“Harmony,” he said with a quiet tone that wasn’t sharp but hit harder than if he’d yelled. So I followed him into the kitchen. The air felt cold and smelled faintly of the coffee we’d left warming earlier. He gestured to a chair, but I stayed standing. I didn’t want to feel cornered.
He leaned back against the counter, arms crossed. “Can we talk?”
“That sounds ominous,” I tried to joke, but my voice landed brittle.
He didn’t smile, instead he exhaled slowly. “I need you to tell me the truth.”
I forced a light shrug. “About what?”
“About last night.” His gaze didn’t waver. “About the loft. And about today.”
My chest tightened. He saw right through me. He always did. And after everything my dad drilled into me: hide the weakness, hide the cracks, hide everything, being seen felt dangerous.
“I told you,” I said softly. “I just needed to grab a few things.”
“You lied, Harmony.”
The air left my lungs. He stepped forward slowly, not crowding me but giving me nowhere to run.
“You went up to the loft without me. You opened that laptop without telling me. You talked to someone. You got a message. And you scared the hell out of me.”
My throat burned. “Eric…”
“I’m not angry,” he said, voice lowering. “I’m scared. You walked into the lion’s den by yourself, and then shut down on me like it didn’t matter.”
“I didn’t want to drag you into more of my mess,” I pleaded. As it was, I had already disrupted his life and that of his family. They were kind and good people. But they didn’t deserve the danger I brought to their front steps.
“You don’t get to decide that alone.” His tone was softer now, like he could tell I felt like a cornered stray.
His words cracked like quiet thunder, but they were enough to tremble the ground under my feet.
I wrapped my arms around myself. “I didn’t want you to look at me differently.”
His brows pulled together sharply. “Why would I look at you differently?”
“Because you never looked at me like the rest of this town,” I whispered. “Not like a Bellerose. Not like someone dangerous. Or broken. Or untrustworthy. And I didn’t want to lose that.”
His expression softened, painfully so. He stepped closer, gently taking my hands, even when I tried to pull them away.
“Sunshine… I’ve seen you at your strongest and at your most terrified. None of it changes how I look at you.”
My eyes burned. He squeezed my hands, grounding me.
“But I can’t protect you if you keep shutting me out.” The words weren’t controlling. They bled with raw honesty, and that was scarier than any threat my dad ever trained me for.
I shook my head. “I’m not trying to shut you out. I just… I don’t know how to do this. Tell someone everything. Rely on someone. Trust someone with all the dark pieces.”
“You don’t have to tell me everything at once,” he said softly. “Just don’t lie to me. Don’t hide from me.”
A tear slipped down my cheek before I could stop it.
He lifted a hand, brushing it away with his thumb. “Hey. Don’t do that. Don’t cry alone.”
“I wasn’t crying alone,” I whispered. “Not this time.”
He huffed a soft, aching breath and wrapped his arms around me. I let out a sound that wasn’t quite a sob, wasn’t quite a breath, it was something in between. Something lonely that had been trapped in my chest for years. He held me tighter, with acareful, gentle steadiness. When he finally pulled back, he kept one hand at the nape of my neck.
“Now tell me,” he said quietly. “What scared you at the loft?”
