Every step echoed off the concrete, each one hammering the same thought deeper into my skull:She’s done with you.
With my eye already swelling and my split lip throbbing with every heartbeat, I climbed onto the edge of my cot, the thin mattress groaning under my weight. The cell was cold. Gray. Same as always. But somehow, it felt smaller now. Like the walls had inched closer while I wasn’t looking, ready to finish what Harper started.
At first, I tried to convince myself she was just being noble. Pushing me away for my own good. Maybe she thought ending things would make me less likely to go after Silas. Maybe if I told myself that lie enough times, it would start to feel true.
It didn’t.
I wiped my bloody lip, replaying every word she’d thrown at me.
How the fuck could Harper see my protection, my devotion, as a rejection ofus? How did she not see it as the opposite? That I’d literally end someone for hurting her?
And then that question answered itself.
That’s exactly the problem, you bastard.
She didn’t want someone who’d end a man for her. She wanted someone who’d choose her over the urge to do it.
And I couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
If only I could convince my heart to hate her for it. That would’ve been convenient. Clean. But my heart didn’t get the memo. It was still obsessed with her. Still cared for her. Still wanted the best for her.
Even now. Even after she’d gutted me with the truth.
I grabbed the back of my neck. I needed my heart to see that she was being judgmental. Critical. Narrow-minded.
But no matter how much I tried to hold on to the anger, it kept slipping through my fingers. The only thing left was the kind of pain that doesn’t have a name. The kind that just sits in your chest like a stone you’re going to carry forever.
I’d lost her.
I’d always known I wasn’t good enough for her. I’d felt like a selfish bastard for even entertaining the idea of letting her lower her standards for someone like me. A man with blood on his hands and bars on his windows.
But I’d let myself hope anyway.
Hope. What a fucking joke.
Harper could have any guy she wanted. She could walk out of this prison tonight, walk into some bar, and have men lining up to buy her drinks. She could have a real relationship with any of them. Go on dates. Hold hands in public. Wake up next to someone whose past didn’t have a body count.
And me? I’d let my emotions rip loose like a flag in a hurricane, and I’d fallen for her anyway. Hard. Stupid.
Only to confirm what I’d known from the start: she could never actually want to be with someone like me.
She’d never understand my choices. Today proved that.
And what she’d said about Gwen? Using my daughter against me like that. It was a fucking low blow. The kind of hit that lands because it’s true.
“If you’d let the police handle it, maybe you’d actually be there for her right now.”
Fourteen years I’d lived with that question. Fourteen years I’d buried it under the certainty that I’d done what any father should do.
Harper had dug it up in thirty seconds.
For years, I’d told myself what I did didn’t make me a monster. It made me a good father.
But maybe that was the lie I’d been telling myself all along. Maybe I was fucked in the head. Maybe wanting to rip Silas’s spine out of his body for laying a hand on Harper was the kind of thought only damaged people had. Maybe a normal guy would be satisfied with law enforcement slapping Silas on the wrist.
I wasn’t normal. I’d never been normal.
I’d taken a life and refused to apologize for it. Refused to show an ounce of remorse. Because I wasn’t sorry. I’d do it again.
