Chapter 6 #3
Harper looked at him for a long moment before whispering, “Then why fight the divorce?”
He lifted his gaze slowly. “Because running away was the biggest regret of my life,” he said, his voice breaking on “life.” He presses his thumb and forefinger into his eyes. “And I couldn’t let the last thing I ever did as your husband be to run away again.”
“The logic holds up, irritatingly enough. It aligns with the stubbornness I’ve seen in you this week—the generator, the refusal to bail on the trust exercises. You’ve been treating your character defects like a renovation project you finally committed to finishing.
She wanted to scoff at the timing, to point out that the statute of limitations on his courage expired years ago, but the raw honesty in his tone jammed her usual defenses. She just sat there, knees locked to her ribs, holding herself together by force of will.
“And the most humiliating part? In some pathetic, hope-drunk corner of my heart, I’ve been waiting for so long to hear exactly this.” She hated that corner. Hated that it still had a pulse.
Her eyelids felt like sandpaper. She had to consciously hold them open, the bone-deep weariness of three years of fighting settling into her jaw, her shoulders, the space between her shoulder blades.
Everett continued, his Adam’s apple bobbing twice before the words came, his knuckles white where he gripped his knee.
“I’m not here to win you back. I know I might not deserve a second chance.
But I needed to stand in front of you as the man I should’ve been back then.
Honest. Present. Not hiding. Not disappearing. ”
She blinked hard, her fingers twisting. “I don’t know what to say to that.”
“I know,” he said gently. “And I’m not asking for an answer.”
He’s handing her the control she’s been fighting for, but without the battle she expected.
It threw her off balance. She’d prepared for a negotiation, for terms and conditions, not this open-handed surrender.
It forced her to look at him not as the defendant in her divorce proceedings, but as Everett.
Just Everett. And part of her wanted to pick the fight back up just because it was familiar, at least when they were fighting, she knew who she was.
Harper scrubbed the tear away with the heel of her hand, hard enough to leave her cheek red. “But I needed this. I needed the truth.” When he nodded, she caught herself almost reaching toward him, the old impulse to comfort, to smooth, and forced her arms to stay crossed.
“Then I’m glad you got it. Even if it’s all you ever want from me again.”
The fire crackled.
She took another sip of wine. He took the glass she’d poured for him and gulped it like it was a liquid lifeline before setting it back down on the small table between them.
The storm softened outside as if it were finally listening.
Harper whispered, “Thank you… for telling me.” She picked at a cuticle until it bled.
He remained still, like any movement might break this fragile thing between them. “Thank you for hearing me.”
She sucked in a breath. “Everett… what are we now?”
He smiled. Sad, hopeful, honest. “Two people who finally stopped running from the same storm.”
Harper huffed a tiny, broken laugh. “How… poetic.”
He shrugged. “It’s the truth.” A long, quiet moment passed.
She picked at the throw pillow fringe, then flattened against her thighs, then found each other again.
Then Harper reached for the wine. The bottle was cool against her palm while her chest felt hot, and its weight surprised her, heavier than she expected, like everything meaningful that night.
She poured more into each glass.
When she handed him his, Everett met her eyes, and something delicate, tentative, warm flickered between them. They clinked their glasses gently. To truth. To closure. To whatever comes next, separately or together. The clink made them both freeze, as if it might shatter whatever this was.
Not certainty. Not a promise. But possibility.
And for once… it didn’t feel terrifying. Instead, it was more like relief. And then she remembered, relief meant it’s really over. The hoping is done. And she didn’t realize she was still hoping until this second.
Harper stood, gathering their soup cups, and took them into the kitchen.
Rain ticked against the gutters in a softer rhythm now, almost apologetic. Like the sky realized it had thrown a massive temper tantrum and was now awkwardly trying to make friends again. Too little, too late. The universe could offer all the rhythmic patter it wanted.
Harper hadn’t consciously thought of escaping. She’d told herself she only needed her space. Her dignity. Her distance.
Okay, fine. Maybe that was a lie I told myself to keep from hyperventilating.
In reality, I’d bolted like a startled cat, complete with the metaphorical puffed tail, only to be dragged back by meteorology.
Nature clearly had zero respect for my dramatic exits.
The joke tasted stale in my mouth, another performance, another way to avoid admitting what was inside.
He set the spoons down in the sink, the quiet clink far too intimate.
The sound hit her like a sucker punch to the sternum, all domestic and settled and everything she’d spent years convincing herself she didn’t need.
Her throat tightened. She froze, gripping the edge of the counter like it was the only thing keeping her from either fleeing again or turning around and doing something catastrophically honest. The Formica bit into her palms, real, solid, unforgiving.
If she let go, she might tell him that the sound of silverware made her ache for the Sunday mornings of yesteryear.
The air shifted with that weird static electricity that always seemed to hum whenever he invaded her space.
Heat crawled up her neck, and pressed her molars together, willing her pulse to stop hammering against my ribs like something caged.
He didn’t have to touch her for her nerves to send frantic telegrams to the rest of my body.
It was annoying. It was distracting. And it was definitely not helping the whole ‘aloof and unbothered’ vibe I was trying to project, the same performance she’d perfected in every situation where caring too much had cost her everything.
The heat against her chilled skin made her shiver. She told herself it was leftover cold from the rain. Not the man standing inches behind her.
She could blame the atmospheric pressure or the drop in temperature all she wanted, but her body knew the difference between hypothermia and the proximity of a human furnace.
Her knees went liquid first, a tremor that started deep in the bone and worked its way up her spine like a betrayal she couldn’t control.
Her nervous system wasn’t reacting to the weather; it was throwing a ticker-tape parade because he was finally within reach, totally ignoring the fact that my logic center was currently screaming into a void.
“Not exactly gourmet,” he mumbled. “But it was hot.”
“It was perfect,” she said, and meant more than the soup.
Great. Why didn’t she hand him a roadmap to her emotional instability while she was at it?
The joke landed in her chest with a hollow thud.
Even her own sarcasm knew it was pathetic.
The soup was salty, canned mush, but in this kitchen, with the storm shut out and him standing there like a solid oak in a hurricane, it tasted like a five-star meal.
Perfect because she’d forgotten what it felt like to be fed by someone who knew exactly how she liked things.
Perfect because she’d been eating alone for so long, she’d started talking to the microwave.
She needed to dial it back before she started composing sonnets about sodium content.
Silence swelled, thick, electric. Her pulse thudded in her ears, jaw clenched tight while her eyes softened despite herself.
“I know,” he said, the word catching in his throat. A swallow.
His weight shifted closer. “I just—” His fingers tightened against the counter. “I don’t want to let go.”
The confession slipped between them, raw and unguarded.
That wasn’t fair. He wasn’t supposed to say the quiet part out loud. Part of her wanted him to hurt the way she had, to feel the ache of counting days since she’d been touched by someone who mattered.
We were doing so well with the polite, cautious dance of two people pretending the past didn’t exist, and then he had to drop a truth bomb right into the dishwater. It stripped away her sarcasm, my defenses, and my ability to pretend this was just two old friends surviving a weather event.
She caught the faint scent of his shampoo. The smell ambushed her. The way his scent clung to her skin as if reminding her what she was walking away from.
Pulling her hand from under his, she flattened it against his chest, intending distance.
Her muscles coiled to pull back, but her treacherous body leaned forward instead, pressing closer, surrendering to the solid heat of him.
The rapid beat beneath her touch made her breath catch.
He covered her hand with his, trembling, reverent, holding it there as if he’d been starved for that contact.
The surprise stole the air from her lungs.
So much for him being the calm one. That rhythm under her palm wasn’t slow or steady; it was a chaotic, galloping thing that matched the mess inside my own chest. He was just as rattled as she was.
A sound she didn’t mean to make, half whimper, half sigh, escaped her throat, and she felt him shudder in response.
Knowing he was falling apart too should have given her the upper hand, or at least a moment of clarity.
Instead, it just dissolved the last of her resolve like sugar in the rain.
“Harper…”
Her name was rough, reverent. It was a collision of hunger and hurt, of years of silence and unsaid words.
So much for the “look but don’t touch” policy. He wasn’t asking for permission, and honestly, if he had, she probably would have said yes before he finished the question. It felt less like a kiss and more like a reclaiming, sweeping away every logical argument she’d stacked up against him.
She let out a gasp.
And he deepened the kiss, fingers sliding into her hair as though he’d been starving for the feel of her.
That grip was her undoing. She’d spent so long convincing herself she was fine, thriving, even, without him, but one touch proved she was a liar. A breathless, desperate liar who wanted nothing more than to stay right here and let him ruin her composure all over again.
She tasted salt and warmth and something heartbreakingly familiar. A quiet sound escaped her, half breath, half plea.
Oh God, that noise! She sounded pathetic. Needy. Like she hadn’t spent the last three years swearing she was over it. It was the flavor of home, and she hated how easily her defenses dissolved into the heat of it.
Every exhale between them carried a longing that had never truly faded.
We weren’t warring anymore; we were negotiating a surrender. Her surrender to him.
Her pulse stuttered, trying to keep up with the sudden shift from frantic to tender.
It was unfair of him to be this gentle. Rough she could handle.
Rough was just adrenaline and impulse. But this slow, deliberate mapping of her mouth?
This was him asking do you still want me?
And I wasn’t ready to answer, mostly because the answer was yes, and that terrified me more than being alone ever had.
When they finally broke apart, foreheads pressed together, both of them trembling, the air between them pulsed with something fierce and fragile.
Her lungs burned, demanding oxygen she’d forgotten she needed.
Harper felt unsteady, like she’d just stepped off a tilt-a-whirl that had been spinning too fast for too long.
Standing upright shouldn’t be this difficult, yet here she was, relying on his stability because her own knees had forgotten how to hold her.
His thumb brushed her cheek, and she realized she was crying.
“Goodnight, Everett.” Harper pulled away and went to bed before she made the mistake of letting her body make more decisions for her future than she was ready for.