A baseball bat.
Simon’s brother or not, the kid had been sneaking up on him with a weapon, and Harlow couldn’t let that fly. With fluid certainty, he rushed forward and snatched the bat by its center, wrenching it from the kid’s grasp, then flung it across the room where it clattered upon impact, striking the floor with the bright, airy sound of wood on wood. With the weapon dealt with, Harlow grabbed his aggressor by the front of his shirt and wrenched him forward, his eyes narrowed with the burning anger of betrayal. The fabric tugged tight against the back of the kid’s neck, and using that tension to his advantage, Harlow lifted him from the floor until he stood on the tips of his toes, gasping for air.
“Dad!” Evie shrieked. She grabbed his arm and did her best to pull him back, but Harlow was planted firmly where he stood. “Dad,stop!Leave Shepalone!”
Shep.
Harlow blinked back to the present and brought his eyes to focus on the details. Shep, Simon’s sixteen-year-old brother. Their family resemblance was uncanny. While Shep’s jawline was boxier and his brows a little more bushy, his hair and his eyes matched Simon’s closely—but Harlow didn’t lose himself in Shep like he’d lost himself in Simon.
With the threat largely taken care of, Harlow dropped him, but didn’t avert his eyes. No matter who he was, he’d come at Harlow with a weapon. He wasn’t to be trusted.
“He was trying to protect me!” Evie insisted. Her nails dug into Harlow’s arm.
“He came at me with a bat,” Harlow replied. He did his best to keep his voice level, but some of the grittiness it assumed whenever he switched from civilian to SEAL remained. “You donotcome at me with a bat. Do you understand, boy?”
“Fuck off,” Shep uttered. He plucked at the neck of his t-shirt in an attempt to set it back in place. He wore a black hoodie around his waist, its arms tied near his navel. “I’m not going to let you take her.”
Evie let go of Harlow’s arm. “Shep…”
“I’m not going to let him take you, Evie!” Shep’s hands balled into fists. “If you go back, you’re never going to be happy again. I can’t let him do that to you.”
Bold words for someone who barely looked sixteen. Shep had all the features of youth—bright skin, bright eyes, and too much hubris. While Harlow called Simon “Kid” affectionately, Shep reallywasa kid. He didn’t know what he was saying and probably didn’t know who he was up against. Just like Evie, he was a teenager on his way to becoming a young adult, and he was bound to make mistakes. Harlow wouldn’t hold his youthful ignorance against him.
All he wanted was to understand.
“How do you know Evie is never going to be happy again?” Harlow asked. He shelved his combat instincts, relying instead on his heart. Teenagers weren’t the most forthcoming age group, but he had to try. If he couldn’t understand, he’d never know how to fix what had gone wrong.
Shep glared at him, his brows knit so tightly together that they looked seamless. It was as if Harlow should already have figured out the sins he’d committed.
Harlow remained clueless.
“Shep,” Evie warned. “Be nice…”
“Why should I be nice to him?” Shep demanded. When she spoke, he answered. Harlow noted his devotion—it told him more about Shep than Shep had chosen to openly disclose.
“He’s here because he cares about me. I know that he wasn’t supposed to be here at all, but… but he’s not a bad guy.”
“He tried to choke me!” Shep bit back.
Harlow shot him a look. “You came at me with a baseball bat.”
“And you came to take Evie away!” Enraged, Shep pushed past Harlow and left the closet for the bedroom. Harlow half-expected him to attempt to regain the bat, but instead, Shep went to sit on the edge of his bed. He crossed his arms over his chest, brooding. “You weren’t supposed to be here. I’m going to kill Simon for ruining everything. Healwaysruins everything.”
“With or without Simon, I would have found Evie.” Harlow stood in front of the closet door, his shoulder against the wall. Evie left his side to go sit next to Shep on the bed. Carefully, she placed a hand on his thigh and squeezed.
Harlow tensed. A gesture like that was too intimate to be friendly.
Evie and Shep were an item.
All this time, Harlow had assumed that Evie would wind up with Justin. With his perfect smile, hollow compliments, and English accent, he was a lethal combination of everything a teenage girl was rumored to adore. Evie spent more time with him than Harlow thought was healthy, and he’d been prepared to bite his tongue when she came to him, rosy cheeked, to tell him that Justin had finally asked her out.
But Shep? Harlow hadn’t been expecting Shep, and he didn’t know what to think.
It wasn’t that Shep was unsightly—for a kid, Harlow supposed he was average. He had short, dark auburn hair that suited his face, and he dressed in jeans and graphic tees like Harlow had at his age. His build was middle-of-the-road, not feeble, but not overly muscular. A jock he was not. But when put next to Evie, average didn’t feel like it was enough. Evie, who looked eighteen on an off day, and whose world was shaped by the pressure of adult decisions that would have made other kids her age crumble, made him look like a child. Their worlds were too dissimilar to mesh.
How had they met each other in the first place?
“I’m still gonna kill him,” Shep muttered. “He’s always doing this—always stepping in when he shouldn’t step in. I should’ve known he’d do something like this. What’s he doing for you? Are you using him as security to keep Evie’s accounts locked down?”
