Chapter 35 Chapter 34
Logan POV
The Alpha Chi house looks like something out of a magazine—warm light spilling from the porch, laughter faint behind the door, the faint scent of vanilla drifting on the air. Peaceful.
Too peaceful.
Cole pushes the door open first, balancing two takeout bags. Marco and Zack trail behind him, arguing about whether pineapple belongs on pizza.
I hang back, staring at the doorway like it might bite.
“Are you sure this is smart?” Cole asks over his shoulder.
“No,” I say.
“Good. We’re on the same page.”
Inside, the house hums with noise. Someone’s playing music from a Bluetooth speaker. Girls chatter in the kitchen. Lila stands in the living room giving orders with the efficiency of a general.
And on the couch—Harper.
Her hair’s twisted into a loose bun, a notebook balanced on her knees, her pen tapping against the page. When she looks up, that calm expression flickers just enough to show she didn’t expect me.
Cole grins, setting the bags down on the coffee table. “Food delivery for the queens of Alpha Chi.”
Lila eyes him but takes the bags anyway. “You’re lucky we like carbs.”
Harper closes her notebook slowly, standing. “Thanks. You can leave it.”
Her voice is steady, but her shoulders are tight. She brushes past me toward the kitchen, but the faint scent of her perfume lingers in her wake—jasmine and something sharp, citrusy, the kind of smell that sticks.
I should leave it alone.
But I never do the smart thing when it comes to her.
I follow.
She’s at the counter when I catch up, stacking plates with mechanical precision. Beside her, a vase of white tulips sits under the window, catching the glow from the string lights.
“Harper,” I start.
She doesn’t look up. “You can save whatever speech you rehearsed.”
“I didn’t rehearse anything.”
“That’s the problem,” she mutters.
I take a step closer. “You texted me.”
“I regret that.”
Her voice is ice.
“You think I knew about the auction,” I say.
She laughs under her breath, sharp and humorless. “I don’t think. I know.”
“I didn’t,” I insist.
“Right,” she says, finally turning to face me. “You just conveniently forgot to mention it while you were bringing food and sending flowers.”
“Flowers?”
She gestures toward the vase. “Those. You think tulips fix everything?”
I frown. “Harper, I didn’t send you flowers.”
Her expression falters for half a second—enough to show confusion, maybe even doubt—but it hardens fast. “Then I guess that makes it worse. Because it means you didn’t bother.”
That hits harder than I expect. “You really think I’m that calculated?”
“I don’t know what to think with you anymore,” she says. “You kiss me one night, then you let PR turn it into a headline the next. I feel like I’m living in your aftermath.”
I step forward, until there’s barely a foot between us. “You think I planned that kiss?”
“No,” she says, voice trembling. “I think you didn’t plan the fallout.”
She tries to move around me, but I catch her wrist gently. Her pulse jumps under my fingers.
“Harper—”
“Don’t.”
“Just listen.”
“No.” She jerks her hand free, eyes flashing. “Because every time I listen, you mess with my head. You make me believe you actually see me, and then you remind me that I’m not your type. I never was.”
“That’s not true.”
She scoffs. “Isn’t it? You’ve spent years proving the opposite. Every girl you’ve ever been with looks like a carbon copy of the same poster. I was never going to be one of them.”
I take another step closer. “Maybe that’s why I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Her breath catches. “Don’t say that.”
“I mean it.”
“Then why now?” she snaps. “Why wait until it’s complicated? Until it’s humiliating? Why wait until you can’t have me without breaking something else first?”
Her voice cracks halfway through, and it guts me more than if she’d screamed.
I try to find the right words, but all that comes out is, “Because I didn’t realize how much I’d already broken until you stopped looking at me.”
She stares at me like she doesn’t know whether to believe it or hit me. “You don’t get to do this.”
“Do what?”
“This.” Her hand gestures between us, trembling. “The push, the pull, the confusion. I can’t keep being the girl you come back to when you need to feel something real.”
The silence stretches, taut as wire.
“I’m not playing with you,” I say finally.
“Then what the hell are you doing?”
My chest feels too tight to answer.
She shakes her head, blinking fast. “You kissed me, Logan. And I hated that I liked it. Do you get that? I hated it because it felt like middle school all over again—me waiting for you to see me, and you running the second it gets real.”
“That’s not—”
“It is.”
Her eyes glisten now, angry and shining. “You ran back then, and you ran again last night. So don’t stand here and act like I’m the one who doesn’t know what she wants.”
Something in me breaks loose. I step forward, closing the space between us in one hard breath. “You think I don’t know what I want?”
She opens her mouth to reply, but the words die when my hand cups her jaw.
“Because it’s been you for longer than I’m willing to admit,” I whisper.
Her breath catches. “You’re lying.”
“Then stop me.”
She doesn’t.
The first touch is desperate—my mouth on hers, the kind of kiss that tastes like every unsaid thing between us. She responds before I even pull her closer, her hands grabbing my hoodie, holding tight like she hates herself for it.
It’s not soft. It’s collision and surrender all at once.
Her heartbeat slams against mine, wild and uneven.
And for a moment—just a heartbeat—it feels like the world stops fighting us.
Then she pushes back, breath ragged, eyes wide. “This is exactly what I mean.”
“Harper—”
“No.” She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, angry tears burning bright. “You don’t get to break me and then kiss me like it’s a cure.”
Her voice shakes, but it’s steel underneath.
“You don’t even know what you want from me,” she continues. “And I can’t keep trying to guess.”
I reach for her again. “I do know.”
She shakes her head, stepping back. “Then say it.”
The words freeze in my throat.
She laughs once, hollow. “That’s what I thought.”
The door opens behind her—Lila’s voice, cautious. “Everything okay?”
Harper doesn’t look away from me. “Fine.”
But her voice breaks on the word.
She walks past Lila, through the doorway and up the stairs, shoulders straight even as her hands shake.
I stand there in the kitchen, the smell of tulips thick in the air, her absence heavier than any silence.
Cole’s voice comes from the hall a minute later. “You sure know how to make an exit, Captain.”
I turn to glare at him, but he’s not smiling.
“She needs space,” he says simply.
“She needs the truth,” I bite out.
“Then maybe start figuring out what that actually is.”
I don’t answer.
Through the window, I can still see those tulips glowing faintly under the kitchen light—white and delicate and entirely wrong.
I didn’t send them.
But I hate that she thought I did.
Because for once, I wish I had.