Page 79 of Plum

They both have bottles of champagne. Eric presses his into my palm. “Here, bro. An olive branch. I seriously didn’t think you were going to punch that guy out. I thought maybe you’d have some words with the girl. A little drama. You can’t blame me, man. These things are boring as shit.”

He’s babbling like he tends to do when drunk. He was the one who came and told me Jo-Beth hadn’t left, that she was talking to a man by the bar. I knew he was stirring shit at the time, but I didn’t think. I never have when it comes to Jo-Beth. I’d already been standing, ready to go after her.

On my other side, Harper Ruth hiccups, very delicately and ladylike. “You really fucked that up, didn’t you?” She crosses her legs and takes a swig from her own bottle.

“Where’s cousin Des?” I ask.

“The men’s room? Wandering around, looking for me, after using the men’s room? Whatever.” She gesticulates by swinging the bottle wide, and I duck.

“Did you have anything to do with Jo-Beth coming here tonight?” It didn’t make sense, the dress, how she got in. Not until this moment.

“Yeah. Did you like that? Surprise!” Harper chuckles to herself. I haven’t had many conversations with her, but I’m struck again by the sense that she’s the female equivalent of a fast car whose brakes have failed.

“Was it your idea?”

“Hard to say, in retrospect. And drunk. I’m drunk.”

“So I gathered.”

“She wantedclosure.” Harper overenunciates the word. “She wanted to know why you dropped her like a hot potato. Well, she knew. ‘Cause she’s Jo-Beth Connolly, club pussy, that’s why. But she wanted toknowknow. You know?”

I pry the bottle from her hand and return Eric’s. “Thanks, man.”

I polish off Harper’s bottle in two gulps. There wasn’t much left. “You don’t know anything.”

“Oh, I know some things. I’m a fly on the Wade family wall. I know you’ve been cleaning up after this fuck up your entire life.” She reaches behind me to slap Eric upside the head. He grumbles and jerks away. “I know all the Wades are shitting themselves about what happens to the family fortune when the goose who lays the golden egg decides to take his chances in New York or Silicon Valley.”

She giggles and shoves her hands in the pockets of Eric’s jacket. “You know what I know that you don’t?”

I grit my teeth, wishing this fucking night was over. “What, Harper?”

“I know what it’s like to be a whore. But what am I saying? You know what that’s like, too, don’t you? They own you,” she croons. “Do you even know what you actually want?”

Jo-Beth. In a purple dress. In a purple sweat suit. Curled up on a saggy sofa. Sorting through apples at the grocery store with the seriousness of Job.

Peeking at me from the corner of her eye. Making me feel big and certain and worth something without having to do a damn thing but tease her and hold her and sit by her side.

I want Jo-Beth with the look on her face when she first saw me across the ballroom. Vulnerable, scared, defiant.

Oh, fuck. She came to me. In all this, it’s the first time it registers.She came to me. Hands shaking, goosebumps down her arms, hands fisting the skirt of her gown. And I wanted words? Reassurance?

The bottom drops from my chest. Oh, God. I fucked up.

Harper pats my arm. “They own me, too,” she confides in a whisper. “You want to know something else? About Jo-Beth Connolly?”

Yes. I want to know everything about her. She’s it for me, and I’ve been so hung up on all the complications, I forgot the big picture. I want her more than anything I ever have before.And she came for me. I exhale, leaning my elbows on my knees, and I hang my head.

Harper goes on, oblivious to my agitation. “This guy Creech dropped her off on our doorstep when she was sixteen. She was twenty pounds underweight, and she had, like, a pair of jeans and a T-shirt to her name. Her foster father had been diddling her, and that’d gone south.”

My gut churns, and my brain connects the pieces. The startling in the middle of the night. The fading out. I didn’t want to know. I never asked. Guilt stabs at my chest, constricts my throat. I need to do something, fight someone, but there’s nothing coming at me but words. I want to rip my own skin off, but I force myself to focus on Harper’s words.

“Heavy, that’s my brother, put her under his protection. He kept the brothers away from her until she was legal. She’d been tricking on the side all along, but it didn’t matter. Heavy’s got principles, you know? Very inconvenient sometimes.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m getting to it. Patience, friend.” She pats my thigh. “Anyway. Heavy has a soft spot for Jo-Beth. She’s smart. She’d play his games with him for hours. Fucking board games. I’d blow my brains out.”

A warmth seeps through the ugliness in my chest. It’s a picture. Teenage Jo-Beth playing board games with the grizzled president of the Steel Bones MC. I know the man by sight. He’s a giant—long, wild black hair and beard. Like a creature from a fantasy novel.

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