Chapter 48 Chapter 47
Harper POV
They say sex changes things.
I always thought that was something people said to make their bad decisions sound poetic.
Turns out, it’s just… true.
It changes the air between you.
The way you remember someone’s hands.
The way your brain refuses to cooperate when you tell it to be rational.
And apparently, it changes how Logan Shaw looks at me.
Which might be the worst part.
I sit at my desk with my laptop open, three tabs pulled up for the gala, a color-coded to-do list on my tablet, and my phone facedown like it’s personally offended me.
I haven’t done a single productive thing in forty minutes.
Because my brain keeps replaying:
His voice.
His mouth.
The way he looked at me this morning—quiet, unreadable, not running, but not… staying either.
And then the way he looked at me today.
Distant.
Careful.
Weird.
Like I’m something fragile he doesn’t know where to put.
Or worse.
Like I’m something he already put somewhere and is done with.
The thought makes my stomach twist.
I hate myself a little for how easily I let that night happen.
For how quickly I stopped being careful.
For how much I wanted him.
I press my palms to my eyes and breathe.
God, Harper. Get it together.
I’m not some naïve freshman who doesn’t know Logan’s reputation.
Everyone knows Logan Shaw doesn’t do complicated.
He does fun.
He does easy.
He does girls who don’t ask for anything and don’t expect anything.
And I walked straight into his room and became… what?
A bad decision?
A lapse in judgment?
Another story for the locker room?
The thought makes something sharp and humiliating twist in my chest.
I don’t think he’d brag.
But that almost makes it worse.
Because it means I might just be… forgettable.
I push away from my desk and pace my room.
The stars on my ceiling—left behind by some past Alpha Chi president—glow faintly in the afternoon light. They’re stupid. And comforting. And suddenly I’m too close to crying over them, which feels like a personal low.
I did this.
I let my loneliness and my stupid, long-standing weakness for Logan Shaw convince me that maybe—just maybe—this time meant something.
That maybe he finally saw me.
And now he’s acting like he doesn’t know what to do with me.
Which probably means he’s already trying to put me back in a box.
A very small, very temporary box.
I grab my phone and flip it over.
No new messages.
Of course.
Why would there be?
I told myself I wouldn’t check.
I still do.
I drop the phone back onto the bed like it personally betrayed me.
Lila knocks once and then lets herself in like she always does.
She takes one look at my face and says, “Oh. You’re spiraling.”
“I am not spiraling.”
She closes the door behind her. “You’re pacing and emotionally radiating chaos. You’re spiraling.”
I flop onto the edge of the bed. “I made a mistake.”
Her expression softens a little. “That bad?”
“I slept with Logan,” I say flatly.
She blinks. Then: “Okay. That’s… not where I thought that sentence was going.”
I stare at the floor. “And now he’s being weird.”
“Define weird.”
“He’s… distant. Careful. Like he’s trying not to touch me with a ten-foot pole. Except he also keeps looking at me like he’s thinking too hard.”
She sits beside me. “That sounds very Logan.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“I know.”
I hug a pillow to my chest. “I think I was just… convenient.”
Lila’s head snaps toward me. “No.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that,” she says firmly. “Because men like Logan don’t get weird over convenient.”
“That doesn’t mean he wants something real,” I argue. “It could just mean he doesn’t want to deal with me.”
She studies me. “What do you want it to mean?”
The question hits too close to home.
I swallow. “I don’t know. I just know I hate this.”
“Hate what?”
“Not knowing if I mattered,” I say quietly. “Or if I was just… another notch.”
Lila’s voice softens. “Harper…”
“I’ve spent years,” I say, my voice tightening, “being the girl who isn’t his type. The girl who’s invisible in that way. And for one night, I wasn’t.”
I laugh, but it comes out thin. “And now I feel stupid for believing it could be more.”
She puts an arm around me. “You’re not stupid.”
“I am,” I say. “Because I should have known better.”
⸻
Campus feels too public now.
Everywhere I go, I’m aware of my own skin.
Of the way my body remembers him.
I catch sight of him across the quad later that afternoon—laughing with some teammates, looking normal, relaxed, unburdened.
Something bitter twists in my chest.
Of course he’s fine.
Why wouldn’t he be?
I turn away before he can see me.
I don’t trust my face.
⸻
The auction prep meeting two days later is worse.
We’re in the same room again.
The same table.
The same polite distance.
He’s respectful.
Too respectful.
Professional.
Like nothing ever happened.
Like he didn’t see me without walls.
Like he didn’t touch me like he meant it.
Every time he says my name in that neutral, careful tone, something in me curls in on itself.
This is what I get for hoping.
When it’s over, I leave before he can catch me.
I don’t want another almost-conversation.
I don’t want another “we’ll talk later.”
I want clarity.
Or I want space.
Right now, I don’t seem to be getting either.
⸻
That night, I sit on my bed with my laptop open and do exactly what I’m good at:
I work.
I plan.
I organize.
I pretend my heart isn’t bruised.
But the words won’t focus.
My thoughts keep circling the same ugly question:
What if this meant everything to me…
And almost nothing to him?
I close the laptop.
Stare at the stars.
They say sex changes things.
It did.
It made me want something I told myself I’d outgrown.
It made me vulnerable in a way I hate.
And worst of all—
It made me care again.
⸻
I don’t know what Logan is thinking.
But I do know this:
I won’t let myself become a quiet regret.
If he wants distance, I’ll give it to him.
If he wants to pretend nothing happened, I can learn to do that too.
And if he doesn’t know what he wants?
Then he doesn’t get to keep me in limbo while he figures it out.
I’ve worked too hard to become this version of myself to shrink back into someone who waits.
They say sex changes things.
It did.
It just didn’t change them the same way.