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“You didn’t deserve it. Not then, and certainly not now. I’ve been terrible to you since you’ve arrived back in Chicago. Will you ever be able to forgive me?”
I hoped she recognized the sincerity in my voice. I was very unapologetic in life, and had been that way for as far back as I could remember. I was very sorry about everything she had gone through, mainly because I could’ve spared her from at least some of it, and gotten her out of the situation she had been in if she had only trusted me enough to tell me the truth.
“I just wish you would’ve told me what was really going on, Harper.”
“I did,” she told me. “I tried to warn you once I got here, and you—”
“I’m not talking about now. I’m mean back then when you moved to Portland. If you would’ve only told me, or my father what was going on, we would’ve gotten you out of there.”
She shifted, then rolled over onto her back. I waited a few seconds before turning onto my side. I then tilted her face toward me.
“I was ashamed,” she finally admitted.
“You were a child. How can you—”
“Maybe, but I’d made love with you. We’d had sex, so maybe I wasn’t quite the child you remember.”
“We were both children trying to act like adults. It wouldn’t have mattered if you’d had sex with every boy your age, if you told Jayson no, then—”
“I did,” she told me, then closed her eyes. I knew they were welling with tears because one slipped out from under her long lashes. “He was so strong... so evil.... The more I struggled, the more it turned him on. I kept fighting him until I lost the only thing I’d ever wanted, and after that, nothing else mattered.”
“Until you’d broken up with me,” I murmured, and she reached out to touch my face. I turned it into her palm and closed my eyes momentarily as she stroked it.
I’d been a mess when she first broke up with me. I clearly remembered trying to reach out to her in any way I could, only to realize I had been blocked on everything. At first, it had just been me, so I had urged her best friend, Charlie, to contact her, but even those messages from her went unanswered. When it had finally dawned on me that Harper no longer wanted me in her life, I’d become a different person. That man, or rather boy, wasn’t one I was proud of.
“I’m so sorry,” she told me, her voice now breaking and cracking with every word. “I didn’t want you to see how damaged I was. You had your whole life ahead of you, and I didn’t want to take that away from you, too.”
“Don’t you understand,” I told her as I opened my eyes. “All I’d ever wanted was you. All I’d ever needed was you.”
“But football. You were going to be the next Jerry Rice or Randy Moss. I remember the plans you and Noah used to make, and I’d always known I would go along with them because it all mattered to you.”
“I loved football, but I loved you more.”
This time, she couldn’t quite choke back her sob and I heard the anguish as it slipped out.
“In my fear, and my pain, I didn’t love you enough.”
“But you’re wrong,” I told her, the vehemence in my voice hopefully coming through. “If you didn’t love me enough, you wouldn’t have ended things between us. You didn’t want me to know you were being abused. You wanted to shield me from it, but in the end, we both lost. We lost each other and ourselves.”
“W-what do you mean,” she stammered as she raised her damp eyes to me.
“The night of our graduation and that car crash.”
“It was an accident, right?” she asked, and I shook my head.
“It was, but it wasn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
I thought back to that night and remembered all of the questions from everyone. Only those closest to me knew we had broken up for good. Most of the others at the party all assumed we were carrying on some long distance relationship.
I’d been so pissed off upon remembering how things ended, that I got into my Huracan, and wanted to drive as fast and as far away as I could from those failed dreams. I didn’t want to put more guilt on Harper, because the truth of the matter was that she wasn’t to blame for my actions, not then or now.
“After graduation, I went to Dougie’s house for one of his massive parties. You remember them, yes?”
She nodded. Doug Dorland came from old money, his father also a Titan in Chicago. He used to throw the most epic bashes. His father, and two older brothers, were legends at Rushton Academy, and he’d done everything to carry on the family tradition. I couldn’t even count the number of parties I’d attended, including some with Harper back during better times.
“I remember,” she finally said as if to urge me to continue.
