“Don’t touch me you skanky bitch,” I snarled.
She shoved me right back. “Don’t come into my fucking club and—”
I lost her in the rest of it, too focused on her fingers curling back into my hair and tugging hard. I ripped her hand awayand twisted it behind her back. She swung with her other, and my hasty dodge sent drinks at the next table flying. My hand collided with her, and she hit me in the gut. My nails raked across her arm and—
Someone held me back, just as someone else went for her. And then there were bouncers.
And then, inexplicably, police. Two of them.
“This is the owner,” the manager tried explaining, the bouncer’s arm on Harper’s shoulder notably laxer than the one gripping me tight. “I’m sure there’s a misunderstanding.”
“And I’m sure they can both think it through with a night in a cell.”
They stepped forward.
“No, no it was all me,” Harper said, shaking her bouncer off only so she could raise her hands in surrender. “I started it. I hit her. She didn’t even fight back, just tried to get me off her.”
“I don’t want to press charges,” I hastily added.
The male officer raised a brow. There was talk then, in Hollywood, of letting celebrities get away with too much. Of needing to make examples.
Evidently they decided Harper was their opportunity.
“Just you we’ll take down then,” he said, gaze cutting to me. “And we can figure out what you want to do about charges when you’re sober.”
———
I phoned Ruchi right away, begged her to get Harper outgiven she was sober and authoritative and also,Ruchi, a woman with a thousand strings to pull and the right line to talk someone into anything. I could hear Adrian in the background but still there was nothing they could do until the next morning when Adrian collected Harper from the police station.
“Why?” I demanded when she stepped through the door. “Why would you take the fall like that?”
She gave me a look like she couldn’t believe I was actually asking that.
“They have my prints and samples, Nadine. They don’t have yours. It’s reasonable for mine to be on Joel—but yours? You want them to run your profile and find your DNA matches that found at a murder scene?”
Oh. She’d taken a grenade for me.
And now it was blowing up.
Harper Moore Arrested! Starlet in Brawl with Nadine Heywood, Spends Night in Cell
Harper Moore’s Mugshot Revealed! Star Serves Club-Night-Glam in Steamy Shot!
“She was always volatile,” from Screaming Matches on Red Carpets to Nadine Heywood’s Attempt at a Restraining Order—We Take a Look Back at Harper Moore’s History of Violence
Harper didn’t go out much after that.
And I stopped trying to push her. There seemed to me only two real options: It would die down, or it would escalate.
If it calmed, we would try again.
If it escalated, if evidence was found and Harper’s guilt stopped being a fun little joke and started to become a serious concern then … Well, I would rather spend as much time with her as I could.
Then Ruchi called.
“Nadine, the police want to talk to you.”
———
