picks up her wine and takes a sip and looks at me.
I look back at her.
Evelyn holds Harper’s gaze for a long moment. Something moves through her expression that isn’t anger and isn’t respect and might be both.
She stands.
“Early morning,” she says. “Monica.”
Monica looks at Asher one last time. He doesn’t return it. She follows Evelyn to the door without another word and they’re gone.
The restaurant breathes.
I look at Harper.
“You have a beautiful dress,” I say.
The corner of her mouth pulls up. “Too much?”
“Perfect.”
I look at Asher. The careful steadiness he runs on has slipped, just slightly. He’s looking at Harper and it’s an expression I haven’t seen on him in a long time.
Harper looks back at him. “How are you feeling after that, Ash?”
The corners of my friend’s mouth tilt up at the sound of his nickname from the woman between us. “I’m sorry that they spoke to you like that.”
She waves her hand in the air. “Don’t worry about me, I’m asking about you.”
“I’m fine,” he says. And then, quieter, “I’m better than I’ve been in a while, actually.”
Harper studies him the way she studies everything, direct and unhurried, like she has all the time in the world and nowhere more important to be.
The restaurant is nearly empty now. One bartender moving slow at the far end.
The low warm light doing what low warm light does to a woman who already doesn’t need any help.
“She still has a hold on you,” Harper says. Not an accusation. Just a fact, offered gently.
Asher looks at the table. “Less than she did an hour ago.”
Harper tilts her head. “Why’s that?”
He looks up at her.
She looks back.
I am sitting approximately six inches to her left and I have excellent peripheral vision and I watch my best friend reach up and brush a piece of dark hair back from her face with the back of his fingers, slow and deliberate, the way a man touches something he’s been thinking about touching for longer than he’s admitted to himself.
Harper goes still.
Asher’s hand stays at her jaw.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he says, low. “Back there. But you did.”
“Someone had to.”
“It didn’t have to be you.”
“I know.” Her voice has dropped to match his. “I wanted it to be.”
Something shifts in his face. He leans in, and I think: here it is. And I should look away, or say something, or be anywhere but six inches to her left watching this happen.
I don’t look away.
His mouth finds hers. Soft at first, a question, the way Asher does everything, patient and certain.
And Harper— Harper tips toward him and kisses him back and the hand that had been resting on the table between us slides instead to my thigh and her nails press into the fabric and I feel it everywhere.
My hand covers hers on my leg. I don’t move it. I just hold it there and feel her fingers curl under mine.
Asher pulls back slowly. His eyes open. He looks at her like a man who has just confirmed something he wasn’t sure he’d ever feel again.
Her chest is rising and falling. Her hand is still on my thigh.
She turns her head and looks at me.
I reach up and take her face in both hands and I kiss her, and I don’t start soft. I drink deep because I’ve been sitting next to her all evening with my hand in her hair and her shoulder warm against my arm and I’m done being patient about it.
She makes a sound against my mouth, low and wanting, and her fingers tighten on my thigh and Asher’s hand finds the back of her hair and the three of us exist in the quiet, charged dark of a nearly empty restaurant at the edge of something that is going to change everything.
I pull back just enough to breathe.
Her lips are parted. Her eyes are dark.
Asher’s forehead is resting against the side of her hair.
I haven’t shared in a long fucking time, but the idea of sharing this woman with Asher doesn’t upset me at all.