Page 76 of Score to Settle
Pain carves through my chest as I scan the pages of Harper’s notebook and see the words she’s written about me. Her true feelings. What the hell is this?
“I can explain.” Harper’s voice rings out on the empty street.
I lift my gaze. Hurt and confusion battle for space in my head. Her face is pale, eyes wide with what looks like fear. Instinctively, I want to go to her, but I’m rooted to this one spot. I know we got off on the wrong foot. Hell, Harper wasn’t exactly my favorite person to start with either, but the hate in these words takes my breath away. It’s so much more than two people who didn’t want to spend time together.
“Go on then,” I say, my voice tight. “Because it’s not just this I’m confused about. Why don’t you start with why you lied to me about Scott? Why didn’t you tell me he’s both your college ex and the editor in New York who harassed you?”
Harper swallows, her hands trembling slightly at her sides. “It’s not exactly something I like to talk about. Scott was my editor, but before that he was my boyfriend, and on top of that he’s close with my dad. It made things complicated. When he told HR that I’d come on to him, he made this big point about how we’d dated in college, like it was evidence I would dosomething like that. I was humiliated and angry and hurt. I knew what people thought of me atInsight. They saw me as someone trying to sleep my way to a promotion. By the time I felt like I could trust you enough to open up about this stuff, we were already… growing close. I didn’t want you to think I was sleeping with you to get the feature or a promotion…” She trails off, but I see where she’s going and it cuts me to the bone.
I scrub a hand over my face. “You thought because Scott made up some bullshit about you, I wouldn’t be able to see past that when it came to us?”
When my reputation blew up last year and I went from playboy to sleaze, it cost me. I’ve had to live with the knowledge that maybe I’m the reason Dylan got injured and might never play professional football again. I’ve had to live with people thinking and talking shit about me. The comments whispered behind my back. The disappointment in Mama’s eyes when she sees a lurid bullshit headline about me. I’ve had to live with the grillings from Coach Allen and the Stormhawks management. The warnings to clean up my act or I’d be cut from the team. No one gave a damn the stories weren’t true. But no matter how much I hate it all, it’s nothing compared to how much it hurts Harper could think for one second that I’d side with a prick like Scott.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “It was before I got to know you properly.”
I shake my head, the muscles in my jaw tightening. “Maybe that’s true, but you didn’t tell me after you got to know me either, did you?” I tap the notebook. “You’ll never trust me. You never have.”
“That’s not true. I—” She breaks off, shaking her head. “You weren’t supposed to see that, Jake. Those were my private thoughts.”
“Meaning your true feelings about me? What the hell is all this? There arepagesof notes about how much you hate me. How writing this feature will be my downfall. ‘A chance for the world to see the Jake I know him to be,’” he reads. “What did I ever do to you?”
“Look, it was a stupid thing and it doesn’t even matter now.” She draws in a long breath. “Back in high school… I wrote this article about you. I wasn’t ever going to publish it in the school newspaper, but I poured my feelings for you into it, and I wanted you to read it before you left for college. So I slipped it into your locker.” Her words come fast. “You were the only one I gave it to, so when copies of it were plastered all over school, I thought you’d done it as a joke to humiliate the person who wrote it.”
“It was anonymous,” I say quietly.
“Yeah, but seeing the whole school laughing at my feelings when I was already a lonely and shy kid still hurt. Then I overheard you tell your friends—” She shakes her head. “It doesn’t even matter now. Yes, at first I saw this feature as a chance to get even. But only because I thought you were a player. I thought reporting the truth would be reporting that. I was wrong. If you read?—”
“For the record,” I cut in, raking a hand through my hair in frustration, “I didn’t make those copies. One of my idiot friends snatched your article out of my locker before I got a chance to see it, and as I’ve already told you, I know I was an idiot back in high school too. My friends were ripping into me about the article. What did you think I was going to tell them?”
“I know that now. It was easier to blame you for my insecurities and all the things that weren’t going well in my life after high school than it was to admit I needed to change.”
Tears pool in Harper’s eyes and I find I have to clench my hands by my side to stop myself reaching for her. Even now,when I’m hurting this bad, when I’m so fucking pissed, I still want to protect her.
She takes a shaky breath. “This isn’t an excuse, but you have to admit, you weren’t exactly welcoming at the start. You hated me from the moment I set foot on the ranch. Of course I thought you were still that same boy from high school. But then I got to know you and I saw you weren’t like that. I realized I was the idiot for holding on to a high school grudge. I changed my mind, Jake.Youchanged my mind. Look at the rest of the notebook. Look at what else I’ve said about you.”
“I think I’ve read enough.” I take a step back, needing distance.
“Please, Jake,” she cries. “Look at the rest of the notebook. The feature is going to be the truth. It’s going to be about the man who I thought was nothing more than his reputation, but in getting to know him, I found not only was I wrong, but that you are someone who cares about others, who is kind and generous and everything this world needs in a human. You have to trust me.”
We stand in silence. I want to believe Harper, but how can I trust what she’s saying after she’s lied to me? All I can hear is the betrayal roaring in my ears. Those words from her notebook spinning in my head.
Jake is a dick.
Jake hasn’t changed at all.
Jake deserves what’s coming to him.
I’ve never let anyone in. I’ve never wanted to. But for the first time in my life, I actually give a damn what someone thinks about me. And this is what I get. My heart feels like it’s tearing down the middle. I swore I’d never let myself feel hurt like this again after my dad.
I take another step back. “You want me to trust you when you’ve been lying to me this entire time? Trust you like you trust me, you mean?”
I drop the notebook back to the ground and stride to my truck. Harper calls out and I falter, because a part of me wants to go back and hear her out—believe what she’s saying. But another, larger part of me wants to be as far away from this street, from Harper, and this hurt as I can get.
THIRTY-EIGHT
HARPER
“And you haven’t spoken since?” Mia asks the next day as she drops onto the couch beside me after I finish telling her what happened with Jake. She only arrived home from her visit to Edward’s family ten minutes ago and hasn’t even taken her jacket off yet.
