by Cindy Miles
That shocked me. “But I’m not a criminal,” I said. “How can I remind you of, well, you?”
Again, he didn’t seem affronted. Just…factual. “There’s actually a little more to me than numbers,” he said, then glanced at me. Liquid pools of coffee grazed my eyes. “Believe it or not.”
I knew there was something because every time we were in the same breathing space, something like a current hummed beneath my skin. I wasn’t stupid, or naïve. Just because I’d never been on a date before, or had sex before, didn’t mean I was blind to the signs of attraction. I knew how things worked. Murphy was a walking, breathing Wikipedia of dating, snogging, and sex and all things in between. She inadvertently taught me plenty. Maybe not everything, but plenty.
“How do you know I’m not already in a relationship?” I asked.
“I asked.”
“Oh.” I had nothing to say after that. All of my big Dare plans seemed to be getting tossed right back at me by a quiet, strange beautiful guy with liquid eyes, wise beyond his years. I glanced out the window, watched the dark figures pass by.
Some time passed before Kane turned down a long, dark road. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I know this looks creepy, but it’s really not. I promise.”
“I believe you only because I know Brax Jenkins,” I said with confidence. “He’d punch your eye out if you did anything shifty.”
A faint rumble of laughter spilled from Kane’s throat. “Yeah, he’s already warned me to keep away from you and you can believe he’d be madder than hell if he knew I’d taken you out here.” He winked. “But I’m the older brother, see? Where do you think he learned everything from?” Then, as he slowed the truck, his gaze found mine. “I might be fast with the numbers, Harper, but I don’t swindle hearts. It’s not my MO.”
I somehow believed that about him. “That’s…good to know.”
It wasn’t long after that when Kane pulled to a stop at a crossgate. He looked at me. “Ready?”
Inside, my nerves jittered. It was dark. I didn’t like the dark, and immediately, my breath hitched. I tried to stifle it, the panic I felt creeping up along my spine. I didn’t want Kane to see it. “I suppose.”
Out of the truck, with a blanket he’d grabbed from somewhere behind his seat, Kane extended his hand and helped me out. From his pocket he pulled out a small flashlight, flipped it on, and some of the tension eased from me as soon as the light arced through the blackness. Grasping my hand firmly, he tugged me toward the crossgate. A sign read KEEP OUT. TRESSPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. My feet braked, and Kane jerked. He looked down at me.
“What’s wrong?”
“This…is trespassing,” I stammered. “See that word, Kane? Prosecuted? We could get into trouble.”
He rounded on me, sort of creating an enclave around us with his broad shoulders. He invaded my space; it made me feel protected, somehow. He didn’t even need to assure me with his hands. His eyes, his voice did the same maneuvers. “Haven’t you ever done anything daring, Harper?” he asked gently. “Anything that made your adrenaline kick in?”
“Of course not,” I said quickly. “Especially if it means going to jail!”
The lines around his eyes and mouth eased as he smiled. “It’s okay, Harper. Olivia knows the owner and I called ahead. Besides, Brax just brought Olivia out here the other night.” In the darkness, he tilted his head, ducked it to get a better view of me. “Your face is hidden in the shadows,” he said quietly. “But I know you’re tense. I can feel it. I asked you to trust me. Is it so hard?”
If he only knew. “Okay. Lead the way.”
We ducked under the crossgate and followed a hard-packed dirt path up a slight incline. Up and up we climbed, until our breath puffed out white with moisture.
“Notice anything yet?” he asked.
“No,” I answered breathily.
Kane laughed softly and we continued on, the narrow beam of light slicing through the darkness.
Finally, we plateaued, the trees cleared and we stood perched on a bluff.
An engine roared overhead, and when I craned my neck to look, I gasped as a commercial jet seemingly skimmed the top of my head.
“Oh!” I gasped again. “Kane!”
His laugh was husky and cut through the night air. Under his arm, he unrolled the blanket and set it on the ground at our feet. “Sit.”
I did, trying to keep my boots off the edge. “Where are we?”
Kane flung himself beside me, shoulder to shoulder. The moment he turned off the flashlight, the panic rose again in my throat and I gasped.
He looked at me. “What’s wrong?”
I tried to calm my breathing. “I, uh,” I stammered, “I don’t really like the dark.” I didn’t want to admit it, but there it was. I had no choice. My body fought the urge to take off and run. “Hate it, actually.”
“Hey,” he said. “I’m right here. I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”
I nodded, breathed. “It’s not you. It’s the darkness.”
Suddenly, he pushed the flashlight into my hand. “Tell you what. If you get nervous, turn it back on. But I’m right here.”
I squeezed the flashlight, and somehow just having it in my hand, in my control, eased my panic. “Thank you,” I said softly. I glanced around. “Where are we?”
Only a thumbnail moon illuminated the bluff, but I could see Kane’s profile as he spoke. “Would you believe we’re on a farm behind the airport?” He inclined his head in a direction behind us. “The main runway extension is back there,” he said, then looked at me. We were close—too close, almost, for comfort. “You have to lie back to get the full effect.”
He spun around then, stretched his long body out over the blanket, crossed his boots at the ankles, and tucked his hands behind his head. In the moonlight I could see his those liquidy pools staring at me. He smiled. “Take a chance for once. I won’t bite. Promise.”
Another plane zoomed overhead, and again, I gasped. Kane laughed. “Hurry up and lay back before you miss the next one,” he said.
With a hefty sigh, I kicked my boots over the blanket and stretched out beside him. Our shoulders touched; our heads were close. The flashlight gripped tightly in my hand.
“I never see this many stars back home.” His feathery voice drifted in the darkness. “I guess you’re used to it.”
My eyes were glued overhead. Sure, I’d seen stars. I’d seen blankets of them. But had I really noticed? “The sky. It’s so…big,” I said. My eyes roved from one end to the other. “It seems endless.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Here comes one,” he said.
We both held our breath as a jet seemingly skimmed the sky above our noses.
“Are you warm enough?” he asked.
Heat radiated off his body, so close to mine, and the sensation was new. Exciting. Frightening. “I am,” I said, even though I shivered.
He laughed lightly, then grew quiet. “Who are you, Harper Belle?”
I kept my gaze trained at the sky, but my insides froze. “What do you mean?”
“You’re the president of a sorority, yet you have no friends. You attend meetings, but are never seen anywhere other than sorority events. Class. The library.” The shift in air made me know he’d turned to me, so I looked at him. “You don’t go out for pizza. You don’t go out to movies. And you don’t go to the local pubs.”
I tried to keep my mask in place. “Seems like you’ve been doing some research.”
Those brown eyes, as fathomless as the inky sky, searched mine. “No. I just recognize myself in you, is all.” He turned on his side, propping his head with his palm. “Fear is our common factor, Harper,” he said, and his words washed over me like warm, honeyed breath. “Broken recognizes broken. It’s also what sets us apart.”
I now turned on my side to face him. My heart thumped at his perceptiveness. “A criminal philosopher. Interesting,” I said, forcing my voice to stay strong. Not crack. Not let him kn
ow how close to the truth he probably was. “I’ve said this before, Kane McCarthy. You don’t know anything about me.”
“I’m trying,” his voice was soft, and a crooked smile tilted his mouth. A mouth I had a difficult time looking away from. “I’ve found out a few things, though.”
Fear and panic instantly gripped me. Made my spine stiffen, and my skin prickle. Had he found out about my past? Who I really was? “Like what?” I asked slowly. I tried not to overreact. Did he know what had happened? What was inside of me?
What I could become?
His gaze moved over my face, so slow and painfully thorough he might as well have been dragging those full lips over it. “That you come from a rich, affluent family. You’re pre-law. You date, but you don’t date lowly college students. And that you never, ever break rules.” His gaze settled on my mouth. “And that you eat turkey sandwiches alone. Jog alone, away from campus so no one can see you. Interact with you. You eat oatmeal alone. And you trust no one.” His eyes returned to mine. “Yet you came out here with a near-total stranger.” He grinned. “Who may or may not be a thug. Why?”
I thought about it for a moment. “I’m even surprising myself, coming out here with you,” I answered. “Trust is a powerful gift that I bestow very, very lightly Kane McCarthy. If I were to give it to anyone, though,” I thought more. “It’d go to Olivia Beaumont. Which is why I’m here with you now. She seems to trust you.” That was a partial truth. The other reason was of course to gain footage with Kane on the Dare. “As far as the other accusations?” I sighed. Some weird part of me wanted to just…let it all out. Tell Kane the truth. I was so, so weary of keeping secrets. Tired of being scared. “Only half-truths of course. Murphy is my friend. And I do occasionally go out. I just happen to not want to waste a single dime of my family’s money partying it up versus getting my solid education.” I watched him watching me, and that did make me a bit more antsy. “I’m on the fence about pre-law, actually.” I’d blurted that part out, and I wasn’t sure why.
“What then?” he asked, and returned to his back, facing the plane jetting overhead. “If you didn’t have your family pushing you into pre-law,” his gaze found mine in the moonlight, “and I’d be willing to bet a grand that’s the case, then what would Harper Belle want to do with her life?”
That he’d guessed that didn’t sit well with me, either. But for some reason I didn’t think anything I said to Kane McCarthy would get back to Winston University. “I really like taking pictures,” I finally said, and thought about the used camera I’d saved up to buy. The pictures I’d secretly driven hours away to capture. I kept it to myself, though. No one knew but me. I looked at him. “I’m a novice, though. Just learning.” I studied him. “And if Kane McCarthy wasn’t busy taking illegal bets for the Kappas, what would he want to do?”
Kane joined me on his back, staring skyward. “Hmm. Honestly?” He was silent for a moment as he thought. “You won’t believe it.”
“Tell me,” I urged.
“A cop.”
We were both silent after that. Until Kane’s voice broke through the night.
“Funny,” he said softly, and kind of surprised. “I have a feeling we both just did something completely out of the ordinary for either of us.”
He didn’t even have to explain, because I was thinking it myself.
And only then did I realize we’d been in the dark this whole time, and I’d actually forgotten the terror of it.
I had the light in my hand. In my power. My control.
But with Kane beside me, it hadn’t seemed to matter so much.
She knew as little about me as I did about her. Well, almost. I had done a little research, asked some questions—although Olivia Beaumont had been tight-lipped about almost everything. Ask her yourself, she’d said. Brax, of course, had said, Leave her the fuck alone, Kane, and I fuckin’ mean it. But I couldn’t. She’d burned my brain from the moment I’d asked her for directions. I had a strong feeling Harper and I both could read into the masks we each wore. The shields we each locked in place. The reason I knew this was because people who did that—shielded and masked—could almost always spot another kindred spirit. It was a gift, I supposed. Sort of how I could immediately spot another product of the foster system.
Harper Belle was a complex soul. She hid something behind that broken smile, and it wasn’t pretty. She had a lot of people fooled, no doubt. But not me. I recognized it as clearly as I recognized my own demons. All that richy-rich, affluent family shit? Yeah, she might have been raised in that environment, but that’s not who she was. She was something else entirely.
And she completely fascinated me.
It wasn’t so much her looks—which were beyond beautiful to me. It was the beauty that lay behind the perfect skin, the striking eyes, and the lithe runner’s body. It was…something I almost couldn’t put my finger on. Strange, though, when it came down to it, I’d label it as pain. The pain that lay just below the surface of the beauty. It intrigued me. Made me want to step in, stop that pain, and kick anyone’s ass who had caused it.
“You’re very different from your brother,” she said in that delicate Texas drawl. Which also fascinated me. I could see now why Brax was so crazy about Olivia’s.
“I am?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. She pushed her hair behind her ear, and I balled my fingers together to keep from doing it for her.
“How am I then?” I prodded, curious.
“Well,” Harper continued. I noticed the way her brows bunched together in the middle when she thought about something. “Brax is loud. Obnoxious. Swears profusely, although it seems like since he met Olivia, it’s a little less.” She looked at me. “Don’t get me wrong—I think he’s a really great, really intelligent guy. He’s just…so much harsher than you.”
I watched her, intrigued by the movement of her mouth, and the way her teeth pulled at her lips when she wasn’t sure about something. I wanted to kiss her. In a bad, bad way. But I didn’t dare. Not now. So I lightened the mood. “You sayin’ I’m a wimp?”
She laughed, and for once it sounded sincere. “No. You’re more like a silent storm. You have a quiet sort of strength,” she said, and I watched her profile beneath the watery moonlight. “Even your accent doesn’t sound as harsh as Brax’s. I don’t know, you kind of have a sort of wisdom that is extraordinary, I guess. Brax is loud. Uses his fists. You actually look like you use your fists, but you don’t. Or…” She gave me a quick look, and her widened eyes nearly made me laugh. “Do you?”
“It’s rare that I have to,” I assured her.
“I thought so,” she said on an exhale. “You…think things through. Demand respect through your silence. Using only your eyes.” She looked at me, and the way her face scrunched up as she peered at me in the moonlight, inspecting me closely, sank straight through me. She was incredibly perceptive. “You speak a lot through your eyes. That’s sincere power.” She stared at the darkened sky. “Impressive.”
So she had me semi-pegged. That, to me, was impressive. “Well, while I’m running around being all silently powerful,” I said, turning to her. “You’re putting on a front that I have a feeling isn’t fitting you all too well anymore, Ms. Belle.”
Even in the darkness, her eyes flashed something familiar.
Fear.
Hell, I knew it well.
“You said we all have secrets. Why can’t it just stay that way?” she said.
Her diplomacy eased my mouth up at the corners. “Because I seem to want to know everything about you.”
“Oh,” she breathed. “Well…I’d prefer it if you stopped illegal betting activity with the Kappas. It not only puts yourself at risk, but your brother, too. And that’s selfish. So I guess we both want something we can’t have.”
“Why do you care so much what I do there?” I had to ask because no one other than Brax had ever cared. And even he didn’t know my true reasons.
She sat up and tucked her
slender legs beneath her. With my head propped against my palm, I stayed stretched out on my side, watching her. She reminded me of a fawn—one that would startle and take off with any sudden movement or sound, so I just…listened. “For one, it’s illegal. Where’s the integrity in that kind of lifestyle? I mean, do you plan on having a family one day? Children? Is that your legacy? I was a damn fine criminal, kids. The best around. I mean—” She now looked exasperated, as though trying to get me to see a point I’d never, ever see. Her pretty little brows bunched together again, and I found it endearing. “Does that employment come with a 401K? Medical and dental benefits?”
I couldn’t help but smile at her rant. It was a justifiable one. And I’d heard similar from Brax, just the other day.
If either of them knew why I actually did what I did, maybe they wouldn’t judge me so harshly. I rubbed my jaw, felt the unshaven stubble there that had grown back since I’d shaved earlier. “I have my reasons, Harper.”
“I see,” she said, and sat ram-rod stiff. “Well, I suppose you wouldn’t need all those benefits in prison.”
I sat up then. No, I didn’t want to go to prison. I wouldn’t, either, because as soon as I was finished at Winston, I’d hit the road and be on my way. “I’m not going to prison,” I said with a light laugh that sounded acerbic in the night air. “Ever.” I pulled one knee up, rested my forearm against it, and she watched my movements as closely as I did hers. “But your concern for my retirement and future is…touching.”
She cocked her head. “How is it you on one hand run illegal bets, but on the other secretly wish to be a police officer?”
My mind went there, due to her prodding probably. “Scumbags fill the world, Harper. Not the kind like me, who run numbers for money. I’m talking about the ones who hurt people.” I stared at her, almost willing her to see the truth without actually having to say it out loud, confess it to her. That was a first for me. “The ones who need to pay for their crimes in the worst possible way.”
