Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
HARPER
The night air bites at my bare arms as I lean against the back porch railing, watching Z exhale a thin stream of smoke into the darkness.
Helen’s perfect backyard stretches out before us—all manicured hedges and strategically placed garden lights.
Even the fucking grass looks like it’s been individually groomed with nail scissors.
I want to hate how beautiful everything is here. How calm. But I know it’s just because I’m in a bad mood.
My phone buzzes again, and I almost wrench my arm off in my haste to pull it out of my pocket.
Z chuckles at me.
“Worried your lover boy is getting too frisky on his date?”
I glare down at the text. Just a girl from World History asking if I did the reading. Spoiler alert: I didn’t. I ignore it and shove my phone back in my pocket.
“Not him?”
“He’s not texting me,” I bite out, not in the mood. “And it’s not a real date. He and Marie just had to go because this bitchy girl from school was hounding Caleb to go on a double date with her and her boyfriend. It was good for them to be seen out in public ‘dating’ so they went.”
Z just keeps laughing at me. “Sure. Just keep telling yourself that.”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t know why I’m bothering explaining myself. Clearly, the politics of high school mean girls are lost on you.”
His chuckle gets deeper, and I yank the joint out of his hand.
“Give me that. So glad I’m here for your amusement.”
I take a deep drag of the sweet-smelling joint, hold the smoke in my lungs, and slowly exhale.
“Hey.” Z grabs the joint back. “Hugs not drugs.”
I snort. “Says the pothead.”
“Exactly. Stay outta my stash.”
I close my eyes as the short buzz takes life in my veins.
“Since when are you bothered about a guy, anyway?” Z asks, and the question isn’t as casual as I know he’s trying to make it sound.
Then again, he always gets a little paranoid when he smokes weed. It mellows me out, but he just gets jittery as fuck.
“Since Caleb was so perfect,” I sigh into the cool night air.
Z blows out a long line of smoke into the air beside me. “I don’t see what’s so perfect about Captain Handsome. Especially when he’s out on a date with another girl.”
I sigh and toss my arms out wide. “I already told you. It’s not a real date. And Marie’s my best friend at school. It’s not like that between them. She was just excited about the lasagna at Luigi’s.”
Z just shrugs. “Maybe there’s a bunch of things around here that aren’t what they seem.”
I frown over at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothin’,” he says, super enigmatically.
I’m about to shake my head, chalking it up to him just being high, when he continues. “Just that I knew your old man wasn’t up to what he said he was up to.”
“What do you mean?” I repeat.
His eyes take a slow loop before finally landing on mine. “I mighta snooped when I had the house all to myself today. And picked the lock on that office he keeps closed up so tight.”
“You didn’t!”
“I did.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
I’m horrified. If I were Caleb, I’d rip him a new one and rattle off all sorts of rules he’d just broken.
But I’m not Caleb.
“And?” I spin to face him.
He grins, that lazy, mysterious grin. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Fuck off.” I thud him in the shoulder with a fist. “Tell me what you found.”
“Oww,” he says, rubbing his shoulder. “Damn, why should I tell you now?”
“Z.”
“All right, all right.” He finally gives in with another lazy pull on the joint. “He’s definitely grifting Helen.”
My stomach sinks, and the weed smoke that smelled sweet a moment ago is suddenly making me nauseated.
“How do you know?”
“Because that club of theirs? It’s not just some country club…”
I wait on his every word. No doubt, just how he wants.
“Well…?” I prompt impatiently.
“Weeeellll, it’s a sex club,” he says like he just let a mic drop.
I feel my forehead scrunch. “Like a strip club?”
He shakes his head.
“A sex club. Like a BDSM dungeon. Where people have sex. And that’s just the front. I mean, he’s probably at least running a prostitution ring, and that’s the least of the shady shit he’s doing there if you’re lucky.”
“How the fuck do you know?”
“I found it on some invoices and then dug deeper into their filing cabinet to find out more. It’s called Carnal.”
The fuck?
I yank out my phone and get to googling. Holy fuck, there it is. Carnal BDSM Club. For consenting adults to come play.
“Do you think Helen knows?” I ask, aghast as I do an image search and flip through pictures of all sorts of eye-opening leather bondage equipment and neon lights. It looks… clean at least.
Z laughs again, deep in his chest. “Oh, she knows, judging by the outfits I found in the closet in that room. Homemaker Helen’s got a dominatrix streak in her based on the height of those leather thigh-highs.”
“Don’t be gross.” I smack him again, eyes still wide from flipping through my phone.
“Mmm,” he makes a mock noise of pleasure. “Maybe dominatrixing runs in the step-family.”
I glare up from my phone at him, deadpan. “You will be murdered. There will be blood.”
Immediately, my eyes drop back down, unable to look away for long. “So wait, I don’t get it. If the club—dungeon—whatever is making money, what’s the grift?”
Z shrugs again. “Could be anything. Sex ring running through the club. Money laundering for the old MC your Dad used to run with. Human trafficking—”
“Okay. Okay.” I hold up a hand. “How do we get more information? Find out what he’s really up to?”
“Took care of that, too. Did a little stakeout.”
My mouth drops open. “With what car?!”
He shrugs. “Helen leaves her keys on that little hangy thing by the door.” He rolls his eyes. “Such an easy mark. Silas must’ve clocked her a mile away.”
I want to smack him for saying it, but I’m afraid I’ll actually hit him instead of the friendly rough-housing we usually do for saying that about Helen.
Even though I’ve said literally the exact same thing before.
But now that I know her? Fuck, I’d lay across tracks to protect that lady.
I try not to think about this new information about my apron-clad, cooking-baking stepmother in leather thigh-high stilettos. Does not compute, does not compute.
I shake my head, trying to scrub that particular image out of my brain.
I look at Z. “You sat around here for weeks doing nothing but sitting on your ass and gaming, and suddenly you’re Sherlock Holmes?”
His face goes solemn. “I knew you’d wanna know.”
“So?” I ask, emotions all over the place. “What’d you find?”
“I saw one of the guys who used to come around the trailer park, visiting with Darlene, after your dad got popped. The guy with the motorcycle. Or maybe it wasn’t the same guy.
” His eyes are dark, like he knows exactly how devastating the information he’s delivering is.
“But he sure had the same cut. The one with the devil’s horns. ”
Fuck. By cut I know he means the motorcycle jacket the MCs wear. The outlaw MCs.
Z’s voice is softer. “After I saw him pull up, your dad came out the side exit lookin’ like he’d seen a ghost. They started arguing. I’m so sorry, Harp.”
“Fuck!” I shout, my knees cutting out, so I sink down to my haunches.
I’d actually started to believe... I thought Helen was such an easy mark, when all along it’s been me.
Z immediately crouches down with me, trying to put his arms around me, but I throw him off.
“I’m so fucking stupid!” I jump back to my feet, hands to my head like if I just squeezed hard enough, I can go back in time and stop myself from being so fucking gullible.
And what would that have changed?
The porch is still spinning under my feet.
I snatch the joint out of Z’s fingers before I can stop myself. “Helen will murder me if she smells weed. Don’t fucking smoke out here.”
But I bring it to my lips anyway and take a deep drag to let the burn distract me from the ice water in my veins. It makes my voice raspier.
“Don’t piss me off, Z. Do you know how hard I’ve been working to keep this all from falling apart? You could make it easy just once.”
It comes out too sharp, but I don’t take it back. I can’t. If I stop swimming, I’ll drown.
Z gives a bitter little laugh, one I haven’t heard in months. One that reminds me of asphalt and blood and trailer park shadows. “You still thinking this is real? This is a pit stop, baby. Nothing more.”
Baby. The nickname scrapes against something raw.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Your dad’s the same piece of shit he always was,” Z says, taking the joint back and flicking ash. “The con’s just dressed up in better clothes this time.”
My throat closes. I want to punch him. I want to hug him. I want to disappear under the covers where we used to pretend none of it could touch us.
Z’s laugh is jagged. “No one changes, baby.”
“I said, don’t call me baby.”
But my voice falters, and he hears it. Of course he does.
I move to shove him, but he catches my wrists and pulls me into his chest. His hands are warm and rough and too damn familiar.
“You used to like it when I called you baby,” he murmurs. “Remember? During storms, when you’d climb in my window and wrap around me like you’d never let go?”
The memory hits like a sucker punch to the ribs. Thunder outside, the trailer shaking, both of us pretending we weren’t scared. His arms around me were the one place I didn’t have to pretend or perform. I didn’t have to be tough. I just had to stay alive.
“You liked it then,” he whispers.
“That was then,” I whisper back. “We were kids.”
“But you remember.”
Goddammit. Of course, I remember.
And that’s a problem.
I step back, gently. Not because I’m afraid, but because I’m not. And that’s dangerous.
“I’m different now.”
But Z just looks at me, gaze steady in the moonlight. “Yeah. Keep telling yourself that.”
I look out over the backyard again—perfect hedges, fairy lights, not a blade of grass out of place. Everything here is curated, so there’s no room for chaos.