Chapter 34 Chapter 33
Harper POV
By the time I finally get back to Alpha Chi, I’ve read the email three times and still can’t decide whether to scream or laugh.
Date Auction — Headliners: Harper Lane & Logan Shaw.
My name looks wrong next to his, like someone misspelled reality.
The kitchen smells like burnt toast and coffee grounds. Two sisters are huddled by the counter scrolling through the same announcement, their whispers stopping the second I walk in.
“Harper,” one of them starts carefully, “we just saw—”
“Yeah,” I say before she can finish. “It’s true. Apparently I’ve been volunteered as merchandise.”
They exchange a look I don’t want to decode.
I grab a mug, pour coffee, and ignore the way my hands shake.
Lila appears a minute later, hair up, eyes sharp. “Please tell me you’ve already called PR.”
“I texted them.” I take a scalding sip. “Then I texted him.”
Her brows rise. “Logan?”
“I asked if he knew. He says he found out this morning.” I let out a humorless laugh. “Convenient.”
Lila folds her arms. “You don’t believe him.”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
I drop my phone on the counter. It buzzes once—
nothing new.
Figures.
I walk into the living room before anyone else can look at me with that mixture of pity and curiosity. The sorority house is alive with noise—music from upstairs, someone laughing in the hall—but it all feels distant, muffled, like I’m underwater.
I sink onto the couch and stare at the press release open on my phone. The photo they chose makes it worse: me smiling at some campus event, Logan standing behind me, laughing at something out of frame. We look like a couple.
We look happy.
My stomach twists.
He was probably with Sophia that week.
The thought hits like a slap. I close my eyes and exhale until the room stops spinning.
Footsteps. Then Lila again, quieter now. “Hey. Talk to me.”
“What’s there to say?” I whisper. “The universe has a sick sense of humor. First it gives me a kiss I can’t stop thinking about, and now I get to be auctioned off beside the guy who gave it to me.”
She sits next to me, tucks her legs beneath her. “You still haven’t opened his last text, have you?”
“No.” I stare at the screen. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because if it’s something that makes me hate him, I’ll believe it. And if it’s something that makes me forgive him…”
I shake my head. “I’ll forgive him.”
Her voice softens. “You really liked him.”
“Liked?” I give a short, bitter laugh. “Try survived on the fantasy of him since middle school.”
Lila doesn’t tease, doesn’t joke. She just waits.
I look down at my hands. “He was my first kiss. You know that story already, right? Seven Minutes in Heaven at a birthday party. Everyone dared him to pick a name, and of course it was mine. He kissed me once and bolted out of the closet before the timer hit six.” I try to smile. “I told myself it didn’t matter. That he just didn’t want to embarrass me. But that’s the thing, Lila—he never even saw me after that. Not really.”
“And now he does,” she says gently.
I nod. “But for all the wrong reasons.”
For a moment, neither of us speaks.
Then she asks, “What are you going to do?”
I drain what’s left of my coffee. “Handle it. Like I always do.”
⸻
The walk across campus feels longer than usual. Students stop to greet me, their smiles genuine, but my mind’s somewhere else—back in that dorm hallway, that heat, that breath between us before everything shattered.
By the time I reach the administration building for the planning meeting, I’ve practiced the polite smile I’ll wear like armor.
The vendor from Titan PR is already there, face pale when he sees me and Lila coming. “Ms. Lane! Ms. Kearns! Good morning.”
Lila folds her arms. “Define good.”
He fumbles with his tablet. “There seems to have been some, ah, confusion about the event structure—”
“Confusion?” I echo. “You called it a date auction on a recorded video call.”
His mouth opens, shuts. “We assumed everyone was informed.”
“Well, we weren’t.” My voice is steady, cold. “And next time, you can run your assumptions through me first.”
He nods rapidly. “Of course. Of course.”
Lila leans forward. “And for the record, if this backfires, Titan PR takes the hit, not Alpha Chi.”
“Understood,” he says quickly. “We’ll, uh, draft an updated press statement.”
“Do that,” I say, standing. “And send me every photo before it’s published. Every single one.”
He swallows hard. “Absolutely.”
When he leaves, Lila mutters, “I almost feel bad for him.”
“I don’t,” I say. “Not even a little.”
⸻
By the time afternoon hits, I’m running on caffeine and stubbornness. The rest of the house is buzzing with talk about the gala, about the shoot, about Logan. Everywhere I turn, someone mentions his name.
I hide in my room to breathe.
The glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling blink faintly in the daylight, little ghosts of the girl who first moved in here.
I remember that first week—how I’d unpacked my books, taped up the scholarship letter on the mirror, whispered, You belong here now.
And for the first time, I’d believed it.
But heartbreak has a way of digging its claws backward. It drags you into versions of yourself you thought you’d buried—the awkward, unsure girl who ate lunch in the library and watched the boy she liked fall for everyone else.
That’s what Logan does to me.
Every damn time.
I pull my phone closer, stare at the unread message bubble—his last text, still unopened.
Maybe I’m scared to find out it’s an apology I don’t trust.
Maybe I’m scared it’s not one at all.
I swipe it away instead.
Someone knocks at the door. “Hey, Harper?”
It’s one of the new pledges. “You’ve got a delivery. Flowers.”
Flowers.
I open the door and there they are—white tulips, my favorite, in a simple glass vase. No card.
Lila appears behind the girl, eyes widening. “Let me guess.”
“Don’t,” I say.
“Fine. But you’re reading the card.”
“There isn’t one.”
“Then you know exactly who they’re from.”
I stare at the tulips, heart hammering. Logan wouldn’t—
Except he might.
The man’s entire personality is mixed signals.
Lila sighs. “You going to throw them or keep them?”
I set them on my desk. “Haven’t decided.”
⸻
Night falls too fast.
The house is dim except for fairy lights lining the stair rail. Lila’s downstairs with the others, strategizing for the fundraiser. I should be there. Instead, I’m pacing.
My phone buzzes.
Logan:
Harper, please. I didn’t know about the auction. Coach told me this morning.
I stare at it until the letters blur.
Then another bubble pops up.
Logan:
I never would’ve agreed without talking to you first.
My chest tightens. I type and erase three different replies before settling on one that feels honest.
Me:
Hard to believe anything you say when you kissed me one night and let PR sell the story the next.
The dots appear, disappear, appear again.
Logan:
I didn’t let them. And the kiss—
He stops typing.
Then another message.
Logan:
It wasn’t nothing.
That single line steals the air from the room.
I want to throw the phone. I want to scream.
Instead, I sink onto the bed, head in my hands.
Because for all my anger, all my resolve, a small, treacherous part of me believes him.
And that part is the one I hate most.
⸻
Downstairs, the front door opens—loud, unmistakable. Voices filter in, familiar laughter.
Cole. Zack. Marco.
And then the one that makes my pulse stutter.
Logan.
Lila yells something about takeout. The house hums with energy again. I stand at the top of the stairs, heart hammering, the smell of fried food and cologne drifting up.
He laughs at something Cole says. It’s low, rough, too easy.
Like last night didn’t happen.
My throat burns.
Lila glances up, catches me, shakes her head once in warning.
Don’t.
But I already know it’s too late for that.
Because no matter how much I tell myself to stay away, no matter how angry I am, the truth crashes over me again:
That kiss wrecked me.
And I’m still trying to remember how to breathe.