I wrapped my arm around her, pulling her closer. “I’m sorry you’re sad. We can figure everything out together, Harp. You aren’t alone in this.” I gave her a small squeeze. “I don’t think adding to your life is a bad idea. As long as what you’re adding is making you happy. I honestly don’t know if I have ever felt the way I do right now. I’m confused and horny, but so happy. Tonight was a lot for me to process, but not in a bad way.”
She lifted her head to look into my eyes. “And we can figure that out together, too.”
She exhaled a little shakily, then leaned her head back on my shoulder.
I didn’t move. I just held her there. And in the stillness between us, something shifted. I didn’t know what we were becoming, but I knew this much: I’d burn the world down before I let her lose everything she worked for.
I kissed the top of Harper’s head. Just a soft press of my mouth against her, right where her forehead met her hairline.
We sat quietly like this for a while. The silence gave me time to figure out what I could do to help her.
I hadn’t touched the trust fund my grandfather left me agesago. It’d been sitting there for years, untouched, collecting dust and interest. I always figured I’d save it for something that mattered—a business expansion, a down payment on land, maybe. Not someone else’s emergency.
But now Harper wasn’t just someone else to me.
Still… Did it make sense to pull from that? Or would it be smarter to take out a loan, stretch it into payments, and treat it like a mortgage? Hell, I didn’t have one. My house was paid off. My bills were light. I could handle it. I could always make bigger or extra payments when I could.
Or I could just pay the twenty-five thousand upfront. Earlier, while Harper was in the bathroom, Tucker explained the price and what needed to be done to the house. I definitely had more than enough in my account. Between working so many jobs in my lifetime and now owning my own business, twenty-five thousand wouldn’t break me.
I could do this. But should I?
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I rubbed my hand up and down her arm as a silent comfort.
And then—like a goddamn betrayal of everything I was trying to think through—I thought abouther.
Even now, while I was supposed to be focused on trust funds and bank statements, all I could think about was how soft she felt tucked against me. How warm her skin was. How fucking good she smelled.
And suddenly, I was hard again. Like, painfully hard.
I needed to get myself together.
But it was too late. That ache was already there, low and hungry, made worse by the fact that she was pressed against me in nothing but shorts and a thin tank top.
20
HARPER
The couch creaked as I shifted, still tucked under Cameron's arm. He had been quiet for an awfully long time, but I knew he had a lot to think about. And honestly, I did too.
It was so late. When I put my phone down, it was nearing three in the morning. I was getting so tired. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave him. My stomach was tight, not from hunger, but from everything else—stress, money, fear, the pressure of holding everything together.
But my heart felt so full. Even though nothing went further than kissing, we all worked so well together.
My mind went back and forth between the two men I spent my night with and the fact that I still had to pay for my house to be fixed.
Thirty thousand dollars. Well, now twenty-five thousand after I wired the money to Tuck while they were outside. I’d done the math at least a dozen times in my head. Even if I cashed out my savings and maybe begged my way into a low-interest loan, I’d still come up short. I’m worried that a payment plan may be a good option now, but what if in six months, Ican’t afford a payment? I’d worked so hard on that house. I was proud of it—maybe the only thing I’d ever fully claimed for myself.
And now it was slipping. It was the last piece of my dad that I had. As angry as I was with him, I needed to keep this house.
My eyes fluttered closed, and I rested my head against him. My chest felt heavy and wrung out from crying. But then the quietness shifted, and I remembered something else.
I was alone in this house. With him.
The man who, not even two weeks ago, had touched me like I was something holy. Who had laid between my thighs like heneededto worship me. Who just made out with me,andthe man who was going to fix my house. Who just kissed my forehead like he knew how easily I could fall apart.
And now he was holding me as we both tried to figure our shit out.
My thighs pressed together instinctively, the ache low and impossible to ignore. The kind of ache that didn’t belong in this moment—didn’t belong when I should’ve still been crying about money or panicking about my future—but it was there anyway.
