The best friend who gave me a family when I lost mine…
If I started something with Harlow and fucked it up the way I fucked things up with Cam... Jax would never forgive me. The friendship we built over two decades would crumble, and I would lose the only family I had left. Kaia would look at me with that disappointed expression that was somehow worse than anger. Trystan would probably beat the shit out of me, which honestly seemed like the more merciful option.
And Syn…
She would cut my heart out with a spoon. A dull rusty spoon. She told me once, in vivid and anatomically creative detail, exactly what she would do to anyone who hurt Harlow. I laughed at the time, thinking she was joking.
She wasn’t joking.
But beyond all of that, there was the simple, terrifying truth that I didn’t want to hurt Harlow.
And I had a terrible track record.
What if I broke her heart and had to watch her look at me the way Cam looked at me that evening at the beach house?
The risk was too high. The potential for destruction was too massive.
And yet.
And yet, I couldn’t stop thinking about her and wanting things I had no right to want.
My phone dinged, and my heart did an embarrassing little leap as I grabbed it, hoping…
Sydney: Hey, handsome. You up?
Sydney Davis.
Sydney was a fixture at every hockey event, every afterparty, every bar within a five-mile radius of the rink. Pretty, persistent, and absolutely uninterested in anything serious. She was the girl you could call at 2 AM when you wanted to forget your own problems for a few hours.
Another message popped up before I could respond.
Sydney: I’ve been thinking about you all night. Want some company?
A photo followed that left absolutely nothing to the imagination, all tan skin, lingerie, and a smile that promised exactly the kind of distraction I should probably want.
I stared at it.
Nothing.
I felt absolutely nothing except a vague irritation that she interrupted my pathetic spiral about someone else.
Sydney: I could be there in 20 minutes. Do whatever you want to me. No strings.
The old Owen would have said yes and let Sydney come over, exhausting him until he forgot. He would have used a physical distraction to avoid any type of emotional reality, the same way he’d been doing for years.
But all I could think about was Harlow.
I groaned, pressing my phone against my forehead like I could somehow physically expel Sydney’s messages from existence.
This was pathetic. A grown man, lying in the dark, turning down a sure thing because he couldn’t stop obsessing over someone he couldn’t have.
My thumb moved before my brain could stop it, deleting and blocking.
Sydney Davis vanished from my phone.
And because I was apparently determined to make the worst possible decisions tonight, I opened Harlow’s messages and typed before I could talk myself out of it.
Owen: You make it home okay?
