Chapter 5
Harper
My phone rings as soon as I slip inside my little cottage and drop my keys in the little carnival glass bowl that my mom left me when she passed away suddenly after I graduated.
I stroke the sides and my lips quirk. “Darius is back, mom. What do you think about that?”
There’s no reply but then again there never is. No matter how many times I talk to her.
But it makes me feel closer to her.
I toe off my sneakers and wander across my little living room in the dark. This old house holds all my memories.
My mom was a single mom when women didn’t want to be. She got herself messed up with a married man when she was on vacation and came home to find herself knocked up and no way to call the man she only knew as Curt.
She could have given me up but she wasn’t that kind of woman.
She was tough and sweet and such a good mom.
She worked for the police department for a lot of years in the dispatch.
She worked long hours and it wasn’t a lot of pay but it was enough for her to be able to afford our little place.
And we were able to scrape by with everything else. Not a lot left over.
That’s why when I started traveling after she passed away, when Darius didn’t even bother coming back for her funeral and my heart was shattered at the double shots.
Add to that, I found about him slipping up and getting his girlfriend pregnant and then a quickie wedding with a child on the way.
That was when I knew it was time for me to hit the road and try and forget all my pain. Forget the feel of his arms around me when we’d barely turned sixteen and he’d hug me tight while we watched stars in the bed of his old pickup truck.
The same one he packed her up in to leave for college.
That fucking hurt.
All those years traveling didn’t get rid of the pain. It just moved it to a back burner so that I could learn to function around it. Like learning to live without air.
Dropping onto the couch, I lean my head back and stare up at the ceiling.
I don’t understand what happened. I really thought he was going to ask me to the dance. I bought a new dress that my mom helped me pick out.
I ended up not going. I had no intention of sitting there alone all night and watching him dance with her.
My phone rings again and I sigh and pick up, knowing exactly who it’s gonna be.
“Why didn’t you pick up the first time? I know you were home. I tracked your phone.”
Huffing, I punch a pillow by my head. “How many times do I have to tell you to stop tracking me?”
“I don’t know why you’d bother telling me when you know I’m not gonna listen to you.”
“You are a pain in my ass, Fee.”
“And you are still hung up on Darius.” She doesn’t say it like it’s a question.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh please,” she growls. “Don’t bother. If you want to lie to yourself, go ahead. But don’t bother lying to me. You still suck at it.”
“I’m a wonderful liar.”
“Not something to strive for, cousin.”
I giggle and lean back in the couch cushions. “ I don’t know what to do, Fee. He’s still hurting.”
“Of course he is. He’s not a psycho.” She sighs and I hear the question in her breath.
“I don’t know what happened. He never explained any of it to me. Just disappeared.”
“Well, I’d say that’s the first thing that you should do is talk about what the hell happened. Then maybe that will give you an idea where this is going.”
“I suppose.” But I don’t want to ask. What if he tells me that he fell in love with her and he just didn’t care about me anymore.
That my mother, who was a second mother to him, didn’t matter enough to show up for.
“How do you think the plans look?” I ask her, pushing all the niggling doubts down in the back of my mind. That’s for another day.
“I think they look good. I mean, it’s only a wall being knocked down but I do like the way he’s looking at built-shelves along that long wall. That’s a lot of extra space for both of us. We could split it right down the middle.”
“Yeah.” But I’m not thinking about the plans. I’m thinking about the excitement in Darius’s eyes. He looked so good. Like a man on a mission.
“Don’t let him in your heart without getting an explanation for what happened, Harp. You deserve the truth after all these years. I know that he’s why you took off.”
I don’t answer and she groans. “Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She whispers something and I groan.
“Could you two stop it for five minutes so that we can finish this conversation?”
Monroe’s dark voice chuckles in the background and I groan. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Please try and leave your better half home alone.”
“Love you too, Harp,” he mutters into the phone and there’s a breathy whimper and the phone hangs up.
“Ugh. I need better family members. That’s just wrong.” I know damn well what they were doing and I wish to hell I could wipe all those thoughts out of my head.
And I get my wish. My doorbell rings and I stomp over and throw it open, gasping.
“What are you doing here?”