Page 55 of Harper's Song

It could be nothing, the part of my mind that always wants everything to be calm, even and pleasant is saying in my mother’s voice.

But as much as I want that to be true, I can’t pretend it could possibly be.

This man has been trailing me since I started my tour, possibly since I left home. Even if he has nothing to do with the threat Jax and Scar both think I’m under, he’s still a threat.

Shopping will have to wait. My social media will have to wait. I just wish I didn’t have to wait to speak to my dad.

I text him the name of this town and the name of the company we rented the cabin from. Then add,I think someone’s after me… call me!

Then I make a U-turn at the town’s largest yet ghost-empty intersection and head back to the cabin, driving even faster than I did on the way here. The man in black isn’t following me and he’s not where I left him at the abandoned junk yard.

The road in the rearview mirror is completely empty. The road ahead of me is clear too and I’m starting to imagine the junk yard scene never happened.

But that’s just wishful thinking and a completely useless fantasy.

All will be fine once I reach Jax. He’ll know what to do. I wish I’d thought to take my gun with me when I ran away with him. But I didn’t.

He’s pretty handy with the axe though and there are plenty of knives at the cabin. We’ll be fine. He’ll protect me.

* * *

Jax

Well, she’s gone.

I’ve been splitting logs since she drove off about an hour ago and the pile is already up to my knees. We won’t need that many, we probably won’t need a single one anymore. Because we’re leaving. And anything can happen once we do.

I have no doubt that Scar wants me out of her life even more now than he did before.

I have no doubt that Devil’s Nightmare MC will soonernottake me back than take me back.

And Idon’tdoubt that Scar will tell Harper whatever she needs to hear to bring her home. Whether it’s the truth or not.

I’m not scared of that.

I just don’t want our stay here to end.

But it must end. One way or another it will. So it might as well be with her trying to fix everything I fucked up.

The muscles in my arm are starting to cramp up, sweat is running down my back almost as steadily as that waterfall behind me, and every time I strike another log, the pain in my shoulder gets sharper. All the perfectness of the last nine days that we spent here is flaking away like dried mud, and I’m now sure that I can hear snakes hissing in the soft river grass where we made love just yesterday afternoon.

I’m trying as hard as I can not to remember the nights my mother’s twisted husband would have me splitting logs until I collapsed, in the cold and dark, guarded by his blood-thirsty dogs that he also made me sleep with sometimes. My mother could’ve spared me all of that, but she didn’t even try more than once or twice. I kept myself sane by thinking of all the ways I could drive that axe through the bastard’s skull or use it to chop him up into little pieces. And in the end, I probably held on to my sanity by walking away rather than going through with my plans.

By rights I should hate everything about splitting logs. But it’s easy to forget all that when Harper’s with me. Damn hard when she’s not. And impossible when she could be out there spelling an end for us.

The rumble of thunder sounds from far away, the echo off the mountains and the trees bringing it closer and closer. Fitting that the weather should decide to turn nasty today. I wait for more of it to sound, wait for the lighting and the rain to start, but none of that happens. All I hear is the waterfall hissing, birds singing in the trees and the thuds as I start splitting wood again.

And for a time, I manage to focus on just those sounds and think of nothing else.

Until the unmistakable sound of boots trudging through grass and men coughing as they struggle to breathe reaches me too.

They are too loud to be just a couple of hikers who lost his way. My first thought is that the Devils had somehow tracked us down. But when I turn to look at the twenty of so bikers approaching the cabin in a loose circle with the aim of surrounding the cabin, I recognize none of them.

Then they get closer and one of them grins.

“You thought you’d just double cross us, did you?” Snake asks. “You thought we wouldn’t find you?”

Suddenly the fact that Harper went alone to call her father is the best thing that’s happened to me in my entire life, because it means she’s not here for this.

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