Chapter 30 Chapter 29
Harper POV
The sun shouldn’t look this bright after a night like that.
It hits my room in streaks of gold, cutting across my face, warm and cruel all at once.
I blink, slow, disoriented.
My phone’s still beside me, tangled in the sheets — a mess of half-read messages glowing faintly through the cracked screen protector.
I’ve read all of them but one.
His last one.
That unread bubble sits at the bottom like a heartbeat I’m too afraid to touch.
Because I know what it probably says.
Something simple. Something that will wreck me anyway.
I roll over, pressing my face into the pillow, trying to hide from the memories looping like bad film reels.
His hands.
His mouth.
The sound of his breath when he said my name like it meant something.
It’s pathetic — how easily one kiss could undo all the years I’ve spent building myself into someone new.
I groan, drag myself upright, and immediately regret it. The floor’s cold, the room’s spinning, and my stomach twists like it’s still trying to process everything that happened.
The universe doesn’t pause for heartbreak.
It just keeps turning, indifferent.
I pull on a sweatshirt and knot my hair into a messy bun before heading downstairs. The sorority house is already alive — coffee brewing, music humming from someone’s speaker, laughter echoing from the kitchen.
It’s normal.
Too normal.
But the second I step in, the room goes a little too quiet.
Three girls are sitting at the counter — juniors from my committee — mid-bagel and mid-gossip, until they see me. Then it’s like someone hit mute.
“Morning,” I say, because pretending is easier than asking.
They all mumble it back, awkward smiles flickering before they suddenly remember their breakfast again.
I don’t blame them. They saw. Everyone did.
Lila told me later that half the house caught the tail end of it — me storming up the steps, Logan Shaw showing up ten minutes later, the argument on the porch that turned into a kiss no one was supposed to see.
I grab a mug from the cabinet, fill it with coffee, and head straight back upstairs before anyone can decide to ask questions I’m not ready to answer.
⸻
My room feels safer — smaller, contained. The faint vanilla scent of candles lingers in the air.
I sink onto my bed and stare up at the glow-in-the-dark stars scattered across the ceiling — left behind by a past Alpha Chi president years before I ever knew this house existed.
They remind me I didn’t come here perfect.
I wasn’t born confident or poised or sorority-president material.
Freshman year, I showed up to this house with trembling hands and a suitcase full of nerves, half convinced someone would laugh, realize I didn’t belong, and send me back home.
High-school Harper was awkward.
Shy.
The girl who never quite fit — not with the athletes, not with the cool girls, not with the pretty ones or the fearless ones.
I used to eat lunch in the library.
I avoided pep rallies like they were war zones.
And the one time I let myself crush on someone—
I stop.
Because I can still see it too clearly.
That stupid seventh-grade party.
The basement. The game. Seven Minutes in Heaven.
Everyone laughing, chanting names, passing around an empty soda bottle like it was a crown of thorns.
And then someone shouted mine.
And his.
Logan Shaw.
He was all wild hair and crooked grin and too much confidence for a thirteen-year-old.
We stepped into the closet, the door closed, and for five full minutes we just stood there — two awkward kids drowning in the sound of our own breathing.
Then, right before the timer went off, he kissed me.
Quick. Soft. Awkward.
The kind of kiss that shouldn’t matter and somehow still does.
The door opened, everyone cheered, and he bolted like touching me had been a dare he was relieved to survive.
I told myself it was nothing.
But it was everything.
Because that was the moment I started hoping he’d see me — really see me — and he never did.
Until now.
And I don’t know what changed.
Or if it’s even real.
Maybe it’s guilt. Maybe it’s boredom. Maybe it’s another one of his moods — the kind where he wants what he can’t have until he can and then he doesn’t.
I pick up my phone again. My thumb hovers over that unread text.
I’ve read all the others.
You didn’t deserve that.
I’m sorry.
You shouldn’t have seen it that way.
Half apologies. Half excuses.
But that last one — the one I haven’t read — sits there glowing blue and dangerous.
My pulse stutters.
I swipe it open before I can stop myself.
Logan:
I meant what I said.
I don’t want to stop.
The words blur.
My chest goes tight.
Because this — this right here — is exactly the problem.
He says things that sound like truth.
That feel like gravity.
But they never last.
I press the phone to my chest and close my eyes.
This morning feels too much like that night in middle school — the moment after the kiss, when the closet door opened and he ran, and I stood there pretending it didn’t matter.
Except this time, I’m older.
And I know better.
Or I should.
I toss the phone onto the desk like it burned.
“Why now, Logan?” I whisper. “Why me, now?”
I hate that I sound like I still care.
I hate that part of me wants to text him back.
Wants to say, Then don’t stop. Just mean it this time.
But I don’t.
I can’t.
Because I know what happens next.
He’ll come close, make me feel seen, and then disappear again the second it costs him something.
A knock sounds on the door.
“Hey, Harper?” It’s Lila’s voice.
“Yeah?”
She pushes it open, peeking in. “We’ve got the charity vendor call in fifteen. You good?”
“Yeah,” I lie. “I’ll be down.”
She studies me for a second — reading the mess under my skin like she always does — but she doesn’t push. “Okay. Just… maybe brush your hair before you make us both look tragic.”
I almost laugh. “You’re impossible.”
She grins. “That’s why you love me.”
When she’s gone, I stare at the door for a long minute.
Then I whisper, more to myself than anyone, “I’m fine.”
The lie tastes bitter.
I pick up my planner from the desk, flip to today’s page. Meetings. Calls. Deadlines. Responsibilities that don’t care about boys or bad timing.
I force my focus there. On the ink. On the structure. On the version of myself that has control.
But underneath it all, the same loop plays:
his mouth on mine,
his voice in my ear,
his text still burning on the screen.
And I hate how much I want to believe it.
I hate how much that kiss felt like a promise I didn’t ask for.
By the time I finally pull on my coat and head downstairs, the house hums again with voices and clinking mugs.
Everyone’s moving, living, laughing.
And I’m standing in the middle of it — smiling like I haven’t been hollowed out.
Logan Shaw might have finally noticed me.
But I can’t shake the feeling that it’s twenty-four hours, ten years, and one heartbreak too late.