The honesty of it sets me reeling. “Fuck. I can’t regret that, either. Hadn’t thought about it that way. This whole time I’ve been beating myself up over hurting you… but the best thing came out of it. There’s a word for that?—”
“Cognitive dissonance?” she asks as she squints, thinking hard.
I shrug. “You’re the one who went to real college, so I’ll take your word for it. Whatever it’s called, I hate that I hurt you. But I am beyond grateful to the universe that he’s here.”
She slowly nods. “Same. He’s everything to me.” Harper lies against me, her head tucked under my chin, and I can feel the steady rhythm of her breathing. “Tell me about your father. I’m curious.”
The urge to shut down lifts its ugly head, but this is Harper. She’s not going to use it against me, she’s asking only out of true curiosity. “What else do you want to know?”
“What was he like? Besides a gigantic asshole, I mean.”
I chuckle lightly. “Not a lot to tell outside of that. He read classic sci-fi, insisted I do the same. Whatever he did, he wanted me to join him. Whether it was reading copious amounts of Heinlein or working on his truck. Didn’t matter if I wanted to do any of it.”
“Sounds like a piece of work.”
“You’re not wrong… I remember the sound of door closing behind him for the last time and the way my mother stood frozen in the kitchen as if she didn’t move, it might not be real. The sound of his voice, wheedling me into things I didn’t want to do, didn’t want to believe. The way every failure made me believe he was right about me. Those things stick with a kid…”
I ramble on, and Harper listens without interrupting, her hand warm and steady against my ribs. When I finish, she presses her lips there, not as a distraction, but as acknowledgment. “I’m sorry you went through all of that.”
“I’m sorry about your divorce. Do you want to talk about it?”
She takes a breath and lies back, so I turn onto my side to watch her story unfold. “There was a quiet erosion beforehand, but it’s hard to erode a foundation that wasn’t well-built in thefirst place. Like tearing apart sand instead of cement. I had ignored my own feelings for years, but eventually, they bite you in the ass because they were neglected. When I told myself my marriage was over, I thought about staying because of Mason. And I tried. But that was a lie, too, and I couldn’t keep lying to myself or Mason, or even David. As much as he’s an asshole now, he didn’t deserve a wife who loved someone else.”
I press a kiss to her forehead. “You’re too kind to that bastard.”
She shakes her head. “I lied to him. Every day of our marriage. Except the few nights I was ever drunk around him…” Her guilt-laden sigh fills the room. “I told him about you. About the cabin. The way I fell in a single night. The way you broke my heart.”
I kiss the back of her hand. “I’ll never stop being sorry for that.”
“No need. I get it now. Point is, I should have never dumped all of that on him, drunk or not, because now, he’s even more hurt. I don’t hold that against him. I was in the wrong.”
“Are you applying for sainthood or something?”
She snorts a laugh. “It’s true, though!”
I shake my head, smiling. “Well, at least he gave you Mason.”
Her smile becomes beatific. “He did. And honestly, Mason is a part of the reason I left David, strange as it is to say that. I don’t ever want him to think a marriage is something you tolerate. Or that staying quiet is the same thing as being strong or smart. A marriage should be about love or whatever the people in it want it to be about. But it should never be one-sided. That’s cruel.”
“I see your meaning.” I stroke her arm, the valley between her breasts. “Maybe David isn’t entirely the bad guy in this.”
“He’s not.” She pauses. “Well, he could be nicer, but what I mean is, I get why he’s bitter and angry. I would be, too, if I werein his loafers.” She talks on about kindness and acceptance, and hours pass without us noticing.
At some point, the city outside begins to change, the dark softened by the earliest hints of morning. Pale light creeps along the edges of the curtains, and I realize we’ve talked through the entire night without either of us wanting it to end. Dawn breaks while we’re still wrapped around each other.
Harper shifts slightly, her voice raw. “I’m terrified this will end the same way,” she admits. “That you’ll wake up and panic and call us a mistake.”
I pull her closer instinctively, pressing my lips to her hair. “Can’t wake up if we never go to sleep.” I tilt her face up toward mine, sealing that promise with a kiss and the promise of many more.
HARPER
Iwake up already panicking.
For half a second, I don’t know where I am, and my body reacts before my brain can catch up. My chest tightens, breath coming fast and shallow, the weight of unfamiliar sheets tangled around my legs. The smell is wrong. Not my detergent. Not my bed. Not my room.
Memory slams into me hard and uninvited—six years ago, a morning that felt like this, waking up warm and disoriented and foolish enough to think it meant something permanent.
I sit up too fast.
