The Strongest Steel (34 page)

Maybe.
Of all the dumb fucking things to say. The moment the word had tumbled angrily out of his mouth, he’d wished he could scoop it up and put it back again. Of course she’d told him everything. He
knew
she had.

“Sir?”

“What?” he yelled as he turned. The maître d’ from the hotel was standing behind him, cowering, holding the bill for the meal.

Trent quickly went inside, paid, and got a napkin filled with ice for his knuckles. Flagging down a taxi, he headed to her condo while calling her phone. It went straight to voice mail, a sure sign that she’d turned it off.

He’d thought through every possible outcome. She’d be crazy excited. Maybe mad because he hadn’t told her, but the good would outweigh the bad. Never had he considered that she’d dump him on the side of the road for finally becoming someone. He could give her everything Yasmin had accused him of not being able to provide, and yet it had somehow ended up not being enough.

Part of him wondered whether he should have pushed her like that. But it was killing him to see her settling into a life of low expectations.

Jumping out of the cab, he ran up the path to her building and let himself in. To think they had only exchanged keys days ago.

“Harper … Harp, you back here?”

He slammed on lights as he went from room to room, calling out her name.

Think. Think. She wouldn’t have gone back to his place. That he knew for sure.

Drea. He looked down at his watch. It was past eleven, so José’s would definitely be closed by now. Shit, he didn’t even know where Drea lived, but he had her cell phone number from when he’d organized the party.

He cradled the phone under his ear as he paced the length of the living room so he could check out his knuckles. Removing the napkin ice pack, he flexed them slowly.

What good was a tattoo artist with broken fingers? And what kind of impression would it create for the TV show? Fuck.

“Hey, this is Drea. Sorry I can’t take your call…” Where the hell was she?

He redialed and got the exact same thing. She was his only chance of finding Harper. He dialed a third time.

“What the hell did you do?”

Trent breathed a sigh of relief. Harper must be with her if she already knew.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t know what the fuck just happened, but I need to talk to her. I need to apologize. Where is she?” Christ, he needed some pain relief for his hand. He walked to the kitchen and started to look through her drawers to find something he could take.

“She doesn’t want to see you.” His heart felt like it was being crushed like a car in a wrecking yard.

“Please, Drea. I need to see her. I gotta set this right. There’s still so much we need to talk about.”

“The best thing you can do is give her some time. She’s not decided if she’s heartbroken or furious. Give her some space. I’ll tell her you called.”

“Wait. Where do you live? I’ll come over.” He was desperate.

“I’m sorry, Trent. Good night.”

Dropping his phone onto the counter, he leaned forward, rested his forearms on the cool surface, and dropped his head.

It had somehow gone from the best night of his life to the worst, and he had no idea how to recover it. The sick, sick feeling in his stomach matched the throbbing of his fingers.

He pulled open another drawer to look for some painkillers, and he found a white binder. He opened it and saw the cover letter was from a lawyer in Chicago. The case was noted as
Kennedy v. Bell.
It must be the file she’d mentioned that contained all the trial information.

“Photographic evidence submitted by the Plaintiff,” it began.

Eight hours later he stood at the airport, feeling like his insides had gone through a blender. With Cujo’s help, he’d exhausted every avenue to find Drea. They had gone to José’s to see if either of them had shown up for work, but he guessed Drea had already asked José not to say anything. Not knowing Drea’s last name, they’d been unable to track her down, and she hadn’t responded to Trent’s texts.

He had a contractual obligation to get on this fucking airplane, but the last thing he felt like doing was leaving Harper with their relationship messed up like this. He’d asked Cujo to keep an eye out for her and felt better knowing she was staying at Drea’s.

As always when it came to Harper, his emotions were complicated. He was pissed as all hell. His heart had been ripped out of his chest. His stomach felt like he was going through turbulence—especially when he thought about what he’d seen in that file.

The evidence. His worst imaginings hadn’t lived up to seeing her injuries in glorious Technicolor. He got it now. In a way he hadn’t been able to from just her descriptions. The photographs, in their rawest form taken just after the attacks, had brought home just how gut-wrenchingly awful it had been for Harper.

He pulled out his phone one last time, but instead of calling her, he opened his photos and scrolled to the picture he’d taken of her the night they’d “moved in” to each other’s homes. They’d made love in his bed, and she was lying on her front with the white sheet pulled low down her back. Her dark hair lay curled around her shoulders, and she had a soft, all-knowing smile on her lips. Her eyes sparkled as she looked toward the camera and was just about to tell him off for taking her picture.

But it was there in the way she was looking at him. The way she’d just loved him slowly, her eyes wide open, pupils dilating as they had moved together. She loved him just as much as he loved her. And she was going to walk away from it before he told her.

The gate attendant made the last call for the flight. He realized she wasn’t going to call him today. And wasn’t that a fucking ass-kicker?

He boarded the plane, trying to avoid looking at the empty seat next to him, pulled out his phone, and attached the photograph.

You said you wouldn’t run, Harper. Don’t bail on us yet.

*   *   *

Day one, post Trent, had been a write-off. Drea had run interference with Trent and had let José know the barest bones. Harper had spent it in bed with several industrial-sized boxes of tissues.

Not even bowls of chicken noodle soup had tempted her to eat.

Day two had contained minor progress, in the form of a shower and clean pajamas. But the tears still hadn’t stopped, and the pain was a constant pounding in her chest. Words echoed around in her mind.
Half-life. Settling. Status quo. All in.
It hurt to acknowledge it, but there was something to Trent’s words that resonated every time she repeated them.

Day three Harper had finally made it downstairs and turned on her phone, but only because Drea had accused her of being like the girl in those vampire novels who spent six miserable months sitting at her window waiting for her love to return. It had made her smile briefly until she saw the eighteen missed calls and eight messages. A quick scan showed they were mostly from Trent. Her heart broke all over again as she forced herself to listen to them, only managing to get through the first four before collapsing on the floor of Drea’s kitchen in tears.

The alarm clock in Drea’s guest bedroom went off, signaling the start of day four post Trent. Tears weren’t quite as close to the surface, and Harper decided that today was as good as any to try to get back into some semblance of a normal routine.

The coffee shop was still the same. It was a very bizarre feeling, the rest of the world being exactly as you left it while everything in your own life felt like a grenade had exploded in it.

José was cautious around her. Her friends said hi and hoped she was feeling better, but Harper felt like an imposter. Customers wanted their food and drinks, and Harper served them on autopilot.

By late afternoon, Harper was starting to get her head in gear again. A three-day emotional purge had left her with an incredible hangover, but the fog was lifting slowly. Tiredness threatened to consume her, but Harper couldn’t stomach the idea of leaving to go home.

Thankfully she was supposed to head over to Celine’s house to work with Milo, an appointment she really wanted to keep.

“Can I get a large Colombian to go?” Harper turned suddenly from steaming the milk and came face-to-face with Cujo. “How you doing? You look like shit, Harper.” He smiled at her softly.

There was kindness in his eyes. “Thanks. I’ve been better.”

“Can you get a coffee and come talk with me for a bit?” He didn’t look angry, but looks could be deceiving. She looked around him and then outside.

“Nah. He’s not with me, Harp. He’s in LA. Had no choice, his contract meant he had to.”

“Hey, Harper, this guy bothering you?” José came up alongside of her and drew himself up to his full height, which was still no match for Cujo’s.

Harper was overwhelmed with the support she felt resonating from him.

“He just wants to talk with me. Is it okay if I take a quick break?”

“Sure thing. Here, take this. I can make another one.” He handed her a blended coffee.

Sitting down at a small table in the sunshine, Cujo ran his hand over the top of his head, which was bizarrely showing downy sprits of blond hair. They sat silently for several minutes.

“He’s out of his mind with worry, you know.” Cujo plucked the lid off his coffee and blew the surface to cool it down. “He needs to know you’re safe.”

Harper took a sip of the blended iced drink, but it sat like concrete on her tongue, bland and flavorless.

“Why are you here, Cujo?”

“Well, at first I was going to give you a lecture on why you shouldn’t have run out on him, but looking at you, I see you already know that. Then I was going to ask you if you could forgive him for being a fucking idiot.” He looked over the rim of his cup as he took a drink.

“Is he okay?” She needed to know.

“Stupid question, Harp. He’s as okay as you are.”

So not okay then.

“All I’m gonna say is that … look … I know you’ve been through some crazy shit. I can’t even begin to think of all the ways that would normally fuck a human being up. But the difference between you on the first day I saw you in the studio and you the night of your party, before all this shit went down, is night and day. Same for him. You’re made for each other. You’re better people because of each other. It really bothers me that you’re going to fuck up the best thing that could have happened to the two of you.”

Shit. Tears again. Harper swiped underneath her eye to hold them off and took a good long draw of her drink, hoping the pain of ice on the roof of her mouth would take her mind off the hurt.

“When did you get all sensitive on me, Cujo?”

“Aww, Harp. I’m sorry. I don’t want to make you cry, but you’ve got to know he loves you. And because he loves you, he’ll look out for you and protect you. Shit, he’d go to the wall for you. You need to let him.”

“It’s more complicated than that.” She studied her drink, watching the white cream melt into the blended coffee.

“No, it’s not. You love him. You told me. It’s incredibly simple.”

He rubbed his hand back and forth over the blond bristles before standing. Bending down, he kissed the top of her head.

“I’m gonna call him and tell him I found you and that you look like shit. He’ll come home tomorrow if he can’t get on a flight tonight. Think about what you’re going to say to him.”

Harper reached for her drink and watched him cross the street.

“Nice ride, man!” he called out to a biker with a silver helmet sitting on a huge black beast of a bike.

The helmet bobbed in her direction before the engine revved at deafening levels, speeding out onto the street.

The ping of her phone got Harper’s attention. She grabbed it, hoping to see Trent’s name.

Enjoy the rest of your drink, Taylor.

Chapter Twenty-four

Reid. Harper put the photograph back on her kitchen counter. Sighing, she took a sip of her tea, her hands wrapped around both sides of the mug. Where was he? In spite of everything, she missed him. Missed the boy who had taken down Clinton Baines because he’d put wet grass down the back of her dress. Who’d taken the fall when Harper’s poorly timed throw had smashed the bathroom window.

He had chosen Nathan over her, and it still didn’t really make sense why. They’d been so very close until the attack. It was perhaps the most heartbreaking part of the whole mess.

For the first time in years, she had somehow forged an unlikely group of friends. Drea was her rock. Trent’s friends had embraced her as theirs. They knew something horrible had happened but didn’t let that stand in their way of being there for her. Cujo treated her like a sister, reminding her of Reid in the way he teased her. Lia and Pixie sought her advice, took her to their favorite stores, and helped throw that birthday party for her.

And then there was Trent, who had somehow managed to sneak in past every defense and had taken her heart from her. No one else could make her vibrate with need from a single touch. He had the ability to soothe even her roughest edges. He’d encouraged her to trust him over and over. And although he hadn’t told her, if she read the signs right, he loved her as much as she loved him.

So what else was there? Sure, she didn’t want him hurt by Nathan, but Trent was a big boy who could take care of himself. Didn’t it say something about him and his character that he wanted to take care of her?

She didn’t want him to pass up the tremendous opportunity he’d been given for the show. She hadn’t absorbed the details when he had told her. Had she even told him that she was proud of him before leaving him shell-shocked in the restaurant?

She glanced up at the extra dead bolt she’d had Eddie install yesterday after Detective Lopes had left her apartment. He was focusing on community CCTV camera footage for someone texting from a phone the police had already confirmed as registered in Idaho. He’d also handed her back her laptop, scrubbed clean of the spyware that had been monitoring her computer activity.

A call to Lydia had confirmed Nathan’s passport was still being held and that he had made his early evening appointment with his probation officer the day before the text. Lydia’s computer was still with an IT specialist, being checked.