He looked up, frowning from beneath his curls. “Oh?”
“They’re not … not the sort of person I can be seen to be seeing.”
His scowl deepened as he considered all that might mean, and before I could allow him to wander down another path, I added. “She’snot the sort of person.”
“Ah,” he said—and then he smiled. “Well, congratulations, Heywood. Are you happy?”
And I was.
Deliriously happy.
“Yes,” I said.
I’m just not sure that I should be.
———
When I got in my car, my phone was flashing. I flipped itopen to five missed calls from Harper. My heart seized up in my chest, my ribs pulling inward, everything on the verge of collapse. I sat in Caleb’s driveway hitting the Call button, but it didn’t even ring, and she hadn’t left a voicemail or punched in one of her regular sorts of illegible texts. (She used abbreviations no one else did and acted baffled when I couldn’t decode them. I wouldn’t have been surprised to receive TKATW or G2J:they know about the woodsorgoing to jail.)
Joel, surely. She’d be in Canada by now, so whatever it was it couldn’t have happened in London.
I forced myself to twist the key, to put the car in drive. I didn’t need Caleb coming to check on me and becoming more involved than he already was. I could phone Ruchi when I got home. She could speak to Adrian or her network or wherever it was Ruchi pulled answers from because she always had them.
My hands were shaking on the wheel, but I repeated my next steps like a mantra until my own gates opened, and there Harper’s Lamborghini sat.
“Harper!” I called, bursting through the front door.
She stood at the kitchen island, stirring something in a glass. She wore a satin negligee, a silk robe thrown on top, and she’d clearly just washed her hair because it was braided and damp.
“What are you doing here?” I breathed, coming toward her, ready to gather her up into my arms, but she stilled me with a glower.
“I thought I’d surprise you. But you were at Caleb’s.”
“What?”
The stirrer clinked against the glass edge. “You were at Caleb’s. You told me youdidn’tsleep with him. So why were you—”
“I didn’t sleep with him,” I snapped. “I have no interest in sleeping with him. You’re Harper fucking Moore and I’m Nadine Heywood, who is possibly competing withyouin my life? You’ve been at the heart of every action I’ve taken and every thought I’ve had for more than a decade.”
She stilled. Softened. Bit her lip and then I was beside her, taking her hand, knowing it was the vulnerability I was soothing more than her concern.
“How did you know I was at Caleb’s?” My voice was gentle, and she didn’t hesitate with her reply, didn’t hide it. She sounded almost weary.
“I put a tracker in your car.”
“Harper …”
“I know,” she said, turning, leaning her forehead against mine.
“You don’t trust me?” I asked.
“Of course I trust you. I just … I don’t know how to do this. We’ve spent so long obsessing over each other, tearing each other apart—doing hideous things to each other …” She swallowed and turned my hand over to run a finger over the pulse jumping in my wrist. “I can’t care about youlessthan I did. I only know how to want you in a way that’s obsessive and perilous andtoxic.I’m going to want you so much I’m going to ruin this.”
I thought of my alerts for each shred of news bearing her name. Of the way, even now, my mind still wandered the same way: to what she was doing, where she was, what she would think of each and every thing I did.
“I’m only upset I didn’t think to plant a tracker on you first,” I admitted.
She laughed, a sharp quick exhale. “We’re too awful to do this properly.”
