When he kissed me this time, it wasn’t hungry or urgent. It was soft. Certain. A promise forming piece by piece.
For the first time in a long time, I believed in something steady. Something real.
I curled against him, living in the quiet of the moment we were allowed. For now, we were Harmony and Eric, two people choosing each other in the quiet.
Eric walkedme downstairs an hour later, our fingers brushing together in a quiet way that felt new and familiar at the same time. The Thorne house smelled like coffee and voices drifted from the kitchen. Normally the warmth of this place soothed me. Today it made my chest tight. I had just told Eric truths I hadn’t planned to say for months. And he had given me his truths in return. It should have made me feel lighter. But something in the air shifted the moment we stepped into the hall.
My gaze snagged on something unexpected. . . my phone was in Pierre’s hand.
“I gave it to Dad this morning when you were still asleep.” Eric shrugged. “Sorry I didn’t ask.”
“It’s fine. Thanks for looking out for me.” I smiled, despite the heaviness that surrounded me, because Eric cared and that gave me a feeling I hadn’t known much in my life.
“I wanted your device monitored in real time. Nothing would come through without us knowing,” Pierre explained.
A chill slid down my spine.
Pierre’s expression hardened. “We received something.”
Eric stiffened beside me. “What?”
Becket looked up; his expression unreadable. “Harmony… you should see this.”
My stomach dropped.
Eric stepped in front of me slightly, like a shield, as Becket turned my phone around.
A single image filled the screen.
A photo.
My breath caught.
It was taken in the community center parking lot yesterday. The angle was high, as if the photographer stood behind one of the large pine trees near the sidewalk. The camera focused directly on us as we walked out the doors together. Eric’s hand was on my back and my body was angled toward him. We looked close. Connected. Intimate. There were dozens of kids around that parking lot every day, dozens of parents coming and going. And yet somehow the lens found us with surgical precision.
Eric inhaled sharply. “When did this come in?”
“Thirty minutes ago,” Becket said. “Encrypted. Same signatures as the other messages. My contact is tracing it now.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the image. At first it looked like a simple picture, but then I saw the detail that made bile rise in my throat. On the far right edge of the frame, blurred but unmistakable, was the same dark blue car that circled the community center yesterday. The one with the tinted windows Mara noticed first. A fresh wave of cold slid through my bones.
Pierre said quietly, “Read the text beneath it.”
Eric took the phone from Becket before Pierre could hand it to me. He scanned the message, his face darkening, then looked at me with the kind of controlled fury that never raised its voice.
“It says,” he growled,
You look comfortable, Harmony.
Enjoy it while you can.
The room tilted.
Pierre’s voice steadied the air. “This confirms deliberate surveillance. They were close. Far closer than we believed.”
Becket swore under his breath. “This wasn’t random. Someone wanted her to know they were there.”
My fingers trembled where they gripped the banister. Eric moved toward me, cupping my cheek with a gentleness that cracked something inside me.
