Gathering my resolve to not let this man ever hurt me again, I practically hiss, “What are you doing here?”
Harper looks between us, her brows furrowing in puzzlement. “Oh, sorry. Douglass, this is my brother, Jordan. You remember me talking about him, right?”
I remember her talking about Jorey, not Jordan. How dumb am I that I never put two and two together? Her half brother, Jorey, from Woodspire, my hometown with a population of nothing. I really am an idiot.
When neither Jordan nor I say anything, Harper looks at her brother for help. “Jordan, this is Dee—I mean Douglass. My friend I met at CU, who worked in the campus café that Bennett and I would go to every morning. She just moved back into town.” She turns to me and jabs me in the ribs with her finger. “I still can’t believe you never told me you grew up here.”
My glare becomes more deadly when he doesn’t say anything. Of course, he remembers me. How could he forget the socially inept, ungainly, overweight little sister of the woman he asked to marry him? Or the fact that he screwed me in the back storage room of this bar, then immediately tossed me out into the hallway, half-naked with tears streaming down my face, once he got what he wanted. The harsh words he hurled at me that destroyed me and had me running as far away as I possibly could. If I’m being honest with myself, I’m still running and have never stopped.
Finally catching on that something is not quite right, Harper asks, “Wait. Do you two know each other?” She volleys worried glances between me and Jordan, finally noticing myveryunhappy reaction to supposedly meeting her brother for the first time.
Jordan’s chest expands with a deep inhalation, and for one insane second, I remember my lips pressing a kiss to his bare chest directly above his heart. I shudder at the intensity of the memory, and instant self-loathing consumes me at still being attracted to this asshole.
He spears a hand through his hair, a few short strands standing up on end, but it does nothing to detract from his chiseled, good looks.
“Douglass is Amelia’s little sister,” he gravely replies, his grim tone pulling me out of my wayward thoughts.
Out of all the reactions I expect from Harper, her sudden burst of laughter isn’t one of them.
My first instinct is to run. Run away from him. Run away from my past. Get out of there and run as far and as fast as I can. That’s the person I’ve been for so long, but it’s not the woman I want to be now. I can’t continue to hide and cower from my fears and my mistakes—Jordan being the biggest mistake of all.
With as much dignity as I can muster, even though my heart is trying to pound itself out of my chest, I steel my spine and lift my chin. Over the past sixty months, I’ve worked too hard to reclaim any semblance of the girl I used to be. One who had been filled with hopes and dreams. Five years of painstakingly gluing those jagged pieces of myself back together. Pieces that Jordan so easily carved out of me.
Harper’s laughter dies as suddenly as it began, and her hand flies to her mouth. She reaches for my hand, and I instinctively want to take a step back but stop myself.
“Oh my god, that was completely inappropriate of me. I’m so sorry. I’m a little shocked is all. We were actually just talking about…” She trails off, looking over at the wall of photographs.
Who were they talking about? Me? I dismiss that as soon as it pops into my head. If they’d been talking about me, Jordan wouldn’t be standing here with a contorted look on his face at seeing me. Or maybe, he would be.
Those old insecurities claw at my psyche, ripping open scabbed-over wounds. All the times I was made fun of because of my weight. All the times I was compared to my older sister and always came up lacking. All the times I was overlooked because I stood in her shadow. I wasn’t as pretty or as thin or as popular. I was invisible.
Clearly, not now, because Jordan keeps staring at me, and it’s making me uncomfortable.
“You look different,” he says in that deep, husky voice I used to fantasize about.
Screw you!I want to scream at him. I’ve had half a decade for my anger and hatred for this man to simmer and fester. I’ve replayed that night with him over and over in my head. The words he said. The pain they induced. Words spoken in anger and malice can inflict worse damage, cause more hurt, and leave behind deeper scars than any physical wound ever could. Bruises to the flesh heal and disappear over time. Bruises to the most vulnerable part of your heart never do.
A warm hand curls around my upper arm and gently pulls me several feet away to the other side of the table. Harper’s concerned face comes into focus.
“Hey, if this is awkward for you, we can go somewhere else. Just you and me.”
Harper never knew about Amelia, because in all the conversations she and I had, I never once mentioned I had a sister. Amelia and I have a very complicated relationship. One that was never good to begin with and only deteriorated even more once Mom passed away when I was thirteen. I haven’t spoken to Amelia in the time I’ve been gone, much to my aunt Natalie’s dismay. The last I heard, Amelia was still with Chase, the guy she cheated on Jordan with. I know I’ll eventually run into my sister. Woodspire isn’t that big, and gossip tends to spread quickly in small towns like ours, where everyone knows everybody’s business.
“And don’t think we aren’t going to talk about that little bomb that was just dropped,” Harper says, running her hand down my arm in a comforting gesture.
I wince slightly. I knew one day my secrets would catch up with me. I know she expects an explanation about why I never told her about Amelia or about my life before we met. Harper knows a little aboutthe guywho broke my heart. It’s only a matter of time before she eventually figures it out and realizes thatthe guyin my story is her brother, Jordan. Until she forces my hand, I will happily live in denial.
Harper tucks a loose strand of my hair behind my ear and graces me with one of her soft smiles. “So, what do you say? Want to get out of here and have some girl time?”
If I say yes, it’s not me running away, right?
Exhaling the pent-up air from my lungs I didn’t know I’d been holding, I shake my head. “That’s not necessary but thank you. I’m good.”
Or I will be once I slap some mortar on to the brick wall surrounding my heart that cracked wide open at seeing Jordan again.
“You sure?”
I plaster on the fakest smile I can muster. “Absolutely.”
