by Vivian Wood
“Hey,” she said, almost shyly, to the floor. She tucked a lock of fiery hair behind her ear and shifted her hips. Even beneath the flowing black miniskirt and leather jacket with the arms pushed up, he could make out the familiar curves of her body. To him, she may as well have worn nothing at all.
“What … what are you doing here?” She wouldn’t meet his gaze, and he couldn’t blame her. What are you doing here? That’s what you came up with?
“Why don’t we go outside?” T asked, an attempt to soften the blow.
On the concrete steps of the jailhouse, he let Connor wrap an arm around his shoulder. Joon-ki approached with arms open. It felt partly awkward and a little comforting.
“So, let’s give you the rundown,” T said. Everyone was aware that Harper hadn’t hugged him. He could feel it in their body language. Instead, she kept to the perimeter of the circle, wary and uncertain.
“You’re out on bail,” T told him. “Connor paid it.”
“It’s nothing,” Connor said quickly before Sean could protest or make promises of repayment.
“But it’s only while I hash out a plea deal with the DA,” she said. “Honestly, that might take some time. He’s fresh out of law school and a total prick. Sorry. Anyway, until then, you’re on house arrest.”
House arrest. That wasn’t so bad. Sean thought of the ankle monitors he’d seen on television.
Connor cleared his throat. “Sean, you’ll be living with Harper.”
“Excuse me?” Sean gave Connor a death glare. Was this some sort of fucked up joke?
“It’s a new apartment,” Connor said brightly, like he was trying to sell it to him. “I took care of it, it’s furnished and everything. It’ll help Sam and me out, too. We can stay put until the baby comes, and then—”
“Hold up,” Sean said. He closed his eyes and commanded Connor to shut up. “What … why …”
T interrupted. “It wasn’t easy getting to this point,” she said. “The judge wants to see that you’re in a stable environment, that you have somewhere safe to live while on house arrest. It was either Harper or your brother, and given Sam’s condition, it just didn’t seem right to force this on them.”
“This, uh … this is going to be our last trip out here for awhile,” Sam said. She rested her hand on her pregnant belly. “My doctor says I shouldn’t fly anymore after this.”
“We have three hours,” T said, “and then the police will arrive at your new apartment to fit you with an ankle monitor. My understanding is that Harper has already moved in?” She gave Harper a curious look, and Harper nodded numbly at the ground. “And you’d better be there. You hear me?” T asked.
“Yeah. I hear you.” T gave a tight-lipped smile to the rest of the group and traipsed down the last of the stairs toward her car.
“I’m sorry, but I think I need to lie down awhile,” Sam said. Connor put his hand on the small of her back.
“We’ll catch up with you before we leave tomorrow. Okay?” Connor asked. “Harper, you got this?”
Both Sean and Harper nodded obediently in Connor’s direction.
“I should get going, too,” Joon-ki said. “But I’ll check in with you daily, alright? Get that phone charged. We’ll get back on those daily AA meetings as soon as you’re off house arrest, and we’ll set up virtual meetings until then.”
“Right.” Even now, he was embarrassed for Harper to hear those two little letters associated with him. AA.
For what felt like a full minute, he was left alone with Harper on the steps. “We, uh, we should get going,” she said.
“Harper—”
“Seriously?” she turned and finally looked him in the eye. “We don’t have time for this. Don’t make everything worse by being late to get your ankle bracelet put on.”
“I’m really sorry.” It was all he could manage. But surely she could fill in the blanks.
“I saw your face when you saw me,” she said slowly. “I saw your surprise in there. I know you didn’t choose to contact me. That was all Connor.”
“If you would just let me apologize—”
“For what, exactly?” she asked. There was a steeliness in her eyes as she crossed her arms over her chest. “For not calling me? For being shitfaced the last time I saw you? Or were you more worried about the fact that you were being arrested? Maybe it’s the long list of drug charges that you’ve accumulated? Which part, exactly, are you apologizing for?”
She had him there. He wanted to say all of it, and he wanted to defend himself, but there was nothing to say. She’d silenced him with a fire he’d only guessed she carried deep inside.
She stalked toward a new Tesla and slipped into the driver’s seat without another word. Is this from Connor? But he didn’t dare speak.
As she weaved through traffic, he saw the neighborhoods get nicer and nicer. Finally, a sign for Brentwood appeared. The luxury high-rise was part of the classic neighborhood’s latest reincarnation. Harper pulled into the parking deck and got out.
“Coming?” she asked, the disdain palpable in her voice.
“Is my brother paying for all this?” he asked. “This … this car, the apartment—”
She gave a mean laugh. “No. You are,” she said. “Apparently, you’re quite wealthy. Who would have guessed?”
She jammed the button for the elevator and he was slammed back into silence.
He thought he’d told her that. Kind of. It’s family money, not mine! he wanted to scream at her. But how did he explain that to his girlfriend? Or ex-girlfriend, whatever they were now?
Harper led him into the sleek apartment kitted out in midcentury modern furniture. The tufted gray sofa, steel and glass tables, and the concrete flooring was all right on trend. He knew exactly who’d been responsible for finding this place. It had Connor written all over it. Sean couldn’t even imagine what Harper thought of the place. He pictured her dream home to be a little Victorian with rich moldings and intricate décor at every corner. Though they’d never talked about things like that, he realized. How much did he really know about her? Suddenly, he was desperate to know every little detail, from her first grade teacher’s name to whether she’d ever roller skated. But those words were still buried in his throat.
She must think he was the biggest poser, slumming it in a crappy little apartment and needling away his days at a tattoo parlor when he had millions of dollars at his disposal. Millions of his father’s dollars.
4
Harper
She tried to act unimpressed with the penthouse, but it was still a shock every time she saw it. When Connor had first sent her the photos, she tried to brush it off as creative photography even as P squealed at the location. The first time she’d arrived with nothing but three suitcases stuffed with her meager belongings, it had taken her breath away.
“You like it?” Sam had asked.
“Uh, yeah,” she had said. Who wouldn’t?
Even now, as Sean trailed behind her and her anger simmered just below the surface, she caught her breath at the sight of the too-perfect penthouse. It was like something out of a magazine. Gorgeous, and she was all too aware she didn’t belong.
Harper hadn’t known what to expect when Sean emerged from the jail cell. Would he be excited to see her? Sheepish, but with that smirk that let her know everything would be okay? She hadn’t known, but she certainly hadn’t expected him to flat out ignore her. Sprinkle in the thorny heartache and their complete lack of trust, and it didn’t take long for a hurricane to brew inside her.
Harper strode through the living room, aware of his eyes on her back. Even at her biggest runway show, she’d never embraced so much height or taken up so much room. She tossed the keys on the sofa console table where they made a neat tinkle in the handblown glass bowl.
Immediately, Harper retreated to what she secretly called her side of the apartment. Connor knew what he was doing, alright. A penthouse with two master en-suites, equal in size and luxury, with a stretch
of semineutral ground parading as the living room, dining room and kitchen.
Harper didn’t give a damn about the lack of bedding in Sean’s bedroom. She didn’t even peek when Connor dragged the big bag with a duvet, pillows and sheets into the other room. Instead, she’d quickly torn into her own bedding, gifted from Connor, of course, and set about making “her room” as personal and safe as possible.
She clicked the push-button lock behind her, waltzed into the posh bathroom, and turned on the tap. As she sank to the floor, the sobs came before she could even curl up on the warm tiles with the radiant heat.
You shouldn’t have yelled at him about the money, she chastised herself. After all, there were a million other things she could be pissed about—was pissed about. Screaming about his wealth just made her look like she was mad because he’d cut off any potential for gold digging when they’d been happy together.
Happy together. That was a funny thought. She shook her head and the tears splattered across the gray floor. Having money is hardly a crime, she thought. And he certainly hadn’t owed her any transparency in that regard.
She should have known, anyway. The fancy dinners, what had to be an unbelievable sum to enter the sex party, that night at the hotel—how had she thought he’d afforded it? Had she hoped he was so much of a bad boy that he was bankrolling that lifestyle on a stolen credit card? Laundered money, what?
Harper sighed. Hiding the money had just been the last straw. Her heart was already overburdened, and it wouldn’t have taken much at all to push her over the edge. When her tears had gone dry, she pulled herself up from the floor and examined herself in the mirror. Her eyes were puffy and her lashes damp. Streaked down her cheeks were black rivulets of mascara that was supposed to be waterproof.
In the unfamiliar closet that smelled of a strange cleaning solution, she flipped through the few dresses, skirts and blouses that had made it from her earlier move-in. She pulled out a simple sleeveless black maxi dress.
“You can do this,” she told her reflection in the angled free-standing mirror. She looked like she was in mourning, and perhaps she was. “You can’t hide in here forever.”
Just as she’d pumped herself up enough to face him, she heard the doorbell ring and the click of the front door opening. Male voices mumbled, unintelligible from her quarters.
Harper stepped out lightly, barefoot, onto the concrete flooring of the living room. Two brusque parole officers talked to Sean as he sat on the couch. One leaned menacingly over him while one hand rested leisurely on a pistol. The other was crouched down to fit the ankle monitor.
She noticed Sean had changed out of the clothes he’d been arrested in. His hair looked slightly damp, and she gulped at the idea of him in the shower. Get yourself together. Something about the wornout denim jeans and the tight-fitting white shirt made her heart start to flutter. The officer rose up to reveal a clunky, blinking contraption that rested on Sean’s Converse high-tops.
Harper moved to the adjacent, matching loveseat and perched on the edge while the officers ticked off the rules. “ … home except for parole meetings … go outside the building and the monitor will go off … alcohol or drugs in your system will alert the monitor, too …”
Jesus. It really was house arrest. For the first time, Harper realized that meant Sean would always be here. If she were to avoid him, she’d have to leave. Suddenly the idea of it being “her home, too” seemed like a joke.
“What about AA?” he asked quietly. He’d positioned himself to face as far away from her as possible without pissing off the cops.
“We spoke to your sponsor about that,” the bigger cop said. “You can leave for meetings, as long as it’s at one of these ten locations in your area.” He handed Sean a slip of paper. “We know exactly when and where these meetings happen and how long they last. Given the radius, you have exactly twenty minutes from the official ending time to get back here. Understand?”
Sean nodded, like he’d been reprimanded by a schoolteacher.
“If you want to go anywhere else, it’s on a case-by-case basis. And your PO, me, needs to be notified at least forty-eight hours in advance. Got it?”
“I got it,” he said.
The officers never acknowledged her. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad omen. She watched their backs retreat toward the fancy entryway. It felt odd, to be in this multimillion dollar penthouse while parole officers fastened an ankle monitor to one of the tenants.
Sean shifted toward her, fast and unexpected. Their eyes met and she read it as a challenge. She wouldn’t look away first.
“Want to order some Chinese food?” he asked.
That wasn’t what she’d expected as his first words to her in “their new home.” But she shrugged in agreement. Hell, let him do whatever he wants.
He pulled up a number on his phone while Harper dragged her laptop off the coffee table. She’d left it charging there last night, not knowing how much she’d want to disappear from sight as soon as she arrived with Sean.
She went through her email and opened the Craigslist jobs section while Sean listed off way too much food for two people. She’d missed that gravel in his voice, somehow incredibly sensual even when he did something as mundane as ordering Peking roasted duck.
Harper shifted as she snuck looks at him from over her laptop. Her mind might be in a rage at him and her heart might be on the verge of shattered, but her body was still highly attuned to him. How can I hate someone so much and want them at the same time?
Okay, maybe hate is a strong word. But still …
She nearly smiled when she saw an ad with the headline “Beautiful but broke?” You got me, she thought. Harper briefly wondered how desperate she’d need to be before she forayed into the adult entertainment industry. Not that I really would, she thought. But in that moment, Sean had turned her on so much by doing nothing but ordering dinner. It had been three weeks since they’d last been together, and before that she’d grown quite accustomed to mindblowing sex on a regular basis. If I could just feel him one more time—
“What are you doing?” His gruff voice briskly pulled her back to reality.
“Oh,” she blushed and wondered if he could tell when she was wrapped up in a fantasy. “Looking for a job.”
“A job? Like a new campaign?”
“Like a real job because I got fired,” she shot back.
He blinked, and for a moment she wondered if it was the reaction she’d always feared. Is he disgusted by me now that I’m not a model? Is that downward glance really trying to gauge how fat I’ve gotten?
“Fucking idiots,” he said. “Why the hell would they fire you? When did it happen?”
“When did it happen? Oh, I don’t know. Sometime when you were in jail. I can’t recall the exact date, considering it was sometime in the past month.”
He looked hurt, but pressed on. “Come on, I really want to know. If I can help—”
“Help? How about this for some help? If you really want to know, I was on the way to tell you the fucking day you got arrested! Okay? That’s when it happened.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. Sorry my little nothing news was eclipsed by all your drama.”
“Harper, I’m sorry. I truly am. I … I don’t know how else to say it.”
She looked at him for a long pause. For a second, she almost gave in. Just tell him it’s okay. She knew he’d take her back, at least momentarily, and she was so exhausted from being so scared, so angry.
But it’s not okay, she reminded herself. There was an ocean of a chasm between them that couldn’t be pieced back together. At best, we have a hell of a mess to figure out. She didn’t know if she could ever really see him the same again.
Harper snapped her laptop closed and stood up. “Goodnight,” she said.
“But what about dinner?” She let his voice get cut off by the slam of her bedroom door.
5
Sean
He pinned he
r down. His large hand easily encircled her slender wrists. Bound by his flesh, Harper looked up at him through thick lashes. Sean’s hardness pressed against the creamy skin of her upper thigh. The more he clenched his hand around her wrists, the more he sensed any trepidation in her vanish. She looked at him with total trust as she spread her legs wider.
She parted her lips to say something, but his other hand covered her mouth firmly. “Did I tell you to speak?” he asked.
Harper shook her head gently and he slid his length into her. Her center was familiar, warm and wet. Her eyes widened as he pressed against her G-spot and she let out a muffled cry beneath his hand.
As he began his rhythm into her, the juices that flowed were unbelievable. “How do you get so fucking wet?” he asked her. Sean lifted his hand briefly for her reply.
“You,” she gasped in a small voice. “You do this to me.”
He reclamped his hand over her mouth as she wrapped those long legs around his torso. Harper pulled him deeper with every thrust. The muscles of her thighs begged him to stay buried inside her.
He looked down to her breasts, the nipples hard and bright pink beneath him. As he released her wrists to lower his head to her breasts, the bedroom door shot open.
“LAPD,” the officer boomed. Sean looked up as Harper cried out. He felt her come and her nails, free from his bind, dug into his back.
“Mom?” he asked.
It seemed only mildly unnatural that it was his mother commanding a squad of two other officers. Her always perfectly coifed hair fanned out from below the shiny vinyl cap.
“What do you think you’re doing?” his mother asked. She reached for her baton, but pulled out a small silver flask instead. The other officers skirted the room, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from his mother, who guzzled the flask greedily.
“Fucking bitch—” Sean unwound himself from Harper and shot out of bed toward his mother, but as soon as his feet hit the floor she grew to the size of a monster.
