Chapter 39 In The Court of Public Opinion
In The Court of Public Opinion
August
The frigid December gusts slice across my skin as I shove through the museum doors, leaving the velvet warmth of the gala behind. Chicago doesn’t whisper its cold, it screams it. Tonight, the city feels personal, like it knows what’s unraveling inside me and decides to match it blow for blow.
Adrenaline crackles under my skin. I move fast, dress shoes slapping concrete, breath coming hard in shredded white bursts.
“Fuck,” I hiss.
Spencer fucking Buchanan. Talking to Harlee like she was something he used to own. My hands curl into fists so tight my knuckles sting. I want to turn back just to hit him again.
Buchanan. Stephen Buchanan’s son. Chicago’s district attorney.
Judge Vanessa Buchanan’s his mother. One of this city’s most powerful couples in tailored silence. The kind of family that doesn’t just win. They erase.
Harlee never said. All those nights she whispered how he made her feel small, broken, less than. And I hadn’t asked. I should’ve asked.
“Mierda,” I mutter, dragging a hand through my hair. This suit, usually armor, clings like guilt. Too tight. Too performative.
My father’s voice slips out of me, raw and ugly. “Fuck. Man.” Gone the second I saw Harlee’s face fall.
Spencer’s smug look flashes again. Lazy. Entitled. My pulse pounds. I want to make him bleed all over again.
Frozen rain cracks beneath my soles. Neon flickers somewhere to my left, staining the ice-slick sidewalk in red and blue. It’s too quiet out here, like the city’s pulled back just to watch me lose my mind.
“Respira,” I mutter. The air burns going in.
I stop pacing and look up at the black sky. No stars. Just haze and wind screaming through the buildings.
“Is that who you are now, A?” I murmur. “A hothead? A headline?”
I press my fingers to my brow until sparks pop behind my eyelids. Still not enough to drown out what I did.
Then I hear it, heels on concrete. Fast.
I don’t need to look.
Harlee.
The air changes with her. It always does. She rounds the corner in silk and fury, curls wild, eyes locked on me like I lit the match myself.
Which, to be fair, I did.
Even now, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“August! What the hell was that?”
Her voice cuts straight through me. Not just the volume, but the panic threaded under it.
And I deserve every inch.
I drag my hands down my face. “Hola, beautiful.”
Her eyes narrow, sharp enough to pierce steel. Arms cross. A line drawn. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Air,” I say, barely keeping my voice above the wind. “Before I did something worse.” There’s blood on my knuckles, adrenaline still singing in my ears, and all I can register is the way she looks at me like I’m both the storm and the shelter.
She plants her feet like she owns the sidewalk, curls whipping in the wind.
“Oh, worse than breaking Spencer’s nose?” she deadpans.
But it’s not mean. It’s her version of “what the hell, August?” without pulling the love out of it.
And God, she’s a force. Not delicate-beautiful. Force-of-nature beautiful.
I can’t meet her eyes. “Maybe it was too much,” I admit, voice gone rough. “Probably. But I don’t regret it.”
“You could go to jail, August,” she says. No softness. Just consequences. “He’s petty enough to press charges.”
“Let him.” My voice turns cold. “I’d do it again.”
Harlee’s lips flatten. “This isn’t about you being a hero. You think you’re protecting me, but you’re giving him what he wants. Making a scene. Drawing blood. Playing by his rules instead of mine.”
For a beat, I almost laugh because she always sees the whole board. But I don’t. I scrub a hand over my face, cold and guilt mixing in my chest.
“Look,” I say, “maybe I am a hothead. Maybe I lost it. But I’m not going to stand there while someone talks to you, or any woman, like that. Not while I’m breathing.”
She tilts her chin, eyes flicking to the bruised skin above my knuckles. “Last I checked, no one ever died from being called a name at a party.” Her voice wavers, just barely.
“So you want me to stand there and do nothing?” I ask, softer.
“No. But I want you to trust me to handle it,” she fires back. “I want you to believe I’m not some fragile thing waiting to be rescued.”
The wind steals parts of her words, but not the meaning.
I stare past her down Michigan Avenue, streetlights turning everything sharp and metallic. Sirens wail somewhere, distant and ugly.
“He baits people, August,” she says. “That’s his thing. You played right into it.”
I nod because she’s right, and agreement tastes like metal. “I know. I just… fuck, Harlee, I hate that he gets to walk around with that smirk. I hate that you have to see him, hear him, remember—”
I snap my jaw shut too late.
Her face drops. Eyes go distant. Shoulders pull in like the cold finally found her.
“How the hell did you ever date that asshole?” I blurt.
She flinches. Not much, but enough. “Don’t.”
Shit.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I rush out. “I just… he doesn’t deserve to be part of your story. Not the way he showed up tonight. Not with the way you shine.”
Silence thickens between us.
A car passes, headlights sweeping over her. She’s shivering, that dress nothing but a bright slip in the wind.
She rubs her arms absentmindedly. I step forward, shed my jacket, and drape it over her shoulders. She lets me.
“He never acted like that when we were together,” she says quietly. “That was new.”
“And his parents are Stephen and Vanessa Buchanan,” I say. “Didn’t see that coming. And we helped elect him.”
Her eyes widen. “Holy fucking shit, Batman.”
I laugh, because of course I do. “Yeah. Really bad.”
She steps closer. The cold fades a notch. “So what do we do now?”
That lands like a punch.
“First, I get you home,” I say, steadier than I feel. “Then I go back in. Damage control. Kelley. Media. All of it. I’ll handle it.”
She lets out a small, bitter laugh. “Like this isn’t my fault.”
“It’s not.” I pull in a breath so sharp it nearly cuts. “I lost my temper. I hit him. You did everything you could to deescalate. This is on me. If you’re okay with it… I want to keep you out of the blast radius. I’ll handle this part.” My hand goes to my chest. “Mami. I’m sorry.”
She exhales, neither nod nor shake, just…trying to hold herself together.
“I could have told you about them,” she says, voice strangled small. “But I never met them until tonight. I haven’t thought about Spencer in months.”
“How were you supposed to know?” I say. “About any of it.”
Harlee snorts. “That supposed to make me feel better?”
“Not even close.” I try for a smile. “Just context. I want you to know the battlefield.”
She studies me, eyes catching stray light. “You’d go to war for me.”
I don’t blink. “Already did.”
She shakes her head. “You’re going to get yourself obliterated.”
“Maybe.” I move closer, lock my arms around her like I can block the world. “Worth it.”
For the first time tonight, a real smile cracks her face. “He’s such a dumbass. Do you know how many women would kill to see Spencer Buchanan get his face handed to him?”
I shrug. “You, for starters.”
Her grin softens the edges. “Full disclosure? Watching you take him apart made me a tiny bit wet. But if you catch a case and leave me visiting you through bulletproof glass, I’ll kill you myself.”
I laugh, low and real. “Noted.”
She narrows her eyes. “Don’t let me find out you’ve done time.”
“We all got pasts.”
Harlee goes quiet, breath clouding between us. The wind drops for half a second and it’s just us in this weird, perfect bubble.
“Yeah, well,” she says. “Mine needs to stay in its lane.”
She grips my lapels, hands trembling. There’s a smudge of mascara under one eye. I want to wipe it away, but I know if I touch her face, I won’t let go.
I bury my nose in her hair, inhale champagne and vanilla and her.
“You’re freezing,” I murmur. “Princesa.”
“It’s not even that cold,” she lies, yawning.
“It’s below zero. Windchill’s criminal.”
“Pussy,” she teases, but her teeth chatter anyway.
“Let me get you back to the hotel,” I say. “Where’s Wynter?”
“She dipped when I came to find you.” Harlee looks personally offended. “Her bougie ass was not about to miss the chance to take a black car back to our apartment.”
I smile. “I would’ve gotten her her own room.”
“I know. And she would’ve let you.” She shrugs. “But she figured we probably had a lot to talk about. Besides, I doubt Wynter went home alone. She had her eye on someone old enough to be her big daddy when we were inside.”
I chuckle. “Should I be concerned?”
“You?” she says. “No. Him… probably.”
A gust hits. I pull her closer, book the black car, and slide my phone away.
She laughs, real this time. “You know what sucks? I thought I could come here tonight, look nice, network, be normal. But he’s always there. Like gum on the bottom of my heel. I can’t scrape him off.”
“Tonight, you did.”
She leans her forehead against my chest. I hold her there.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into her hair. “For keeping you out here.”
“I wanted to be here,” she murmurs.
My phone buzzes. I show her the screen.
“Your chariot, mi reina.”
Harlee doesn’t move yet. She stands there wrapped in my jacket, soft in the sodium light. Not invincible. Just her.
She kisses my cheek. “You’re a goddamn mess.”
“Takes one.”
She laughs again. For a moment, I think we might be okay.
She tries to hand my jacket back. I pull it over her shoulders again. “Keep it. Looks better on you.”
A snowflake ghosts her cheeks. “Damn right it does.”
“I’ll see you at the hotel,” she says, heading for the car.
My jacket swallows her frame. Her curls bounce under the streetlight.
I stand there a minute, letting the cold burn away what’s left of my adrenaline.
I want to go with her.
But I have to go back inside.
And face the music.