Open Your Heart (Kings Grove #4) - Delancey Stewart Page 0,30

to stay in the light of her happiness, the shine of those laughing eyes. “It’s been a long day.”

“Five minutes,” she said, and when I looked up to meet her eyes again, there was something new there, something pleading and sad that surprised me. “Stay with me for five more minutes. Please?”

I might have squinted or wrinkled my nose. Something in my face asked the question my voice didn’t.

“I get scared. I know its stupid. I’m a grown woman. But it’s so quiet here. And I’m just not used to being…so alone.” She looked down as she said the last part, and that little disloyal piece of my heart twisted again inside my chest.

“Okay,” I said, wishing for the sadness to disappear from her. Harper was bright and glorious—seeing her sad made the world feel tilted and wrong. “It is Friday night, after all.” I felt a smile come naturally to my face. I’d go home and wallow to punish myself, but I didn’t want to punish Harper. If she wanted company, I’d be company.

She got up and went to the coffee table in the front room, returning with a deck of cards in her hands. “War?’

“Really?”

She lifted a shoulder and cut the cards in half, giving me one part of the deck.

“You’re not even going to deal?”

“What difference does it make? It’s not a real game.”

“I’ll teach you a real game.” I held out my hand for the rest of the cards and shuffled them multiple times before dealing us each seven cards and setting up the table for Kings in the Corners.

“I’ve played this,” she said, her voice breathy suddenly as she squinted at the cards. “A long time ago.”

“This is a mountain card game,” I said. “We never played it at home, but every time we were up here we played this game all the time.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly, her voice still quiet, her eyes distant.

I reminded her how to play, but she was right—this wasn’t her first time. The night ebbed around us, quiet outside the windows of the big house, and it was hard not to feel a little bit content, a little bit settled, for the first time in a long time.

I ended up staying a lot longer than five minutes, and there were stretches of the evening when I didn’t think about things, about Jess, for long periods at once. And then when she’d come back to mind, the guilt would crush me again. But each time it did, it felt just a little bit less heavy than the time before.

When it was time to go home, I found myself wishing I could stay in the light open space of Harper’s living room, in the warm glow of her smile.

As I finally pulled open the front door to go, I remembered my sister telling me to invite her tomorrow. “Hey, are you free tomorrow night?”

Her face lit up. “Well, I’ll have to check my Hello Kitty datebook.”

I chuckled. “My sister’s having a few people over for dinner at six. She asked me to bring you along if you’re up to it.”

Harper actually bounced on her toes and clapped her hands together in front of her—it was utterly charming and a little piece of my heart attached to her then, surprising me. “I’d love that.”

“We’ll go together, if you like.”

“Thanks, Cam,” she said. And as I walked down the front steps, I could feel those pretty eyes on my back, watching me leave.

I worried as I walked home about how attached I was beginning to feel to the gorgeous woman who’d come bounding into my life. I didn’t suffer from any misbeliefs about what I did or didn’t deserve—I wasn’t quite that masochistic. But I did believe that people and things I felt too personally attached to tended to die, and while a rational piece of my mind knew that couldn’t be true, I’d seen enough evidence that it was that I couldn’t quite convince myself it was crazy. I couldn’t let Harper too close—as much as I might wish I could. The universe seemed to like keeping me alone, and unbalancing the universe wasn’t on my to-do list.

We could be friends, but I’d keep my distance and my priorities.

If I possibly could.

Chapter 8

HARPER

Even though it was Saturday, I went into the Inn. I hadn’t slept well thanks to the mountain lion screaming intermittently—whenever I was about to drift off, mostly—and because I still couldn’t quite settle into the big house. I’d have preferred