Chapter 10
TEN
HARPER
“Harper. Harper!”
It’s not his voice.
It can’t possibly be.
Because I can’t possibly have been so stupid as to have actually come here.
This is a dream. No, one of those nightmares I really need to wake up from. There have been so many over the years. Usually I’ve just done something mind-numbingly awkward and beyond mortifying. And yes, almost all of them involve Caleb.
This is only par for the course.
So I block out the deep, resonant voice coming from behind me as I sprint the entire way back to my car. I yank my key out of my pocket and repeatedly shove it into the lock but can’t seem to make it fit.
Fuck! Just go in the fucking lock, you piece of shit key!
I knew this little piece of shit Nissan was going to be a lemon when they sold it to me—it just had lemon vibes—but noooo, Z was so sure it was a solid buy at a steal because the guy didn’t realize what he had.
Oh, he realized all right. We were the ones getting duped, not the other way around.
And now I have to jerk my key in this fucking lock at the exact right angle before it will—
A hand closes over mine.
Instead of jerking away and tasering the person who dared step too close—something I accidentally did to Z once when he startled me while I was out in Austin with Bruiser a few years ago—
Everything in me softens. Just goes loose.
Because it’s Caleb Graham’s touch. And my body’s been imprinted with him, wrong as it is for a thousand reasons.
Then comes his voice, quieter now that he’s close. “After ten years, you’re just going to show up in my backyard and leave without saying one word to me? It’s gonna be like that, Harper Tucker?”
My eyes fall shut.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“I didn’t mean to—” I stop. Try again. “I should go. I just wanted to say goodbye to Helen.”
A pause that lasts one beat too long. “Did you?”
There’s something in his tone I don’t recognize. Flat. Careful. Like he’s holding something back behind his teeth and has had a lot of practice doing it.
This isn’t the Caleb I knew at eighteen, who wore every single feeling on his face like a billboard.
This Caleb is—
I make the mistake of turning around.
Oh.
Oh, this is a problem.
He’s taller. I knew that from a distance when I spotted him at the service, but up close the extra inch or two feels architectural.
He’s broader across the shoulders, which just isn’t fair. His jaw is sharper, too.
He’s wearing a dark dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows.
He looks like someone who’s had to be impressive in rooms full of dangerous people and figured out how to do it effortlessly.
And his eyes.
They’re the same blue. Still that vivid blue I used to catalog every shade of.
But the warmth I remembered is buried deep.
Not gone—I think if it were truly gone, this would be easier. He’d feel more like the stranger I expected.
Instead, it’s as if the warmth is locked behind walls that weren’t there ten years ago.
I swallow hard.
“And I came to say goodbye to you. Properly, like you always deserved.”
“The goodbye I always deserved?” he repeats, and there’s a quiet edge under the words that makes my stomach flip.
It’s not angry. But… quiet is almost worse than angry. Like he decided a long time ago to be calm about this and has never once let himself be anything else.
I blink repeatedly. “I thought—”
“I know what you thought.”
I pull my hand back from the car door and wrap both arms across my chest. I need something between me and him. Even six inches of folded arms.
“I should go,” I say.
“You keep saying that.” His gaze drops to the keys in my hand and back up to my face. “But you always were, weren’t you? Always running.”
The words hit low. He doesn’t say it cruelly, which almost makes it worse. He says it the way you state a fact you’ve had a long time to make peace with.
The sun rises. Water is wet. Harper Tucker leaves.
“That’s not—” I start.
“I’m not fighting with you.” He takes a single step back and shoves both hands into his pockets.
That gesture—that specific gesture—I’ve seen it before, on a younger version of him, when he was trying to stop himself from counting. From reaching. From doing the thing he’d already decided not to do.
“I actually came out here to tell you that if you want to come back for the reception, you’re welcome. People who knew Helen would want to hear more about how she changed your life.”
I stare at him.
He’s inviting me in. Politely.
Like I’m a—a guest. Just some woman his mother was fond of who drove in from out of town. Then why did he chase me down and put his hand on mine like that?
“What happened to you?” The question pops out before I can stop it.
Something moves in his expression. There and gone in less than a second—a flicker—the way a light will pulse once before a bulb goes out.
“I grew up,” he says simply. “Same as you.”
“That’s not what I—”
“What did you expect, Harper?”
He’s not clenching his jaw. That’s the thing. He’s not raising his voice or clenching his jaw or any of the things the Caleb I knew would have done when he was overwhelmed.
He’s just standing there in that awful, controlled stillness, looking at me like I’m a problem he’s already solved and filed away.
“I don’t know,” I admit, which is the first honest thing I’ve said since I got here. “I don’t know what I expected.”
Again I catch the slightest shift in his expression.
“You look the same,” he says quietly. And then, as if it slipped through a crack in the wall: “Exactly the same. I mean, apart from the tats. They’re a good look on you.”
The air between us changes.
It’s so subtle that if I weren’t attuned to every single molecular shift happening on this sidewalk, I might miss it.
But I feel it in my sternum—this low, resonant pull. Like the moment right before a storm when the atmosphere is thick with electricity.
Don’t. I tell myself sharply. You came here for closure. That’s it.
Closure.
“I should have tried harder to say goodbye,” I say.
Because I need to say something, anything, to get us back onto solid ground.
“I know Helen didn’t want to see me after everything I dragged Silas into, which I totally understand.
But after everything, I should’ve at least found a way to leave a note—or call… or something.”
It sounds lame even as I hear the words tumble out of my mouth.
“It all just happened so fast.” My voice trails off, familiar shame washing over me.
I watch Caleb’s face change, but it’s not the disappointment or anger I’m bracing for.
He’s just gone so very still. There’s the faintest tightening around his eyes.
And silence. Such awful, heavy silence.
He’s staring at me. Not at me, exactly. More like through me. Kinda like Bruiser when he’s doing math in his head.
“But you did leave a note,” he says finally, brow furrowing.
Now I’m the one who goes still.
“What? No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
I shake my head no. “I got back from jail, and Z was waiting with my bags packed in the driveway. Helen didn’t want me in the house. I mean, later I totally realized it might just be the chemo messing with her emotions. But I’d just ruined everything for you and Dad and—”
Caleb’s face contorts, and suddenly he steps back, eyes going wide.
“That son of a bitch!” he shouts.
I jump at the outburst, especially since he’s been nothing but controlled the entire conversation. “What the hell?”
His furious eyes drop back to me.
“There was a note. In your handwriting.” The control in his voice is fraying now. Not breaking but fraying, like rope under load.
“The note said you were sorry,” he says through his teeth. “That you needed to be with someone who fit your life better than me, and that you’d decided I’d be better off without you.”
My heart starts beating too fast.
Then too slow.
Then doing something stuttery that doesn’t feel like a heartbeat should at all. Like everything inside me is suddenly getting reshuffled.
My whole reality tilting.
“I never wrote that.” My voice barely makes a sound. “I never— Caleb, I didn’t write that.”
He’s not moving. Not one single muscle.
“He lied to you,” he says. “Z lied.”
And then Caleb strides toward me, and then his body is up against mine. He presses me back against the car door, his hands desperately cupping my face.
“What are you talking about?” I whisper, heart slamming out through my chest.
I can’t be this close to him.
Nothing he’s saying is making sense.
“He wrote that note,” Caleb says, quiet and certain and absolutely devastating.
“He wrote it, pretending to be you. Then he told you Helen sent you away. To separate us. He cleared you out of that house while I was on the way to the hospital with medics still pumping away at Mom’s chest, but only because it was protocol—” He stops.
His throat moves. “Jesus, Harper. Ten years.”
The two words land like a verdict.
No.
No. He’s got to be remembering it wrong.
He’s told himself a story so many times that he believes it the way he wants to. Memory is funny like that, sometimes.
Because oh God, it can’t be true.
It would mean the foundation of everything with Z was built on a lie.
All I had wanted was to get back to Caleb. If Helen never sent me away... If she was already dead, oh my God, that meant Caleb was all alone the whole time and—
Oh my God. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my—
Caleb’s jaw is tight. His searching eyes are very bright.
And I can’t say anything. I can’t make the right sound come out of my mouth because all of me is busy doing the catastrophic math of ten years and the note I never wrote and the message Helen never sent and Z’s face in the car saying she doesn’t want you there and me believing him because why would he lie, why would anyone lie about that, why would anyone—
I have no idea who I’ve been living with.
The thought arrives fully formed, and it is the most terrifying thought I’ve ever had.
Caleb is still watching me. Still contained.
And somehow, in this moment, that control of his—that hard, careful distance he’s kept since he caught up to me in this parking lot—is more gutting than anger would have been.
Because anger would mean he hadn’t had time to learn to be okay with losing me.
That wall means he did.
“Caleb,” I say. My voice comes out wrong. “I need you to know that I never knew—I never meant for—”
“I know.” His voice is rough. “I can see that you didn’t.”
The words don’t fix anything. They can’t. Ten years don’t just undo themselves because two people are finally standing on the same sidewalk, saying the right things to each other.
I watch something shift in his eyes when he looks at me. Something that was locked clicks almost imperceptibly… not open—not yet. But for the first time, I let myself acknowledge it’s there.
“Come back for the reception,” he says finally.
His voice is back to careful and controlled. But underneath is something that took ten years of precisely laid bricks to cover over. And in the end, it turns out, it could never be fully buried.
“You can finally say your goodbye,” he says.
“Okay,” I whisper.
He holds my gaze for one more second—and then one more—and finally he turns and walks back toward the house.
I stand by my car in the late afternoon light and watch him go and think: I never should have come here.
Still, I follow him.