Page 25 of Harper's Song

He stops punching Manny and turns to me, the raging forest fire that are his eyes for me hot enough to singe.

“Why not?” he asks. “He hurt you.”

Manny is passed out and blood is gushing from his broken nose and his mangled mouth. He won’t be pretty anymore after tonight.

I want Jax to stop because I don’t want him to be a murderer too. It’s because I can handle the likes of Manny on my own. It’s because he doesn’t get to just fly back into my life out of nowhere when I need him the most after leaving me so coldly and so completely. It’s because I just want to hug him and hold him and never let him go.

And that’s what I do. I yank on his arm using both of mine to make his stand up, then give him the biggest hug I’ve ever given anyone. It doesn’t mean anything other than that I’ve missed him and that I so glad he’s back. That he’s here, watching over me and saving me from myself.

It doesn’t mean I forgive him.

9

Jax

My luck ran out the moment I saw Harper. I reached the festival grounds, but got stuck behind the tall chain link fence surrounding the open field where the stage and a good number of people where milling around. The fence was too high and too flimsy to climb, but I considered even that despite it being guarded by a bunch of very serious looking bouncers wearing all black. They seemed to see and hear everything. Including me. So I had to keep to the shadows of the pines as best I could while searching for Harper.

She was no longer on stage by the time I reached the site and I couldn’t see her anywhere. Not until I made my way to where a clump of people was getting off a mid-sized white boat, while another clump of people was waiting to get on it.

As far as I could tell there was no other way off the island, apart from the official ferry docking about three hundred yards away from this place.

This entrance to the festival grounds, as it were, was even more heavily guarded than the fence. And I felt very seen in my dirty prison uniform, especially since the bouncers noticed me right away and then didn’t take their eyes off me as I stood there hoping Harper would be catching the boat soon.

The boat left without her though. But I did get my glimpse when it came back. Not just a glimpse, but a clear view of her getting helped onto the boat by a tall, skinny and heavily tatted guy with a shaved head. He was also covered with so many piercings, rings, bracelets and whatnot catching the multicolored lights that he looked like a damn Christmas tree.

She didn’t seem very interested in him though, but that wasn’t much consolation for the fact that she didn’t even turn in my direction as I called her name over and over again.

“You a big fan of this Harper girl, are you?” one of the bouncers asked me suddenly.

He was accompanied by two others and they were all on my side of the fence. He was also speaking to me like I’m a deranged lunatic that needs to be put in his place. Or put down.

So many things I could’ve said. Or done. So many ways to get noticed and sent straight back to prison. Death row this time.

So I just shrugged, smiled what I think is my craziest smile and sprinted back into the cover of the pine forest. Harper’s getting off the island, so I need to get off the island too.

The water was freezing cold as I waded into it and the distance to the mainland looked impossible to swim. The lights on the dock opposite, or what I assumed must be the dock, were just tiny specks of green light. I didn’t come this far to drown now, which would’ve happened if I tried to swim the distance. And who knows what kind of fish swim in these waters.

The official ferry wasn’t an option. My face and my clothes are still covered in blood and torn from my many hikes through the forests in the last day. Someone would’ve called the cops just on the off-chance that I’m dangerous, that’s how deranged and ragged I look.

So back into the woods I went, for the third time today, this time sticking close to the shore, thinking the houses here have to have some sort of private means of transportation and assuming stealing a car and stealing a boat are much the same thing.

I know nothing about boats or driving one. Nor stealing one, as it turned out when I attempted it at the small wooden dock of the first house I reached—a large place with an all glass wall facing the sea that thankfully had no lights on. Then I made so much noise attempting to start the small speedboat, lights started turning on in those floor-to-ceiling windows.

But luck smiled at me in the form of some kind of surf board—wider and longer than normal ones—and a paddle stowed in the back of the speedboat I was trying to steal.

I fell into the water three times before I finally had the flimsy, air-filled board under me. And once I got the hang of rowing with the one-sided paddle, the thing cut through the black water like a knife through butter, the green light of the dock growing bigger and brighter by the minute.

I reached the opposite shore only moments after Harper’s boat docked and had just enough time to get out of the water and try to intercept her before she got lost among the hundreds of cars and vans of all shapes and sizes in the large field doubling as a parking lot.

My cheap, prison issued deck shoes where squelching like crazy, my clothes were sticking to me like a second skin and the salt water drying on my skin was making me itch like crazy, but at least I was fairly confident that most of the blood had washed off my face and arms, and my uniform didn’t look so much like what it actually is and more like regular clothes worn by a guy who fell into the sea.

Lucky for me, the guy with Harper was so tall and so shiny because of all the piercings in his face and ears catching every drop of light, that I could clearly see them walking thorough the rows and rows of cars.

I reached them just as they stopped only a few paces from the darkness I was standing in. I stopped too, couldn’t take my eyes off them just standing there, fearing and dreading that I was about to watch Harper kiss another man.

I was physically paralyzed, unable to decide what to do. Run up to them and making sure he never even thought about looking at her ever again? Or slink back into the shadows and watch over her from afar if this is the guy she’s chosen to move on with?

The first option was the one I was burning to take. But that wouldn’t have been fair to Harper.

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