“No,” I say. “Buckle your seatbelt.”
She does as I order without protest, and tightness twists around my sternum like it does every time she doesn’t fight something she would have before. She once told me that after what happened to her, a person would think she wouldn’t get in a car without knowing where I was taking her, but that she didn’t care. I don’t know if she’ll ever fight that way again, the way she used to.
But I’ll keep trying until it happens. I fix what I break, clean up my own messes. Especially when that mess is her, and she’s mine. I’m the only one who can fix her, and I fucking love it, even if it makes me more of a monster than anything else. I love her brokenness, want to run my fingers tenderly along every jagged edge of her shattered soul, secure in the knowledge that I’ve been here. I did this to her. I broke her, and she will never forget it.
She’ll never forget me.
I’ll always be a part of her, even when she hates me with every fragment of her decimated being. Even if she walks away, if she runs to the edge of the earth to escape me, she can’t leave me behind. I’m inside every molecule of her body. She can never truly escape me, never truly be gone. I’ll always be with her—not a piece of her of the puzzle that makes up Harper Apple, but every break, every cut. It’s all mine. She’s mine. Nothing on earth can change that, no matter how hard she fights.
Maybe she’s realized that, and that’s why she doesn’t protest. When I pull into the parking lot and find a spot, though, she turns to me, her eyes wide. “What is this?”
“It’s the airport.”
“I can see that, smartass,” she says. “Why are we here?”
“We’re going to New York,” I say.
“It’s Tuesday,” she says, blinking at me with disbelief.
“New York is open on Tuesday, too, sweetheart,” I say, smirking as I unbuckle her seatbelt.
“I didn’t bring any clothes,” she protests.
“I’ll get you some when we’re there,” I say, climbing out and looking her over. “I’m done looking at my girlfriend and seeing Preston Darling fetishizing my dead sister, anyway.”
“Girlfriend?” she asks, drawing back and crossing her arms. “I thought we agreed this was just fucking.”
“Okay,” I say slowly. “Then I’m tired of seeing the girl I’m fucking dressed up as my dead sister. I should gut the bastard just for that.”
“I’m not picking a side,” she warns. “I already told you we’re friends, and that’s not going to change. Don’t make me choose between you and him.”
“I’m not.”
“Good,” she says. “Because you already lost a sister that way.”
No one but Harper would dare say something like that to me, hit me with the truth like it’s just another fact, as if it doesn’t make me want to go to my knees like she took a battering ram to my balls.
“Fine,” I grit out. “I won’t talk shit about your other boyfriend.”
“I appreciate that,” she says lightly. “And this. But I can’t just flit off to New York on a Tuesday. I have school tomorrow. You have school. Not to mention I don’t have the money.”
I capture her hand and pull her toward the building. “Don’t worry about it. Your school allows absences for college visits, and mine is a joke.”
“You arranged for me to take off school without telling me?”
“Get used to it,” I say. “I take care of what’s mine, and you are mine. Got it?”
“I didn’t bring any money,” she protests. “I don’t have a ticket.”
“Did you not hear what I just said?”
She doesn’t say anything as we make our way inside. She starts to get in line, but I smile and shake my head. “Dolces don’t wait in line,” I say, pulling her aside. “We’re first class all the way, sweetheart.”
“Why are we going to New York?” she asks as we bypass the line for customs and step through the scanner. “Are you going to introduce me to your mom now that I’m yourgirlfriend?”
I know she’s teasing, but I just smile and shrug. “I told you,” I say. “It’s a college visit.”
“Wait, we’re really going to visit a school?” she asks, looking more excited than the old Harper would have at the prospect of meeting my mother.