Chapter 7
Harvey
The night gathered around us, thick and breathless, the last streaks of daylight sinking behind the hills until only muted gold and bruised gray remained.
Aria stood in front of her childhood home—arms tight around herself, shoulders drawn in, like she was fighting to hold together every fractured piece still wanting to slip through her fingers.
Wind drifted through the yard, stirring fallen leaves and carrying the faint sweetness of honeysuckle mixed with the first warning of rain.
The same smell that used to cling to summer nights when she’d run barefoot across the lawn and find her way to my porch, pretending she wasn’t scared while her father shouted and her mother disappeared with whatever man she’d chosen for the evening.
Now she stood in the shadow of that house—quiet, devastated, unreachable.
I stayed beside her, letting the silence stretch until it felt like we were both balancing on the edge of something neither of us knew how to face.
“Where are you staying?” I asked at last.
Her arms tightened. She didn’t look at me. “I’ll figure it out.”
I inched closer, trying to catch any trace of her eyes beneath the dying light. “Aria, you can’t stay here. Not tonight.”
She didn’t answer, but the stillness in her body said everything. She hadn’t prepared for this. She’d come home thinking there might be some solid ground left—only to find crime scene tape wrapped around the last place she’d ever been a child.
“You’ll stay with me,” I said.
Her head jerked toward me, surprise flaring across her face. “Harvey—”
“I’m not asking.”
The hesitation in her expression pulled at something deep—old, familiar.
For a moment, the years between us slipped, and she was the girl who used to trust me with the fragile pieces she hid from everyone else.
But trust didn’t survive what I’d done. It lingered like a ghost now, something felt more than touched.
On instinct, my hand reached for hers. Her fingers were cold against mine, tremoring so faintly she probably didn’t even feel it. “Come on,” I murmured.
She moved with a kind of shaky resolve, her steps slow, unsteady.
I felt her falter when we reached my mother’s porch—of course she thought that was where I meant.
The place where we’d lived our entire childhoods in each other’s orbit.
But I didn’t stop there. I let our hands stay linked as I guided her down the side path, gravel shifting beneath our feet in the deepening dark.
“Harvey, where are we going?” she whispered.
I didn’t trust myself to answer. Not yet. Not with the chance she’d pull away if I gave her too much space to think.
The detached garage came into view, warm light spilling from the apartment above it. The staircase stretched up to the small place I’d built with my own hands—a refuge I never expected I’d be leading her to.
Her breath caught. “You live up there?”
I nodded. “Built it a few years back. Gave Mom the house, kept this for myself.”
She followed me up the steps cautiously, as if crossing a threshold she wasn’t sure she deserved or trusted. When I opened the door, the gentle warmth inside reached out to meet us—a quiet glow from the fireplace, the scent of cedar hanging softly in the air.
She stepped inside slowly, her gaze drifting over the dark wood floors, the stone hearth flickering with flame, the open kitchen with its clean lines and stainless steel, the shelves filled with books and photographs. My life, stripped down to what mattered.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
“Thanks,” I said, clearing my throat. “Built most of it myself.”
I set my keys down and gave her space to breathe. Her world had been torn apart only hours ago; the least I could do was let the room settle around her instead of rushing the moment.
“You hungry?” I asked.
She blinked like she hadn’t realized she’d been staring into nothing. “I don’t know. I haven’t really…” The words crumbled.
“Sit,” I murmured. “I’ll make something.”
I found pasta, garlic, olive oil—ordinary things in an evening that felt anything but. The soft sizzle of the pan filled the space, grounding the air between us. I poured each of us a glass of wine and carried hers to the couch.
The fire painted her in warm gold, softening the exhaustion carved into her features. She held the glass like she wasn’t sure what to do with her hands, her eyes fixed on the flames instead of me.
“It’s strange,” she said quietly. “Being back here. It feels like another lifetime.”
“Maybe it was.”
She looked at me then—a flicker of something old, something wounded and familiar.
I set my glass down and leaned forward, elbows braced on my knees. “Aria.”
Her breath hitched at the sound of her name in my voice.
“We never talked about that night,” I said. “Not really.”
Her shoulders tensed, fingers whitening around the glass. “Harvey, please—”
“I need to know,” I whispered. “Because I’ve been carrying my version of it for too long, and I know I got it wrong.”
She tried to swallow, her chin trembling. “You wouldn’t want to hear it.”
“I do,” I said. “I’ve wanted to hear it every damn day since you left.”
Silence pressed in—thick, unsteady, trembling with something that hurt too much to look at.
Then she set her wine down, hands unsteady.
“That night…” Her breath wavered. “Someone handed me a drink,” she whispered.
“I didn’t even see who it was.” Her fingers braided together in her lap.
“It was just a party—kids from school, people I thought I knew.” Her voice trembled.
“I didn’t realize until later that someone had slipped something into it. ”
The sound in my chest wasn’t breathing—it was something near breaking.
“I didn’t know what was happening,” she said softly. “One minute I was with my friends, and the next…” Her throat tightened. “I woke up in that room. He—” She shook her head, tears slipping free. “I didn’t even know who it was.”
My hand found hers before I could stop it. She flinched, instinctive, wounded—but she didn’t pull away.
“Aria,” I whispered. “Jesus Christ.”
Her eyes rose to mine, shimmering with disbelief—like she still couldn’t understand how she’d survived the memory long enough to voice it.
“I wanted to tell you,” she said. “But when I saw your face… the way you looked at me… I knew you already believed what everyone else did.”
The words hollowed me.
“I saw you,” I said, voice low and unsteady. “But I didn’t see you.”
Her eyes shut, a tear slipping down her cheek. “You left me there, Harvey.”
“I know.” The words fractured out of me. “And it’s the biggest regret of my life.”
The quiet that followed vibrated with everything we’d broken and everything we still hadn’t lost.
I tightened my hand around hers. “You don’t have to finish tonight,” I murmured. “You don’t owe me that.”
Her gaze lifted to mine again—wet, luminous, brave. “Maybe I need to.”
And in that trembling breath between us—her grief, my regret, the ghosts of the past curling into the warmth of the fire—I knew the shift had begun. Not forgiveness, not yet. But the possibility of finding our way back to something that had never really died.