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“What subject?” I balked. “Talk about who?”
“Jason,” she murmured. “Your brother.”
My face twisted into a frown. Instinctively I turned my full attention back to Emma, and for a few seconds she let me. Eventually though, her fingers found my cheek.
“I need you to know how sorry I am about what happened,” she reiterated, guiding me back to those striking blue eyes. “I never got the chance to fully tell you.”
“You weren’t there, so why should you be sorry?” I shrugged. “It’s in the past now. I don’t need a pity party every time someone realizes—”
“I’m not throwing you a pity party,” she interjected angrily. “Jax, I’ve known you forever, and I knew Jason too. A tragedy like that is obviously horrific, and I can’t even begin to imagine your pain. But the way you handled it was inspiring. I’m in awe at how incredible you are, for stepping up and taking on Emma as your own.”
I didn’t expect the hurt in her eyes. But it was there, and it was genuine, and it certainly wasn’t pity.
All of sudden I felt foolish.
“There’s nothing incredible about it,” I finally countered. “I did what anyone—”
“Jax, you and Jennifer took on a daughter,” Harper asserted. “You made her your own. The two of you did it when no one else would, and at a time in your life when things are at the absolute busiest. But you did it anyway, and you didn’t hesitate. That makes you amazing.”
I looked away again, if for no other reason than there was suddenly a knot in my throat. Emma had moved to a different tube, now. I could still see her through the Plexiglass, laughing away with some little boy in blue overalls.
She called you amazing.
My mind spun through a storm of conflicting thoughts. Harper and I weren’t supposed to talk like this. We should be in some shitty bar insulting each other, like always. We weren’t supposed to be out on a date, much less a play date complete with a toddler, vanilla shakes, and deep conversation.
And yet somehow, I didn’t mind it. Somehow it seemed… right.
I turned back to look at her, silhouetted so prettily against the snowy bank of windows. Yet this was Harper. She wasn’t pretty, she was an asshole. Or maybe I was the asshole. Either way, she wasn’t loving, she totally hated me. Right?
Wrong.
I’d been incredibly jealous of Adrian and Preston the other night, getting to be with her when I wasn’t available. Enjoying her in ways that I so desperately wanted to. And yet, as much as they’d so thoroughly had her, she was also still mine. I didn’t begrudge them for wanting her, or for taking her, or even for Preston’s smug announcement that as far as the battle for sexual bed-supremacy went, he and I were now ‘even Steven.’
No, somehow I was okay with all that. In fact, on some deep, perverted level I still had yet to fully explore, it actually turned me the fuck on. It made me want her more. It made me want to possess her, to reclaim her. To nudge those beautiful thighs apart and take her back as my own, all while kissing her until she was whimpering those sexy little noises into my open mouth.
I could do all that and more, later on, after we’d dropped Emma off at Jennifer’s. But right now…
Right now I was still exploring the crazy idea that Harper and I actually enjoyed each other’s company.
“Trust me, I’m far from amazing,” I told her flatly. “I’m kind of a dickhead, actually.”
Harper’s smirk came back so fast it made me love her even more.
“Oh, no one’s arguing that.”
“But I’m an amazing dickhead?” I countered. “Is that it?”
She shrugged. “Better than average. As far as dickheads go, anyway.”
I tried to keep a straight face as my eyes continued tracking Emma. She’d come down the tube slide, finally. The smile on her face as she sank happily into the ball-pit was something that couldn’t be bought.
“Speaking of dickheads,” I continued, “Preston told me you gave him a world-class blowjob the other night.”
“Really?” Harper replied casually.
“In my bed.”
Tucking the straw between her lips again, she shrugged innocently. “Maybe.”
