There were a few of the two of them dancing together at Carly’s wedding, laughing and focused so fixedly on each other it was as if the rest of the world didn’t exist. How had she not realized her own feelings even then when the camera lens could pick them up so clearly?
Amid the photos were two folded pieces of paper Harper immediately recognized. One was a plain white sheet with an address written in blue ink that made her stomach clench just looking at it. Day 104, it read. The next was a green napkin covered in doodles and scribbles of chemical formulas and mathematical equations. She didn’t have to read the black words to know what day this was from: the night he’d taken her to that bar in Dublin and dared her to let down her guard and live a little. Where it all started.
Harper shuddered, her eyes clouding. He’d kept all of them, something from every dare, every step they’d taken together over that summer. And not just while they were dating. Half of these keepsakes were from before they’d even started to consider the possibility of having feelings for each other.
Harper looked up to find Cowboy watching her, waiting for some sort of reaction, but she had none to give. Not when everything in this box caused only more confusion than she’d already felt.
How had he known, even from day one, how much they would come to mean to each other? How powerful their feelings would eventually grow? There was no way he could have felt it back then, not when he was so against relationships from the start. But then what had led him to save these small pieces of memory so long ago?
“How—?”
Her voice caught in her throat as she heard the sound of keys jangling outside the front door. There was a click as the lock gave way just before the door swung open.
Cowboy cursed under his breath, and Harper tore her eyes away from him to focus instead on the man coming through the front door.
“Howdy,” Cole Tucker said, closing the door behind him. He took a few steps into the room, placing his hands in the pockets of his zipped up Carhartt jacket.
Cowboy stood. “You know, just because you still have a key doesn’t mean you should just barge in whenever you feel like it.”
Harper swiftly grabbed the lid and put it back over the white box. She set it aside, out of Cole’s line of sight. When she looked back up, she was met with an awkward silence. Cole’s eyes traveled between her and Cowboy.
“Am I interrupting something?”
“Actually—”
“No, it’s fine,” she jumped in. “We were just going over the landscaping plans for the B&B.” She stood, her hand going to her glasses while her eyes tried to look anywhere other than at the two men watching her fidget. They settled on the table covered in food. “Hungry?”
Cole eyed the pizza box on the corner. “Is that from Sherman’s?”
“Yep.”
His nose wrinkled. “Any chance it’s started tasting like actual pizza in the last week?”
“I don’t think either of us touched it, so maybe.”
He stared at it for a long time before finally giving in and grabbing a slice from the box. He took a bite, chewed once, twice. Swallowed. “Nope. Still tastes like greasy cardboard.” He walked over to the trash like he was going to chuck the slice, then shrugged and took another bite.
“What are you doing here, Cole?” Cowboy grumbled as Cole shrugged off his jacket and tossed it onto a chair, revealing a bright yellow shirt that read My Wife Knows Best. “And what’s with the shirt?” he asked, taking the words right out of Harper’s mouth.
He looked down at it and grinned. “Oh, right. We were getting lunch with the chief at Wade’s, and I bet Lo she couldn’t eat twenty hot wings in under a minute.”
Harper studied the shirt again. “I take it you lost.”
“Apparently the appetite of a pregnant woman in her third trimester is nothing to be trifled with.”
“You don’t look too upset about losing.”
“Are you kidding? Watching her scarf down those wings like that, I’m not sure I’ve ever been prouder to be her husband.”
“Maybe don’t tell her that,” Harper suggested.
He laughed to himself. He looked across the room at Cowboy, who was glaring daggers back at him. “We had plans to watch the Georgia game. Starts in fifteen minutes,” he finally said.
Cowboy’s hand dragged through his shaggy hair. “Shit. I forgot.”
“I gathered as much.” Cole’s eyes flitted from Cowboy to Harper and back again. “I can take off, you know, if you two still have more planning to do.”
“No, that’s okay.” She needed the escape, needed to get away from that box and the hurricane it had created inside of her. She grabbed her phone and keys from the coffee table. “I should really get going. Tell Lo I said hey.”
“Sure. See you, Harper.”
She pulled the door open, and Cowboy took a step forward. “Harper—”
“Thanks for dinner, Cowboy. I’ll see you later,” she said in a rush, quickly closing the door behind her.
DAY 104
Harper snuggled deeper into Cowboy’s arms. They were lying on the couch at his house, her head on his chest and his arms wrapped around her on what he now deemed the perfect Friday night. Cole and Lo had left town for a romantic weekend getaway and weren’t coming back until Monday morning, which meant Cowboy had the place all to himself for the weekend. And he wanted to spend every second of it he could with Harper.
Her body rose and fell above his with soft, slow breaths, her eyes half-lidded as they struggled to stay open through another episode of Leave It to Beaver. Normally, he’d be more than happy to let her fall asleep in his arms, but not until they had a very important conversation. One he’d been dreading for weeks now.
Cowboy shifted, rousing her from her drowsy state, and ran a hand through her hair. “I got you something.” He maneuvered himself out from under her body and disappeared down the hall toward his bedroom. When he came back, Harper was wide awake and sitting up on the couch. He sat next to her and handed her a thin, flat rectangle wrapped in shiny yellow paper.
Her lips curled upward. “A present?”
He shrugged, ignoring the flailing dance taking place in his stomach. “I know you’re leaving for Boston in a couple weeks, so I wanted to give you something you could take with you. It’s not much, but hopefully whenever you see it, I won’t be far from your mind.”
She bit her lip as she tore the paper, revealing a DVD copy of Blue Hawaii. Her grin grew wider.
“When we were watching it the other day, I noticed your current copy is a little worse for wear. I figured this way you could watch without it skipping halfway through.”
“I love it.” She placed a sweet, soft kiss on his lips, and then settled herself back into his arms.
He sucked in a breath, his gut only growing more jittery. “So, about what happens when you go back to school…”
She tensed in his arms, and for the millionth time he hated not knowing what she was thinking. They hadn’t talked about it yet, whether they would stay together when she left for med school or if they would do what was—arguably—the more reasonable thing and end what they had before it could get messy with distance and time. Whether he was just counting down the days until she began school or the end of everything they had become. He’d known for weeks now what he wanted, but whether she wanted it too was a different story.
“I’ve thought about it a lot,” he continued. “Boston is really far away, and a relationship with that kind of distance would be really hard.”
Harper swallowed, her smile slipping. Her shoulders started to sag as she hugged him closer.
“But…”
Her eyes shot open and she stared up at him.
“But?”
“But it wouldn’t be half as hard as being here knowing you’re a thousand miles away with some other guy.”
Harper shook her head, her mouth opening to say something, but Cowboy pressed on. “So, I want to try long distance. At least,” he t
ook a deep breath, “if that’s what you want.”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “And I really do love my gift. Thank you.”
He grinned, the Irish jig in his gut replaced by the weightlessness of a thousand helium balloons. She set the DVD case aside and kissed him again. This time it dragged out as her body curled into his. Each kiss was slow and methodical, drawing every ounce of his desire to the surface. He could feel it on his skin, buzzing in all the places her body met his. It took every bit of self-control he had to let her pull away, and when she did, he was panting.
“Damn,” he muttered under his breath.
She giggled and sat up straight. “I have something for you, too.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh.” She pulled a folded slip of paper from her back pocket and handed it to him.
Cowboy opened it and read the words written in blue ink, his forehead creasing. “You got me an address?”
“Yep.”
He chuckled. “Does it belong to anyone in particular, or is this more of a guessing game situation?”
“Alan Gardner.”
Something twisted inside him as the name registered, and he stared down at the paper in his hand. His smile disappeared, like his last few minutes of happiness never happened.
Harper pulled her legs up under her, sitting back on her feet while she faced him. “I did some digging. He moved around a couple times since he left Dublin. But mostly he stayed in south Georgia. He currently has a house in Augusta.”
Cowboy felt like he was going to be sick. “Why?”
“I don’t know. For his job maybe?”
“No.” He closed his eyes, his head shaking slowly back and forth. “I mean why did you do all this?”
“Well, because he’s your dad. Don’t you want to meet him?”
“It’s been twenty-two years. He’s probably got his own family. He won’t want anything to do with me.”
“Seeing as your mom never even told him you existed, you don’t really know that.” She reached for his hand, but he pulled it away, his brain running a mile a minute. He stood from the couch, dragging his fingers through his hair as he started pacing the living room floor.
“You said you spent your whole life trying to connect with the man you thought was your father. And now you’ve got one alive and only an hour-and-a-half’s drive away.”
“Maybe I don’t want to know this guy,” he said, voice rising. “I’ve made it this far without a dad, why did you think I’d need one now?”
Harper flinched, and her hand shot up to adjust her glasses. “I—I thought you’d be excited to get to meet him.”
He stopped in the middle of the floor, glaring as he yelled through a tight jaw, “Do I look excited, Harper?”
“You have no idea how lucky you are. To get a second chance. To find out you have a father you can get to know.”
“Or maybe you’re the lucky one because your parents are dead and they can’t come back and disappoint you!”
Her mouth fell open, and her gaze flitted from one spot of carpet to another. Cowboy felt like he’d been rammed in the gut by a bulldozer. He’d been caught off guard by the mention of his birth father and felt like driving his fist through a wall or downing a twelve-pack. But none of that compared to the knowledge that he’d hurt her.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” He sighed, walked over, and sat on the coffee table across from her. He took her hand gently in his. “You’ve gotta understand. All my mom has ever done is lie and cheat. Who’s to say this guy is any better?”
Harper stared into his eyes, reading him like a book he’d spent years trying to keep closed. “You’re a coward.”
He pulled his hand away sharply. “What?”
“You go on and on about giving up control and getting out of my comfort zone, preaching to me about being fearless. And you’re just as scared as the rest of us.”
“Harper—”
She stood, grabbing her keys and phone, and hurried to the door. “Maybe for once, you should be the one to take the risk and do what scares you.”
She pulled the door open, glanced back over her shoulder, and muttered three words before slamming the front door between them.
“I dare you.”
Chapter Twenty
Harper scavenged through her bag a third time with no luck.
“Sadie,” she called up the stairs, “do you know where my keys are?” She heard a muffled “no” from her sister’s room where Sadie was currently studying for a history test.
Harper set the bag aside and started searching the small table by the door, not for the first time. She’d already been searching the house for her keys for the last ten minutes and was now officially late to meet Logan.
That morning, Harper had been enjoying some of Sadie’s delicious homemade cinnamon rolls and discussing décor for the B&B before her younger sister left for school when Sadie suggested adorning the walls with works by some of the local artists. Harper had been all for it, and when she relayed the idea to Logan, the hormonal, pregnant woman was so thrilled she immediately started crying and told Harper to come by the gallery around five to see what she liked.
Now, at five after, Harper was still searching for her stupid keys.
“Dadgummit,” she muttered to herself. Harper looked around the room, scanning for any other places her keys could be hiding. Her eyes landed on Sadie’s massive, plum, leather purse by the door.
She grabbed the bag and started rooting through every pocket. The chances of finding here keys within were low, but Harper was running out of options. Her hand sifted through the contents of the bag, ignoring the wallet and makeup and five tubes of ChapStick—among other things. She checked the interior side pocket in a desperate yet vain hope that maybe her keys had gotten lost in there. She peered inside and froze when her eyes landed on a small collection of foil squares.
Harper held her breath as she reached for one of the packets, her heart racing the second her suspicions were confirmed. Without thinking, she darted up the stairs and threw Sadie’s bedroom door open, too frantic to bother knocking.
Sadie was sitting on her bed with her cell phone to her ear, staring down at the textbook laying open in front of her.
“I said I don’t know where your keys are,” she said without looking up.
“What is this?”
Sadie’s head snapped up at the sound of Harper’s voice sliding through gritted teeth. Her eyes widened when they landed on the unopened condom she held up between them.
“Uh, Margot, I’m going to have to call you back.” Sadie hastily ended the call and looked up at Harper. “Where’d you get that?”
Harper ignored her question, her mind too busy racing with a dozen or so of her own. “You’re having sex?”
“I’m not.”
“Then what is this?”
Sadie shrugged, her eyes floating around the room as they landed on anything but Harper’s. “It’s just a precaution.”
“A precaution? Why do you need a precaution? You don’t even have a boyfriend.”
“So?”
“So?” Harper cried out. “Sadie, your first time is supposed to be special.”
She rolled her eyes, closing the history book in front of her. “Yeah, that’s what they all say. But what they don’t tell you is that, for most people, the first time sucks no matter how special you try to make it. So, I figure I might as well just get it out of the way.”
“Out of the way?” Harper couldn’t seem to stop repeating her.
“Yeah. That way when it does mean something, it’ll be more…enjoyable.”
“So, what? You’re going to have sex your first time with someone random like Brett Woods?”
“I don’t know, maybe. It’s not as big a deal as you’re making it.”
Harper crossed her arms over her chest, frustration flooding every inch of her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were thinking about sex? You should have come talk to me.”
“Look, no offense, but you’re not exactly the person I’d want to get sex advice from.”
“What? Why not?”
Sadie got up from her spot on the bed and stood directly in front of Harper, her own arms crossing defensively in front of her. “You’re a virgin. You don’t even know what you’re talking about when it comes to this kind of stuff.”
Harper’s hands fell to her sides. She stared silently at her sister for several seconds, a part of her desperate to correct her, to open up to her and finally tell her the truth about what happened between her and Cowboy. The truth about why she left Willow Creek. But the tearing sensation in her chest told her she wasn’t ready. Instead, she sucked in a deep, calming breath.
“I just don’t think you should take such a big step—and it is a big step—with someone you don’t really care about and who doesn’t really care about you.”
Sadie shook her head. “Well, it’s a good thing for both of us then that my sex life isn’t actually your concern.”
Harper’s mouth fell open. “Not my—your entire life is my concern!”
Sadie turned away from her, grabbing the history book and her open backpack from her bed. She shoved the book in.
“I dropped out of med school to come take care of you. I came back here and took legal responsibility of you, and I was willing to sell the one place we’ve called our home for the past thirteen years just so we could somehow get enough money for you to get to go to college when you graduate! And what do I get? Attitude. Lies. And now this. I have done everything I can to make this work, and you won’t throw me a single freaking bone! What else do I have to do, Sadie?”
“You could keep going on and on about how you had a life and friends and everything else you wanted before I dragged you back. That always seems to help,” she snarled.
“I never said that.”
“You don’t have to! You didn’t come home once for three years. You know what that tells me? That you don’t want to be here, and the only reason you came back was because I couldn’t be on my own. Your life is ruined because of me.” Sadie wiped at her cheek where tears had started falling. She grabbed her bag and rushed over to the desk, shoving notebooks and textbooks and whatever else into it. Then she ran into her bathroom, frantically ripping drawers open and slamming them closed.
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