Harley's POV
The gala is a masterpiece of performance—chandeliers throwing fractured light across marble floors, champagne flutes catching gold like liquid currency, Wentworth's finest dressed in generosity they'll write off on their taxes by Monday.
Every smile is calculated, every handshake carries a price tag. The entire evening exists so wealthy people can photograph themselves caring about causes they'll forget by morning.
I throw myself into it like a woman possessed.
"The auction items need repositioning—the Cartier piece should anchor the display, not the painting. Donors bid higher when jewelry catches the light first."
I check my clipboard without breaking stride, weaving through the crowd with the efficiency of someone who has no intention of standing still long enough to feel anything.
"And the catering rotation is behind schedule. Table twelve hasn't been served appetizers, and Mrs. Montgomery is already giving the staff that look—you know the one. Someone needs to intervene before she writes a complaint letter to the board."
I keep my hands busy, my mind occupied and my eyes pointed at anything that isn't the sandy-haired boy in the tailored suit I can feel watching me from across the room.
"Harley."
His voice finds me near the service corridor, quiet enough to be private, close enough to be inescapable. I don't turn around.
"We need to talk. You've been avoiding me for six days, and whatever you're feeling right now, we still have an arrangement. There are things at stake that are bigger than…"
"Go fuck yourself, Mercer."
The words come out clean and sharp, loud enough that two nearby donors pause their conversation. I turn to face him, and the venom in my expression makes him take half a step back.
"Better yet, go fuck yourself somewhere far away from me—possibly another continent. I hear Antarctica is lovely this time of year. Very few lowborn scholarship girls from the hood for your father to pretend don't exist, so you should feel right at home."
"Harley, just listen to me for damn thirty seconds…"
"I gave you two years of listening, Tate." I step closer, my voice dropping into something colder than anger. "So no, I won't listen. Not for thirty seconds, not even for one. Go find someone else to be your prop—I'm done."
I walk away and I don't look back.
I find Grant near the silent auction tables, studying a framed photograph with the quiet attentiveness he brings to everything. When he sees me, his expression lightens immediately, automatic and genuine.
"Hey." I make my voice warm, my smile deliberate. "How's the auction looking? Anything worth bidding on, or is it all overpriced vanity purchases disguised as philanthropy?"
"Mostly overpriced vanity purchases," he says, his smile careful. "But there's a nice set of first editions in the corner that I think you'd actually appreciate. Want to take a look?"
I lean in when he talks, laugh at his observations about the donors, let my hand rest on his arm when he makes a point, let my attention focus on him.
It's pointed, public. It's not subtle, and it's not supposed to be.
From across the room, I feel Tate's gaze like a physical force—heavy, burning, impossible to ignore even when I'm trying with everything I have.
I keep my eyes on Grant, keep my smile in place, keep performing the exact kind of ease I've never been able to manufacture around the boy currently watching his composure crack in real time.
"Harley." Tate's voice cuts through the space between us, and this time there's nothing quiet about it.
He crosses the room with none of the careful restraint he usually maintains—no performance smile, no calculated approach, no awareness of the dozens of eyes tracking his every step.
He stops directly in front of us, his jaw tight, his eyes blazing. "Let’s talk. Please."
"I believe I already answered that question. Do you need me to repeat it, or did you get the general direction?"
"I'm not leaving until you hear me out. Five minutes, that's all I'm asking, and then you can go back to ignoring me and flirting with Daniels like I don't exist."
"Nobody's flirting." Grant's voice enters the conversation with quiet firmness. "We're having a conversation, Tate."
"Stay out of this, Grant. This is between me and her."
"Except it's not just between you and her when you're making a scene in front of the entire gala." Grant steps slightly forward—not aggressive, but present. "Maybe take a breath and try this conversation when you're not performing for an audience."
"There's nothing to try." I keep my voice steady, aware of every donor, every classmate, every turned head absorbing this moment. "Tate and I are done talking."
I watch something fracture behind Tate's eyes, but I don't let it reach me. He opens his mouth, one more attempt, one more push, and I turn my back on him before the first word forms.
I walk toward the exit with Grant beside me, and the crowd parts around us while the drama settles into Wentworth's collective memory like sediment in water.
"Let me drive you home." Grant says once we're outside, his voice careful, measured. "You look like you could use a quiet car and zero conversation, and I'm very good at both."
"Yeah…" The fight drains out of me all at once, leaving behind something hollow and exhausted. "Yeah, that would be great."
The drive is quiet. Grant doesn't gloat, doesn't say ‘I told you so’, doesn't reference the warnings he gave me weeks ago with that concerned expression I dismissed as paranoia. Instead he speaks carefully, the way you handle something fragile.
"I didn't warn you about Tate to be right, Harley. I warned you because I could see this coming from a mile away, and watching you get hurt was the one thing I was hoping to prevent.”
The kindness aches worse than cruelty, and I absorb it quietly, staring out the window at streetlights blurring past, something in my chest cracking at the decency I don't feel I deserve right now.
“You're the most resilient person I know, you've survived things that would've broken anyone else at this school. But resilience doesn't mean you deserve to keep getting hit."
"Thank you, Grant. For the ride, for... everything."
"I'm here if you need anything—no pressure, no agenda. Just… here." He pulls up to my building and gives me a small, gentle smile. "Get some rest."
The apartment is a safe place when I get inside. I sit on my bed in the dark, hollow with the effort of holding myself together, staring at the wall where Aro's sketches hang in crooked rows.
Crack.
The sound is small, sharp and precise, like a pebble striking glass, and I freeze.
Crack. Crack.
Two more hitting my window with deliberate aim. Then a voice rises from the street below. "Harley! I know you're up there—your light was on thirty seconds ago."
Tate. Here. In the Southside. At my building. At eleven-forty at night, throwing pebbles at my window like some deranged Romeo who missed the memo that Juliet wants him dead.
“Come down and talk to me, or I swear to God, I'll stand here the whole night before somebody robs and kills me. And then you'll have to live with that in your conscience. And my ghost will haunt you, forever!”
Before I can even process the audacity, I hear the building's front door slam open and Diego's voice explodes into the night. "You have exactly five seconds to get the fuck off this block before I rearrange your face, pretty boy. One…"
"I'm not leaving until I talk to her."
"Two…"
I'm already running down the hallway, down the stairs, bursting through the front door into the cold night air just as Diego's fist draws back and Tate plants his feet like an idiot.
"Stop!" I shove between them, one hand on Diego's chest, the other pushing Tate backward. "Both of you—stop! Diego, go inside."
"This little shit shows up at our building and you want me to go inside?"
"I'll handle this. Go."
Diego's eyes burn into Tate over my shoulder before he reluctantly steps back, points two fingers at his own eyes and then at Tate in the universal gesture of ‘I'm watching you,’ and disappears through the door with a slam.
I round on Tate, breathing hard, furious at all of it.
At him for showing up, at Diego for almost starting a brawl, at myself for caring enough to intervene when I should have let my brother handle it.
"Have you lost your mind?! Coming to Southside at midnight, throwing rocks at my window, antagonizing my brother—what is wrong with you?"
"Everything."
His voice is raw—no smirk, no armor, no performance. Just a boy standing on a cracked sidewalk in a neighborhood he's terrified of, looking at me with an expression I've never seen on his face before.
"Everything is wrong with me, Harley… And I need five minutes to explain why."
Something in his face, the desperation, the refusal, the way he stands there like he'll take a beating from every Valdez brother on the block if that's what it costs to be heard, cracks through my defenses just enough.
"Five minutes." I hold up my hand, fingers spread. "And if I don't like what I hear, you leave and you don't come back. Ever."