24. Elliot
ELLIOT
Iwas not heartbroken. That was ridiculous. Heartbroken was dramatic. It was poetry and sad playlists and men in movies standing in the rain like idiots. I was not that.
I … I was irritated, frustrated, sleep-deprived, and definitely undersexed.
But heartbroken?
No.
The problem was that people kept using that word around me, which was starting to feel real. But I was not that; you had to love someone and lose them to be heartbroken.
The first person who called me that stupid term was Theo. He looked at me over a coffee he had no business drinking in my office and said, “You look fucking heartbroken.”
I threw a pen at him. He caught it and laughed.
Then there was Caleb, who did not say "heartbroken" but did look at me like I was one tantrum away from needing professional help.
Julian simply stared at me too long during meetings, which was worse.
Rowan said, “You look like shit.” Which honestly felt more respectful.
Still, the word sat there. Lucy looked at me with a soft, concerned look on her face, and Emily told me I looked like a lost, heartbroken puppy…
Heartbroken. The term felt like something sticky on my skin, so obviously I tried to ignore it.
I went to the gym and lasted twenty-seven minutes before leaving because the treadmill felt like punishment and every woman with blonde hair made my body react like a shock collar.
I tried working late and accomplished nothing except reading the same sentence in a contract eight times while wondering whether Harper had been to that restaurant on Oak Street without me.
I tried sleeping; that went poorly.
I tried not drinking; that went worse.
I tried women, or more accurately, women tried me.
They approached at events, bars, private dinners, and industry bullshit.
They smiled, laughed, touched my arm, and angled their bodies toward mine with open invitation.
And I felt nothing. No interest, or pull, no easy hunger I used to mistake for chemistry.
Just a low, irritated emptiness. Because one laughed too loudly, one wore too much perfume, one asked me what I did for work even though my name had been printed on the program she was holding, and one touched my wrist, and all I could think was what it felt like when Harper reached for me.
Which was inconvenient because Harper did not reach for me anymore.
Harper did not call or text. She did not exist anywhere I could find her, and yet I kept seeing her. Everywhere.
A woman turning a corner with blonde hair tucked into a coat, a laugh outside a coffee shop.
Every time my chest seized, but every time I looked closer, it wasn’t her.
And apparently, according to Theo, I needed fresh air and to get out and start living again. Which was why I was currently walking beside him in the middle of a freezing afternoon while he talked about absolutely nothing.
“Do you think Caleb has always been that emotionally unavailable,” Theo was saying, “or did boarding school make him worse?”
I didn’t answer.
“Because I’m leaning towards boarding school. Blackridge did something to all of us. Julian became a contract with legs. Rowan became allergic to joy. You became…” He waved a hand at me. “Whatever this is.”
“Charming?” I quipped.
“Historically, yes. Currently, no,” he retorted.
“Why are you here?” I grumbled; I was feeling so over... everything.
“To make sure you don’t do something stupid.” I shot him a look. “Too late, obviously,” he added.
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t,” Theo replied with a laugh.
“I do.”
“No, you hate yourself. I’m just a convenient person to deflect to.”
I stopped walking and looked at him.
He grinned. “What? I read that in an article Emily sent me.”
“Emily sent you an article about self-hatred?” I asked, because what the fuck…
“She sends me a lot of things.” He said with a soft smile. “She cares about my growth.”
“She wants to fix you.”
He shrugged. “Maybe I enjoy being her project.”
I stared at him. Theo North was smiling like an idiot. “Oh my God,” I muttered.
“What?”
“You’re into her.” I accused, while I thought… Julian would hate that.
He looked offended. “I am into a lot of women.”
“No. You’re into her.”
His grin widened in a way that confirmed everything. “Baby Bennett is fun.”
“She is Lucy’s sister.” I countered and, for good measure, added, “Julian will kill you.”
“He can try.”
I shook my head and kept walking. “Unbelievable.”
“What’s unbelievable is that out of all of us, you are judging me.”
“I am making an observation, and I was there on New Year's where you were warned several times to stay away from her.”
Theo ignored what I said and returned the focus to me, saying, “You tried to steal a man’s phone.”
“He had information that I needed.” I defended.
“You tackled a PR consultant.”
I was pretty sure Theo was fucking with me now, and it was working.
“I did not tackle him.” I ground out, shoved my hands into my coat pockets and started walking faster. Theo caught up easily, still laughing. “You know,” he said, “there are ways to get over a woman.”
“No.”
“You don’t know what I was going to say.” He said with a stupid laugh.
“Yes, I do.”
“You don’t.”
“You were going to suggest sex,” I said with an annoyed tone in my voice.
He sighed. “Fine. You knew.”
“No.”
“One woman?”
“No.”
“Two women?”
“No.”
“Three?”
I looked at him, and he held up his hands, saying, “I’m brainstorming.”
“It won’t help.”
The words came out before I could stop them, and Theo’s expression shifted. The teasing softened around the edges. “No?”
“No.”
We kept walking. For once, Theo didn’t immediately fill the silence; that was how I knew things were bad. Then he said quietly, “You really loved her, huh?”
My chest tightened so violently that I almost stumbled. Loved. Past tense. Or was it present tense? A word I had not said. A word I had not let myself think on too directly, because thinking it made everything else fall apart.
“I don’t know.”
Theo looked at me as if I were an idiot.
“I don’t know,” I snapped again, because it felt necessary.
“Okay.”
“I don’t.”
“Sure,” Theo said, holding his hands out in front of him like a peace offering.
“I don’t even know what that means.”
Theo’s mouth twisted. “That is probably part of the problem.”
I opened my mouth to tell him to fuck off, but then I saw her. Across the street. For a moment my brain refused to accept it. Not another almost-Harper. Not a blonde woman with similar posture. Her.
She stepped out of a yoga studio wearing black leggings, a skin-tight bodysuit beneath an open coat, and a knit hat pulled low enough that half her face was shadowed.
Her hair was shorter, much shorter. She wasn’t wearing any makeup; the only time I had ever seen that was the last part of our time together when I finally convinced her to stay over.
My entire body stopped. She looked different.
Not less polished, or less beautiful. Just different.
Softer somehow. Freer, maybe? Like someone had reached inside the version of Harper Lane I knew and loosened all the ties that held her together. I could not move, could not breathe.
“Elliot?” I heard Theo, but I didn’t answer.
Because a man stepped toward her. He was tall, with dark hair, broad shoulders, and an expensive coat. He said something to her, and she smiled up at him. My chest cracked, not metaphorically. It felt physical. Sharp and violent. I grabbed at my chest because that smile was not polite. It was real.
He said something, and she laughed. Her head tipped back slightly, and her cheeks flushed pink from the cold or him or whatever the fuck he said, and for a second I forgot where I was.
Because I had seen Harper smile, I had seen her amused; I had seen her breathless and undone beneath me.
But this was different. This was a version of her that I did not know.
The realization cut deeper than jealousy.
Who was she with him? Who had she become while I was calling her old office and humiliating myself in front of Timothy?
The man stepped closer, too fucking close. My hands curled into fists inside my pockets. Harper looked up at him, still smiling, and he brushed something near her cheek with his thumb.
I moved before I decided to. One step, then another. The crosswalk sign was red. A horn blared so loudly it punched through the fog in my head. Something yanked me back by the collar. Hard. I stumbled onto the curb as a cab flew past, close enough that I felt the wind of it against my legs.
“What the fuck?” Theo shouted. I could barely hear him. His hand was still fisted in the back of my coat. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
I pulled free because Harper and the man had started walking across the street.
His arm slipped around her shoulders, pulling her to his side, and she let him.
She tucked herself against him as if it were natural, as if she belonged there.
A sound crawled up my throat that I did not recognize.
Theo followed my gaze. For once, he said nothing. Then, quietly, “Oh.”
I turned on him. “Who is he?”
Theo’s expression had changed. The amusement was gone, which should have been my first warning. He stared across the street at the man beside Harper, and something like recognition settled over his face. “Elliot…”
“Who is he?”
Theo exhaled. “Oh, buddy.”
“Do not fucking buddy me.” I all but growled.
“That’s Oliver Hastings.”
Hastings.
The man from Emily’s phone, the tattooed billionaire bad boy. The one with the post about glitter freckles. The one everyone apparently knew. The one Caleb had recognized. My jaw tightened so hard it hurt. “Why is he with her?”
Theo looked at me like I had asked why the sky was up. “Because apparently she likes him.”
“She doesn’t.” The words came out sounding childish.
Theo’s brows lifted in question. “She doesn’t?”
“No.”
“Are you sure about that?”