Page 34 of Harper's Song

“What’s wrong?” I ask as I turn on the light, because the image of her as motionless grey stone twists my stomach into all sorts of painful knots.

It’s her phone, not her hands that she’s staring at. And her eyes as they meet mine make me think there’s a ghost in here with us.

“You killed a guard to escape from prison,” she says in a hoarse monotone voice.

“Not me, I had no idea that was going to happen,” I say and leap out of bed to go to her. But she turns her face away from me as I try to touch her face.

“I just spoke to my father,” she says. “I told him you’re not here with me. I lied to him and told him I haven’t heard from you. And I don’t know why I did that.”

Because you want to be with me and deep down you know he’ll never approve of us.

But I don’t say that.

“He says you escaped with the two Horned Riders,” she adds.

“I did.” And that’s all I can say.

“You have to go back,” she says.

She’s already dressed in a pair of jeans and a leather jacket zipped up to the throat as though we’re in the middle of winter and not the beginning of summer. I feel like I’m in a freezing winter too. It’s in her eyes and what she said.

“I can’t. I’ll never get out again if I do.”

The winter in her eyes intensifies, becomes wind lashing against my chest.

“One year, Jax,” she says and at least now her eyes are full of fire again. “One year and you’d have been a free man. You could’ve come to me then and we’d… we could’ve been together then. Or tried to be. But this? Now? How can we? What were you thinking?”

I walk to the bathroom to pick up the sweatpants I left there, because she’s not gonna let me touch her anyway and the iciness that erupted as she laid out all the facts of our current situation is too much to bear.

“I was going to finish the two Riders,” I say, wondering how much she even knows about all that. But it’s Harper. She always knows everything whether anyone tells her or not.

She shudders and the iciness grows a couple of degrees cooler, which I didn’t even think was possible.

“But all the damn Renegade Knights decided to escape too,” I add. “They killed the guard. And they want to hurt you. They wanted to use me to get to you. Wanted me to lure you into their trap. If I hadn’t gone with them, they’d have done it without me.”

Her eyes are two huge round balls of fire and she’s not currently breathing. She could very well still tell me to take a hike and I need her to know this. I need her father to know it, because I’m sure I’ll never get close enough to him to tell him myself. Not if the Devils think I’m working with the Riders.

“So you see, I can’t go back,” I say and try to grin but I’m sure it looks far from happy. “I have to make sure they never get close to you.”

She finally lets out the breath she’s been holding.

“What do the Renegades want with me?” she says, but then she clamps her hand over her mouth. “Is it to do with my mother?”

“I think so, yeah,” I say. “I think you should call your father back.”

She shakes her head. “He’ll want me to go back home.”

“Maybe that’s for the best,” I say. “At least until—”

“What? They kill all the Renegades too?” she snaps. “I won’t be responsible for that kind of bloodshed. Not ever, not for any reason.”

Her hands are shaking and her breath is hitching in her throat.

“That scum doesn’t deserve your pity,” I say, fully aware that I’m talking about my father here too, but what did that bastard ever really do for me? Not as much as Harper did. Or the Devils come to think of it.

She realizes her hands are shaking so she sticks them into the pockets of her jacket.

“How do I even know what’s real and what’s not?”

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