harley
Widow’s Drophad changed the mood between Maverick and me. Something intangible hung in the air between us. I shouldn’t have brought up Aidan. I should’ve just taken what he said about my life and left it at that. His assessments were accurate after all. That would’ve been the smart thing to do, but I wasn’t exactly thinking straight today.
Late in the afternoon, I braced for the backlash as I walked back into my mother’s house. I looked like hell—I knew that. Myhair was disheveled, and my clothes were wrinkled and dirty. I was covered in sweat and dust, but I just didn’t care. I was too stuck in my head for that.
I wasn’t happy.
Something about saying those words out loud to him had unlocked something inside me. Cracked it wide open with no dam to hold it back. I wasn’t happy. Not even a little bit. The last few weeks with Maverick had been the happiest since… well, since we were eighteen and ditching school. The correlation wasn’t lost on me.
I found myself teetering on the edge of what I was supposed to do and what I wanted to do. Who I was versus who I wanted to be.
“Clifford,” I whispered as a way of greeting as he opened the door. He only nodded tightly. I dared to ask, “How upset is she?”
“I’d rather wrestle a hungry lion than be you right now,” he answered under his breath.Well, at least he was honest.“To be—”
“Clifford!” The shrill snap of my mother’s voice from the living room had me flinching.Yeah, this was going to be a disaster, and I’d done it to myself.
“I’m sorry if I get you in trouble,” I said quietly to Clifford before drawing in a deep breath and heading to the living room.
Vivienne sat on the couch, her ankles crossed and expression impeccably poised as she watched me. Just her existence irked me. The idea of her being in my life was miserable to say the least. But I didn’t have the chance to focus on her as my mother strode right past me.
“The office,” she bit out. “Now.”
The emphasis on that last word sent my heart lodging in my throat. I braced myself as I followed her. There was no way to avoid the fallout. All I could do was work through what I wanted to say.What did I want to say?Lying about where I waswouldn’t do me any good. She knew by this point. I couldn’t talk myself out of this.
And truthfully… I didn’t want to.
“Where were you?” she demanded the minute I shut the door.
“I was out,” I said. I kept the door to my back, putting as much distance between her and me as possible. Her anger was palpable and suffocating as it filled the room.
“You were out!” she repeated, her voice rising significantly. “What kind of idiot do you take me for, Harley? Iknowyou were out. What I want to know iswhere were you?”
“I was with Maverick. I spent the night with him,” I told her.
The words hung there between us as she processed them. Something dark and inexplicable crossed her expression—something colder than anger.
“I have been more than patient with your little experimentation phase with that boy—”
“It’s not an experimentation phase!” I exclaimed, the words flying out of me before I could stop them.
“—but enough is enough, Harley!” she snapped over me, completely ignoring me. “I’ve had it with your childish behavior. Your father insisted we let you work through it—insisted you’d come around—but clearly that’s not happening!”
That last sentence was a slap to the face.He… what?
“He what?” I asked, my voice quieter and barely audible. I was stuck between confusion and disbelief. The idea that my father had tried to stand up for me… I struggled to believe it. “What do you mean—”
“The man was as foolish as you are,” she cut me off. “I should’ve nipped that behavior in the bud the minute you started hanging out with that ridiculous boy!”
“He’s not—”
“Do you even understand what you’re doing? What you risk every time you go running around with that boy? Do youknowwhat people would think?”
“I don’t care,” I admitted a little too honestly. They weren’t people I wanted to appeal to. The only person whose opinion I cared about was Maverick.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the smartest thing for me to say to her. Her expression twisted into something livid and dangerous. I did my best to hold my ground, keeping my chin lifted, even as every instinct screamed at me to back down. My heart hammered wildly—so loud in my ears that it wouldn’t have surprised me if she could hear it too.
“You listen to me, Harley Christopher Lowell,” she began, her tone dark, as she moved closer. “I have spent your entire life turning you into exactly who you are supposed to be to run this family business—”
