I met a helpful older man, who gladly informed me Harper was good friends with one of the bartenders at the Rusty Nail named Jack. The description the man gave of Jack matched the man I’d encountered at the motel, and I decided it was time to have another chat with him.
As luck would have it, Jack was working when I walked into the bar later in the afternoon.
He eyed me suspiciously as I sat down and ordered a drink.
What did he know? Harper wasn’t the type to have told him everything, but he seemed wary of me, so whathadHarper told him?
Before I had the chance to ask, the door opened, and there he was.
Harper’s eyes locked onto mine. His beautiful diamond eyes, one of them surrounded in a dark bruise that had me wanting to tear the head off whoever had given it to him.
“Shit,” he cursed. Then he turned and bolted.
I was after him, determined to stop him from getting away from me again.
Something shattered behind me, but I didn’t stop to check. Only one thing mattered, and that was getting Harper back.
forty-six
Benny
ON MY OWN.
Harper was fast, faster than I’d expected as the distance between us increased. But then we were in the woods, and he had to be careful of sticks and shrubs in his way while I simply smashed my way through, gaining on him, and not caring if they scratched or sliced me.
My heart thundered in my chest as if it were trying to break out of me to get to him faster.
For weeks it had ached in his absence, but now it felt as if it were tearing as he ran from me.
Adrenaline mixed with my elevated heart rate, the anger and the desperation in me bubbling to the surface like a volcano’s eruption.
“You said I was yours!” I yelled after him. “Always!”
He stumbled, and it was all I needed to close the distance.
My body closed around his to protect him from the fall as we tumbled into the sticks.
Then I was over him, my arms boxing him in and preventing him from trying to get away from me again.
“You left me again!” I yelled.
“I didn’t have a choice!” he yelled back.
“Of course you did. We’re supposed to fight this together.”
His eyes filled with tears. His lip quivered. Cold fingers traced my cheek. “I need to protect you.”
I shook my head, trying to fight back my own tears, because I was mad at him. And I wanted him to know that.
He nodded. “I do. I have to protect you, and your family. Which means I can’t be in it, Benny.”
“No,” I grunted, my voice strained from how tight my throat was. “You’re my family too. And family doesn’t leave.”
“But staying is what got Ginny hurt.”
“No.Leonhurt Ma.”
“Because of me!”
