Chapter 11 #2
I wonder if that’s what my music really says about me—that so little about me is actually mine. Just pieces I’ve collected from the people I’m trying to keep. Mom’s nostalgic favorites. The classics Silas introduced me to. Songs my friends sent me on Discord.
What songs will I add after Harper leaves? Aerials? I Am Not a Robot? Will I scroll through metal playlists trying to remember what it felt like to have her sitting twelve inches away from me in this car, arguing about music and smiling like she knows something I don’t?
Is that all that will be left—a few songs I listen to when I’m feeling masochistic?
“So you’re just going to leave first?” I try to keep my voice neutral, rational, like we’re discussing a homework assignment. “Why not stay where you’ve got free rent? And what about finishing school?”
She shrugs, and the casual gesture makes me want to slam on the brakes and shake her.
“There are just more important things. Like my best friend back where I come from. He’s the one I’ve been trying to get back to this whole time.”
“The sort-of fiancé?” The words come out strangled.
I know about Z. Harper mentioned him that first week. But that was before. Before the football game. Before late-night conversations in the hallway between our rooms. Before she started sitting with my friends and me at lunch.
Before I started counting down the hours until our morning and afternoon drives to and back from school, just to have twenty uninterrupted minutes with her.
“Yeah.” Her voice goes soft. “If we get married, then he gets emancipated and can get away from his abusive fuck of a stepdad.”
She’s never opened up to me this much before, and I should be grateful. I should be supportive. I should be the good stepbrother who wants what’s best for her.
But all I can think is: she’s leaving to get married.
“When does he turn eighteen?” I manage to ask.
“Five months. I can’t leave him with Frank that long when I can get him out now.”
Five months. Not even half a year. One hundred and fifty days of living in a place where someone—Frank, Harper’s voice said his name with such venom—can hurt him.
Five months is a long time when you’re in danger. I think about Mom’s cancer, how every day of treatment felt like a year. How time moves differently when you’re afraid.
“So then what are you going to do?” My voice sounds far away, clinical, like I’m interviewing a stranger instead of trying to understand why the girl who’s become the center of my gravity is planning to leave orbit. It’s my go-to mode in difficult conversations.
She shrugs again, and I hate that gesture now.
“Get jobs. Hitchhike to Austin. Be normal people.”
Normal people.
I can’t imagine Harper ever being normal. She stands out in any crowd—that dark hair, those sharp eyes, the way she moves like she’s always ready to either fight or run. She’s extraordinary, and she doesn’t even know it.
“So if you’re gonna marry him, then I guess...” My hands squeeze the steering wheel. “Do you love him?”
Another damn shrug.
“It’s just a piece of paper that gets him free.”
Relief floods through me, immediately followed by shame. I shouldn’t be relieved. I should want Harper to be happy, even if that happiness—
“Does he know that?”
She looks down at her lap, then picks at a nail, frowning. “I think. I haven’t exactly asked.”
“What’s he like?”
I don’t know why I’m torturing myself. But I can’t stop myself from asking.
Her face lights up. And I mean her entire expression transforms—eyes bright, smile genuine, a softness I’ve never seen before washing over her features.
And something in my chest just sorta... caves in.
“Z is the best,” she says, and there’s so much warmth in her voice it makes my throat tight. “He’s loyal and funny. He’s a gamer. God, I wish you could meet him.”
Me too.
The thought comes automatically, instinctively.
So I can make sure he’s good enough for you.
Except—who the hell am I to judge? I’m her stepbrother. I’m supposed to be happy she has someone. I’m supposed to be supportive of her choices.
I’m supposed to treat her like family.
But as I glance over at her—at the way she glows talking about Z, at how animated and open she is in a way she never is at Westfield—I have to face a truth I’ve been avoiding for weeks.
I don’t feel brotherly toward Harper Tucker.
I never have.
And watching her light up mentioning another guy is carving something vital out of my chest and leaving me hollow.
“Hey, don’t tell the parentals about me taking off after my birthday, yeah?” Her voice cuts through my spiral.
I shouldn’t agree. I should tell her that secrets like this hurt people. I should go straight to Mom and Silas and tell them Harper’s planning to leave so they can—what? Lock her in her room? That didn’t work before.
Try to convince her to stay? With what argument? That we want her here?
That I want her here?
“Sure,” I hear myself say.
“Swear.” She’s glaring at me now, and there’s something fierce in her expression. Something that makes it clear this isn’t a request.
I nod, even though I know I’m going to regret it. “Swear.”
I’m promising to help her leave. Promising to keep the secret that will let her walk out of my life like she was never here.
Because that’s what good people do, right? They respect other people’s choices. They don’t try to control situations. They let the people they care about make their own decisions, even when those decisions hurt.
Rag’n’Bone Man’s “Human” comes on next, and Harper immediately reaches over to turn up the volume.
“That’s more like it.”
The movement makes her hair swish, and that scent hits me again—cherry blossoms and Harper, overwhelming in the small space of the Mustang.
It’s the same smell that wafts out of our shared bathroom after she showers, the one that makes me linger in the doorway when I open my side of the bathroom and the steam hits me.
Cherry blossoms. Vanilla. Something sharper underneath.
I’m cataloging details again. The number of freckles on her left hand (seven). The exact shade of her nail polish (burgundy, chipped on the ring finger). The way she tucks her hair behind her right ear but never her left.
If I remember hard enough, will it hurt less once she’s gone?