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“You keep making this about me.”
“Michael did not wound his face, did he?”
Brian threw his arms in the air and fell into the seat beside her. “I am sorry for that. I truly am. My anger gets the best of me from time to time. If an apology does not suffice, then I do not know what will.”
“Apologies are cheap. They lose value the more they are given.”
A long pause came from Brian who stared off into the distance. “Then I take back all my apologies but one.”
Harper couldn’t help but laugh. “That is not how this works.”
After yet another long pause, Brian said, “Do you think that I am a rake, Harper? Truly?”
There was something about his words that made Harper want to be less antagonizing. She had been filled with wonder in terms of his behaviour. At times he had been so difficult, so stubborn. But in between those moments, his stubborn armour would reveal its holes. He would appear all too human and as someone that she wanted to know even more than she did. How could she know someone her entire life and still feel as though she had not known him at all?
“I do think that you are a rake. I think that you are the most rakish out of all our friends. But I also said that I believed a rake could reform themselves. No one is incapable of change.”
“And what if they are? What if the person that someone is, equates to a life sentence?”
“I do not believe that. People are who they want to be. Nothing more and nothing less.”
“Do you think that maybe you just have more faith in people than they have in themselves?”
“Perhaps. But someone must have that faith in them, right?”
Brian shrugged. “I suppose.”
“I’m starting to think that this conversation isn’t just about rakes, but it is about a specific person.”
“I don’t know about all that, Harper. What I do know is that rakes expect more from a wife than just sleeping with her.”
Harper laughed. “Is that so? I don’t know quite what that means.” She could feel her heart speed up in pace and she wasn’t sure why it did that.
“Well then, I’d like to ensure you know what I mean.” He then moved in slowly to kiss her. And this time, she did not feel awkward about it. Instead, she embraced it, feeling the stubble on the side of his face. The second that her gentle fingers rushed to feel the prickly hairs on his face, a feeling travelled through her chest, one she had never felt before. It took the world from around her and replaced it with a new one.
Harper knew that she didn’t want it to end. She wanted more instead. But Brian, to her surprise pulled away first. She was unsure whether or not she should feel disappointed or elated. It made her want to laugh over how she had just gone on a rant about how people can control their feelings, yet she was the furthest away from being able to. She landed on feeling more than happy, though.
The only part of it all that she had wished she could have concealed was the redness in her face. She must have looked like a tomato.
Brian appeared like a different man before her in the seconds that followed.
“Are you going to take responsibility for that, or have you used up all your sorrys for the day?” Harper teased.
“I have used up all my sorrys for the day.”
Harper laughed and her mind instantly went through a plethora of different memories between them. Their kiss had taken her on a ride through time. All those instances where she had annoyed him, pushed him to the brink of getting angry with her, she realised that she enjoyed it. Because Brian had always been a well-composed man. He did not bend for much, even as a child he always had all his pieces in one place whereas someone like Michael had been more concerned with his image. When she was able to get those reactions out of Brian, it made her feel alive. It made her feel special in the strangest of ways. But the kiss, the kiss was on an entirely different level.
“It is probably time for you to be on your way,” Brian said before pulling himself out of the seat.
Part of that did not sit right with Harper. It was as if he was closing up yet again right in front of her. And she had expected it to a degree. He had this way about him where he would give a little and then run. But no one was to kiss her and be on their way. A kiss meant more to her than that. A kiss was special and not an act to be taken lightly. She wasn’t happy that she felt wrong for wanting to say that to him.
“Why do I presume that your kiss was fleeting?” Harper forced out.
“Because it was. Kisses are like butterflies. They are to be admired and appreciated while present. But they are not to be captured.”
Commitment. That was what he was hinting at, she realised. He was a rake through and through, one who was void of the ability to settle. Or so he believed that to be the case. It all harkened back to the belief on whether a not a person could change over time. And he didn’t believe that one could.
“So, you think that you can just kiss anyone that you like and not allow anything beyond that, because you think it goes against the man you are?”
