Harper struggles for composure when she sees the look on my face. “It’s just…” she points between us. “You? And me? It’s…”
“It’s what?” I ask with complete seriousness, and she bites back the rest of her smile.
“You’re my brother’s best friend. It’s off limits.”
“Very, very off limits,” I answer. “But less off-limits than you running off with a man neither of us can stand.”
“What is so bad about him?” she asks. “Other than being your business rival?”
I open my mouth to say something, but I find that the words won’t come. No matter how hard I try, no matter how much easier it would make this, I can’t bring myself to tell her the truth. That he’s a cheater. That he’s only been with her for one thing, and he almost got away with it.
“I love him,” she says when I don’t say anything, and this time I am the one laughing. It’s not the right response, but it’s my initial reaction. “What? You don’t think I do?” she asks.
“I think you have a warped idea of what love is if you honestly believe you are in love with Daniel Colby, Harper.”
The moment my words leave my lips, I know they were the wrong ones to say. Like daggers, they puncture her, first flushing her face, then slamming into her chest, causing her lips to part and the air to deflate from her lungs.
“I didn’t mean…” I try, but she shakes her head.
“Let’s just go to the airport,” she says, walking around me. I rake my hand through my hair and turn, watching as she grabs her things and organizes them. She’s not mad. She’s notthrowing things around the way she was before. She’s quiet and deliberate.
She’s upset.
And I fucked up.
As the villa becomes smaller in the rearview mirror, I know I should be feeling relief. But right now, with the car quiet and tense, I don’t feel good at all. We wind through the trees towards the main road. It will take us to the airport where we will board our plane and go back to our regular lives.
Finally, I say something because I can’t take it anymore. The only thing worse than dealing with this girl’s attitude is watching her shrink into herself.
“Listen, I think I might have been a little out of line back there. This whole thing has been hard for both of us and I shouldn’t have said–”
“Fuck,” she cuts me off, and I look over at her from the driver’s seat, confused.
“What?”
“Fuck!” she says again, pointing ahead of us. That’s when I see it. About fifteen yards in front of us are police lights, construction lights, and a whole lot of fallen trees, covering the entirety of the road.
The only road out.
I stop the car and get out. Harper follows.
“Hola,” I call out with as much patience as possible. “We need to get through.”
The group of men don’t seem to care. Several of them are simply staring at us while the others talk back and forth in Spanish.
“Hello?” I ask. “Do you speak English? We have a flight to catch and?—”
“La carretera está cerrada,” one of them says. I’m kicking myself for not studying up on Spanish on the plane.
“The road is closed,” Harper says, covering her face with her hands.
“Obviously. We just need to get around it,” I tell her.
“No,” she says, moving her hands to look at me. “That’s what he said. The road is closed.”
Fuck.
I take in a deep breath and let it out.
