That I could be brave enough for him.
But I couldn’t.I didn’t know how to be.
Instead, I just sat next to him, hugging my knees to my chest, as I stared out at the water with him. In the silence, my heart fractured, leaving little pieces of me scattered on the beach I didn’t know when I’d return to. And the worst part was knowing that I’d done it to both of us.
CHAPTER 13
maverick
The weight of Harley’s absence settled heavily in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t just missing him. It was like my whole world had shifted off its axis, breaking something inside of me. I ditched school and fucked around, doing anything to avoid going home in the first few days after. I drifted through the days, half-expecting Harley to show up and tell me he changed his mind.
He never did.
I even walked to his house and snuck into his room. The place felt wrong, and his room was too perfect. Too empty. There was nothing of his left behind. He’d been perfectly packed up in boxes that disappeared. His stuff was gone, but that didn’t erase the smell of his rich boy cologne from his pillow. It hit me the moment I sat on his bed, and my chest caved in on itself. I curled around it, pressing my face into the smooth fabric and committing the scent to memory. It was silly, but Harley was the only good thing in my life. I wanted to keep whatever part of him I could
I knew it was pathetic, but I couldn’t stop myself.
Clifford was cool about finding me asleep in his bed—something about making sure Harley’s friend was okay. I was grateful. More than grateful. If his mother found me here, she would’ve had me arrested, and I could only imagine what Aidan would have to say about that.
He’d probably call me a fucking idiot and remind me how everyone leaves.He was right.I hated that he was right—he was always right. That singular truth ate me alive as I added Harley to the long list of people who had walked out on me.
Part of the reason I avoided going home was that I knew I’d have to deal with Aidan. He’d see my sadness as weakness, and Aidan didn’t have the patience for weakness. Or feelings. Or anything else that didn’t serve him.
Unfortunately, I could only avoid it for so long.
Sure enough, Aidan was waiting for me when I walked through the door. He sat at the wonky table with a cup of coffee and that quiet, angry look on his face—the one that always set me on edge. The house felt smaller whenever he sat like that. I stopped dead and just waited for whatever came next.
The air between us thrummed like a livewire, charged and dangerous. My pulse fluttered violently as my blood rushed to my ears. That familiar instinct of survival crawled up my spine.Stay still. Don’t provoke him. Say the right thing. Do whatever he wanted.It was as simple and complicated as that.
Because when Aidan decided he wanted something from me, it happened one way or another. How much I got hurt in the process was the variable up in the air.
“Well?” Aidan demanded, expectation lacing his voice. He stared at me over his cheap cup of coffee. I didn’t have to ask for clarification. I knew what he wanted.What he expected me to do.
Harley’s face flashed in my mind, brief and consuming—those blue eyes, how he looked at me like I was worth something, the way he cared. For a split second, it was like I wasn’t some poor kid stuck in a trailer park trying to do whatever to survive.
But reality had slammed those doors shut.
I was just some poor kid in a trailer park doing whatever to survive.
And survival meant doing whatever Aidan wanted me to.
“Yeah,” I said flatly. “I’ll get you into their house.”
What did I care anyway if Aidan robbed them?It wasn’t like I had anything left to tie me to them.
Still, something inside my chest broke apart quietly the moment I said it because I hated being this person. I wanted to be the person Harley saw me as, not the one the world was making me into.
In a world full of bad, Harley was a good thing.
My good thing.
My anchor in the world’s chaos.
At least he was until the world tore him out of the hole he’d burrowed into my chest.
There were no letters.
No phone calls.
