Chapter 36
I step out of my small ass shower, rubbing my head with a towel. My hair has never been this long, almost hitting my shoulder blades. It doesn’t typically bother me since it practically lives tied up.
But tonight, after washing it, it bothers me.
And if I’m being honest, everything in my vicinity bothers me—the fact my door hits the toilet when you open it, or how I don’t have a freezer big enough to house more than a few cubes when I could use a hefty swig out of an ice cold bottle of vodka.
The comb snags in my ends, and I throw it into the sink, leaving my bathroom to find a pair of sweatpants. My phone beeps from where it sits on my nightstand that doubles as a bar cart. And that annoys me.
How big I feel in this space finally annoys me.
I grab my phone and push play.
He’s asleep . I’ve got a pint of ice cream and two spoons and some extra space on the couch .
I push record.
I need a favor first .
I leave my phone and scamper out of my apartment and into the house where I find Harper on the couch. I grab the ice cream from her hand and return it to the freezer. Back in the living room, Harper is playing my message.
She cocks her head. “What kind of favor?”
“You have Nate’s clippers still?” The buzz cut never retired when Nate left the Marines.
Harper stands. “I think so.”
“Are they in your bathroom?”
“Probably,” Harper says as she follows me upstairs. “Why?”
Taking note of Lucas's door closed, I lessen the weight of my steps and quietly make my way into her bedroom and bathroom, opening each drawer on the left side of the vanity.
Harper clears her throat. “Other side.”
The drawers are empty.
Opening the cabinet, I shuffle through a plastic bin, finding a brush, an extra first aid kit, and clippers cushioned by the power cord wrapped tightly around them. I stand, handing the device to Harper.
“Cut it off.”
“What?”
I point to my wet, matted, hair. “Cut it.”
“Riley—”
I sigh and unwind the cord, plugging the clipper into the outlet. Sliding up the switch upward, it buzzes in my hand. I hold it out to Harper. “I don’t need to be a crew cut. But I do need to be…different. More put together. For tomorrow.”
In the mirror, my eyes drift between Harper’s and the buzzer in my hands that she makes no move to take.
“Who says lawyers need to have short hair?”
“No one.” I nudge the device closer to her again, before I roll my eyes and drop it onto the counter of the vanity. “I should look professional. ”
Harper’s mouth twists as she eyes the clippers.
“I’d do it myself but it’ll probably be all uneven. And then—”
“Wait here for a minute.”
Harper turns to walk out of the bathroom but then spins back toward me, taking the clippers with her.
I put my palms on the countertop and rock forward. My hair covers my face as my head hangs and I can barely see Harper when she comes back in, a garbage bag stuffed in her mouth, carrying a chair with the blade of a pair of scissors stuck under her arm.
“Sit.” Her voice is muffled until I take the trash bag from between her lips.
“Good idea. Will be easier to clean up.”
Harper cuts the trash bag open to make a drape for the floor below the chair I now sit in. I watch her in the mirror as she grabs a brush. The bristles pull at my snarled ends, but Harper gently detangles the mess stroke by stroke.
“If the judge is going to make his decision on whether you have long hair or not, he shouldn’t be a judge in the first place.”
“That’s what judges do. They judge .”
Harper brings the brush up the lengths of my hair and it scratches at my scalp. “Yeah, well, an important life lesson is not to judge a book by its cover, right? They should teach that in judge school.”
I snort and Harper places the brush back on the counter. When she grabs the scissors, it's then I realize when she left the bathroom before, the clippers disappeared with her. “What are you—”
“Riley.” Placing her hands on my shoulders, Harper gives them a squeeze and I lift my neck so we stare eye-to-eye in the mirror. “There’s nothing about you that needs to change.”
Harper’s words hit me like a truck and I drop my head again. Because all of my life, it’s all I’ve been told—be different and do differently.
This dyslexia is bogus. You just need to read more carefully .
Surfing is a hobby. You need to find a real job.
Harper lets go of my shoulders and I hear the cling of the scissors as she drops them against the vanity. She touches me again, but this time it’s her hands on my face, her legs on mine as she straddles them.
“I’m sorry I ever made you feel like you had to.” Harper gently pushes back my hair, clearing my face and leaves a small kiss on my lips.
The confidence I’ve built up over the last few days has begun to wane in the final hours and it’s awful to have to sit uncomfortably in my own insecurities.
A dog. Everyone will think you’re a joke , I tell myself. The judge will already make a ruling before I even open my mouth.
“Riley.”
It’s Harper’s voice and warmth that leads me out of a dark place, and suddenly I’m back to when I told her about this crazy idea, back to the day she told me she believed in me.
“Riley.”
I lean my forehead to hers. “I just want to be…something.”
Her hands find my face and she pushes gently to allow a little space between us. At first, I don’t want it. I want to keep leaning into Harper’s warmth, the steadiness of her breathing in hopes it regulates my own. But I know, the moment our eyes meet, she wants me to not just hear her, but see her too.
“Riley,” Harper begins. “You are important. And brilliant. And all the things everyone who never really knew you said you weren’t. Tomorrow won’t change one bit of that.”
What Harper is saying is even if my efforts go unrewarded in bringing Tides home, she’ll still be there.
I close the space, wrapping her in a hug. “Thank you,” I whisper, my hands running up and down her back, touching the silky, untangled ends of her hair.
I pull back.
“Will you still shave my head?”
Harper playfully smacks me in the chest. “No. But I’ll trim the ends so it’s more manageable. Don’t blame me if it’s a little uneven though.”
Sliding off my lap, Harper returns behind the chair, taking the scissors with her. I don’t say anything as she works, but my breathing levels when it returns to a length and weight that feels slightly more manageable on top of everything else I hold on my shoulders.
“I want you to know something,” Harper whispers. She stares at me through the mirror, running her fingers through my hair. “I love you from head to toe.”
My heart skips a beat when Harper bends forward, wrapping her arms around my neck and kisses my cheek.
I lean into her, turning to find her lips. “I love you too.”
We stay like that for a minute. I think I need it more than her. Or maybe that was before. Right now, all I can focus on is her saying I love you . I don’t even know what I came in here for in the first place.
Eventually, she straightens. “Can I wash you?” she asks, her eyes holding mine in the mirror again.
I nod and Harper bends down, carefully collecting the bag she’s placed on the ground, folding it into a tight ball and throwing it in the trash before she moves to the shower, turning it on.
I slip off my pants at the door of the shower while Harper grabs me a clean towel from the closet.
My free hand tugs on the bottom of her tank top. “Take this off,” I say. “And wash me.”
The small, but powerful breath Harper lets out releases her lip and I step into the shower, right under the steam. My muscles ache from all the work earlier today on the beach, but it’s the best kind of sore, the one that makes you feel like you did something, like you’re accomplished.
That’s exactly how Harper makes me feel—accomplished.
“Lean back a little more,” she says from behind me.
My neck stretches backward and I groan when Harper’s hands wind themselves through my hair, soaping it up as her nails lightly scratch at my scalp. Her smooth, bare, knee bumps my leg.
I reach back, finding her hips and pull her snug against me, gripping her flesh harder, adding even more pressure when the massaging of my scalp makes me moan. It’s nearly erotic to be touched like this. Because Harper physically caring for my one character trait I’ve been ridiculed for makes my entire body bloom from the acceptance.
She wants me , as I am. Flaws, long hair, and all. To be wanted so completely is a desire I’ve never had the luxury of experiencing.
When Harper’s fingers rub at the base of my neck, my cock twitches. I taste a kind of delicious anticipation on my tongue that swipes across my dampened lips.
“Turn around,” she says only loud enough for me to hear over the water and the racing of my pulse in my ears.
My strained cock brushes against her when I turn, leaning my head back under the shower as the shampoo’s suds flow down my back, steams of it trickling down my neck and over my chest where Harper rubs them away.
I open my eyes when her movements pause, and she presses a hand above my heart thumping hard against my chest.
“From head to toe,” Harper repeats. “I love you and everything in between.”
The intensity of my breath forces my lips to part when she rests her hand above my racing heart. I fling an arm to the wall of the shower to steady myself.
Her hand falls from my chest and I shiver when her lips covet the now abandoned spot before she drags her mouth up. Her pillowy mouth is a stark contrast to the tautness of my neck where heavy breaths race out of. They’re loud, powerful, packed to the brim with waning control. But whatever is left of them Harper steals when she grips my cock firmly in her hand.
“Everything,” she emphasizes with a lick to my neck while swirling her thumb around the opening of my swollen tip. I shiver and I shake, overwhelmed with the emotion surrounding us against the anxiety of tomorrow.
But there’s a need for Harper that’s bigger than any and all of that.
I loosen her hand and place it back on my chest, her palm sliding against my wet skin before managing to rest securely over my heart.
“You haven’t always been mine. Not for the taking or the keeping. But do you know what you are now?”
Harper gently shakes her head.
“You’re mine,” I lean down to whisper against her lips. “For the loving.”
When Harper whispers, “I’m yours, Riley,” there’s no going back.
I take her against the shower.
I keep her there as I slide inside of her, my body relaxing when I can go no further.
And I make love to her as she digs her heels into my back and claws at my skin.
“Riley…”
They say your name sounds different from the mouth of a person who loves you. That should’ve been my first clue of how deep I love Harper. Because I’d die a happy man if she were the only person left on the planet to whisper it.