“Look what you made me do.”
I fumbled for my phone, fingers shaking as I yanked it from my back pocket. “Leave. Now.”
He crouched down, and I scrambled backward until my shoulders hit the doorframe. “I’ll never let you go. Why won’t you understand that? We belong together. We’ll always belong together.”
“I’m calling the police.” I held up the phone like a shield, my voice shaking despite my best efforts. “You ever show up on my front lawn again …”
“What? You’ll file a report?” He almost laughed. “Go ahead. See how far that gets you.”
“Go back to Indiana, Silas.”
He tilted his head. Smiled. And something about that smile made my blood run cold.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because that’s where you live.”
“No.” He stood, brushing snow off his knees, and looked down at me with the calm certainty of a man who had already won. “You live here. So, I live here now.”
My stomach dropped.
“Got a new job.” He said it casually. Like he was telling me about the weather.
No. That couldn’t be true. He wouldn’t … he couldn’t just …
But looking at his face, I knew. He absolutely would. He absolutely had.
Silas walked down the porch steps, unhurried.
At the edge of the driveway, he paused. Looked back.
“See you soon, Harper.” He glanced toward the scattered roses bleeding red across the snow. “I’ll bring fresh ones next time.”
Then he disappeared around the corner, and I was left alone on my porch, snow melting into my clothes, staring at a dozen ruined roses and wondering how many more times he’d have to break me before he finally let me go.
The answer, I already knew, was never.
Silas wasn’t just passing through.
He was here to stay.
Swallowing my absolute rage and fear and frustration, I realized I had another big problem on my hands too: I was due to start work with Knox.
And when I pressed my fingers to my cheekbone, I hissed in pain.
“Fuck.”
30
HARPER
My ex-boyfriend bruised my face, and I was about to see Knox.
I glanced at my reflection in the small mirror for the millionth time this morning, tilting my face toward the fluorescent light. The bruise sat high on my cheekbone, a shadow beneath three layers of concealer. Barely visible. Probably. Hopefully.
This was a good-news-bad-news situation.
The bad news? Despite filing a police report, my ex-boyfriend wasn’t rotting in a jail cell. Disappointing, but not surprising. Due process and all that.
