Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
CALEB
The ride back home is awkward as hell.
Harper sits up front with me—her choice, not mine, though I’m not complaining—relegating Z to the back seat. He makes this frustrated noise when she climbs in beside me instead of back with him, and I catch the flash of betrayal in his eyes through the rearview mirror.
Good.
The highway stretches ahead, dark apart from the headlights on the highway now that we’re heading back north.
Z keeps trying to talk to Harper. Arguing with her is more like it. Leaning forward between the seats, his voice gets louder and more insistent.
“You should make him take us to Austin.”
My hands tighten on the steering wheel. Nine and three. Check position. Still correct.
Check speedometer: 70 mph. Five over the limit. Acceptable.
Check mirrors: Z’s face is too close to the front seats in the rearview.
“We’ll get jobs washing dishes like we planned—”
My jaw clenches. Once. Twice. Three times. Four.
“Z.” Harper’s voice has an edge.
Check mirrors again. Rearview. Left side. Right side.
“I’m serious, Harp. You don’t belong with these people. You belong with—”
Five jaw clenches now. Six. I’m going to have a headache by morning.
“Z.” Sharper now.
But he won’t quit. “You’ve been there, what, three months? And suddenly you’re—”
“Goddammit, Z, I’ve had a long day driving to get you, and I just need to catch up on sleep. Can you please just... stop?”
The please does it. Z snaps his mouth shut and slams back against the seat, arms crossed angrily over his chest.
Harper tilts her chair back slightly, closes her eyes, and within minutes, is snoring softly. They’re these huffing sounds that come at regular little intervals and shouldn’t be as endearing as they are.
This also effectively leaves me and Z alone in the car.
The little clock light from the second-hand stereo we rigged to fit in the dash cast everything in blue-green. I can see Harper’s face in profile—relaxed in sleep in a way she never is awake. My hands tighten on the steering wheel.
I don’t actually dare turn any music on. I don’t want to risk waking her. She does need the rest. But Z clearly doesn’t share my concern for her comfort.
“What the fuck did you people do to brainwash her?” His voice cuts through the engine’s rumble.
I glance in the rearview mirror. Z’s glaring at me, arms still crossed, his jaw tight. There’s a fresh bruise blooming under his left eye from where Frank threw him down, and blood has dried at the corner of his mouth.
“Nobody could brainwash Harper,” I say evenly. “You know her better than that.”
“I sure as fuck thought I did,” he mutters, bitter and low.
“We should be quiet.” I keep my voice soft. Reasonable. “Let her sleep.”
“I know what she needs a hell of a lot better than you do,” Z says, louder now, angrily. Loud enough that Harper startles awake with a sharp inhale.
“What’s going on?” She sits up fast, disoriented, eyes darting between us.
I glare in the rearview at Z. Asshole.
“Nothing,” I say quickly. “We just hit a small bump in the road.”
Harper’s eyes narrow slightly—she knows I’m lying—but she’s too tired to call me on it. She settles back, closes her eyes again, and within minutes her breathing evens out.
Z shuts his mouth after that. Smart choice.
We ride in silence for hours. Just the hum of the engine, the whisper of tires on asphalt, and the occasional semi blowing past in the opposite lane with a rush of displaced air that rocks the Mustang slightly.
The Texas night is endless. Dark sky, darker land, interrupted only by the occasional gas station or all-night diner glowing like a beacon.
I keep the speedometer steady at five miles over the limit—fast enough to make good time, not fast enough to risk getting pulled over and having to explain why three teenagers are driving around at midnight.
I don’t regret my quick thinking back at Frank’s trailer, standing up to that piece of shit. I don’t even regret the way my hands shook afterward, or the adrenaline crash that hit me the second we made it to the tree line.
It gets Harper back home where she belongs.
My only regret is the leech hitching a ride with us.
Maybe Harper can’t see what kind of guy Z is, but I clocked him the second we all stopped long enough to catch our breath.
Angry dude. Possessive eyes.
Look, I get he was in a bad situation. But it’s Harper I care about.
And she’s too soft-hearted underneath all that armor.
Yeah, yeah. She’d punch me if she ever heard me describe her that way.
But beneath her tough exterior and all the fuck-yous and the sarcasm and the cigarettes she smokes to look dangerous, she’s a softie.
I’ve seen her with that cat and with how protective she’s been of that younger girl, Marie, who I think was having a tough time before Harper folded her into our friend group.
She’s got so much love to give.
My jaw flexes as my headlights pierce the dark, and as I hit the long stretch of highway between Lufkin and Dallas—nothing but pine trees and darkness for miles—I have to remind myself to be careful with her heart.
With such a soft, generous heart hidden under all that scar tissue, I have to remember that she doesn’t see herself the way I do.
She thinks she’s so cold-hearted and hard, when really she’s the kind of person who spends all her lunch money to save up for a bus ticket to rescue her best friend. Who screamed and jumped and clawed at a window trying to protect someone she loves.
She clearly needs the rest because she sleeps the whole way back.
She doesn’t stir when I adjust the temperature, or when I stop for gas in Tyler and carefully tuck my jacket over her shoulders because it’s gotten cold out.
And you can believe I feel Z’s eyes burning into the side of my head at that little move.
It only takes four hours to get home when I’m not wandering back roads and stopping for long meals.
Three hours and forty-eight minutes, to be exact. 228 minutes. 13,680 seconds.
Far before I’m ready, the lights of the Dallas suburbs bloom on the horizon.
Check the time: 1:47 a.m.
Check Harper: starting to stir.
Check my hands: still shaking slightly. Tighten grip on the wheel even though my knuckles are aching from gripping it so tightly for so many hours today.
I have to pass through the outskirts of Dallas to get to our northeastern suburb, and the nighttime Dallas skyline lights glitter like a promise.
In the rearview, I catch Z pressing his face to the window, eyes wide. Taking in the buildings, the lights, the sheer size of everything.
Has he ever been to Dallas? Or any large city? Has he been just as sheltered as Harper? Trapped in Grass Alley, the same way she was, just with different bars on the cage?
Maybe I should try to find some compassion for him, like Harper has.
But then I catch the way he’s looking at her in the rearview mirror—at her sleeping form, curled toward me like even unconscious, she’s seeking me out—and he’s got this expression on his face.
Like she’s his.
The second he saw me, he wanted to fight me for her. Even though he’s scrawnier than me—all wiry muscle and sharp edges where I’m broader, more solid. I have a feeling he’d fight dirty. Go for the eyes or the throat with a hidden blade.
Whatever it took to win.
Harper always talked about her life before me in terms of survival.
I hate to admit, some part of me thought she was being metaphorical.
But after meeting Frank and seeing where she grew up, smelling that ammonia stench from the factory, and watching grown men size up my car like sharks circling prey, I’m beginning to understand.
She was being terribly direct.
I pull into our driveway as quietly as possible and kill the headlights before I turn in—exactly four seconds before the turn. I counted.
Roll slowly up the driveway, trying not to make noise.
Check speedometer: 3 mph. 2 mph. 1 mph.
Check mirrors: no neighbors watching. Good.
Check the house and frown: lights on. Not good.
It’s 2:03 a.m., and I’m desperately hoping Mom and Silas went to bed already, trusting that we’re just late coming back from the lake.
But from the way the front door flies open, light spilling out into the darkness, and Silas stomping out the walkway, that’s a pipe dream.
Shit.
“Harper,” I say gently, reaching over to shake her arm.
She startles awake again, shooting to a sitting position so sharply she almost bangs her head against the passenger window.
“What?” she’s shouting before she’s fully conscious, and I see it—that instinct. That fight-or-flight response that never quite turns off.
“We’re okay. It’s just your dad.” I point at Silas, who’s crossing the cobbled walkway in his pajama pants and undershirt, face thunderous in the porch light.
“Shit,” Harper says, voice scratchy with sleep. “What time is it?”
“Two in the morning.”
Harper shoves her door open, practically leaping out to meet her angry bull of a father. I follow immediately, not willing to let her face anything alone, even Silas.
The night air is cool against my skin after hours in the car. I can smell Mom’s roses from the front garden, and crickets are singing their endless song in the background. Everything is so normal and suburban.
“Where the hell have you been?” Silas barks, and his voice echoes off the neighboring houses.
Harper holds her hand out, shushing him. “God, Dad, do you want to wake the whole neighborhood?”
“I want to know where the hell my daughter has been.”
Harper immediately props her hands on her hips—that defensive stance I know so well. “Did you forget what day it is? I’m eighteen. You don’t have a say over me anymore.”
Wrong thing to start with. I can see it in the way Silas’s jaw tightens. The way his hands curl into fists.
“Do you know how worried Helen and I have been all day?”