When they arrived at her house, Harper let herself out of the car. Reaching into her purse, she handed her keys to Jeremy. “Why don’t you run and unlock the door for us?”
“Sure, Harper.”
Benny retrieved her case from the trunk and pulled up the roller handle for her, before getting back into the car to give them privacy.
“Thanks, Benny.” She took it with a slight smile that died when she turned to Will. “I think Jeremy should stay home from work for a few days while I reevaluate the situation.”
He felt the nails of his coffin driving into him, even though he’d already known that he had to let her go. Let them both go. But Harper was doing it for him. Because they both knew what the result of her reevaluation would be.
“Right, I understand,” he said, even though he didn’t understand a damn thing—especially not how he could have lost something so precious. So amazing.
Jeremy waved at him from the front door. “’Bye, Will. ’Bye, Benny.”
As Harper rolled her case away, Will climbed into the car and watched her through the window, her back straight, head high.
“Where to, sir?” Benny turned the mirror slightly to look at him.
But there was nowhere to go. Because everything Will had ever truly wanted, he’d just had to leave behind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“We have to talk, Jeremy.”
Harper sat him down in the living room almost as soon as Will left them.
Left them.
She closed her eyes for one brief second, the impact of it hitting her as though her heart were being crushed inside her chest. There’d been something so final in their parting.
But she couldn’t think about that now. Couldn’t think about Will, couldn’t want him, couldn’t need him anymore. She had to think about Jeremy. He was her number one priority.
“You’re going to yell now, aren’t you?” Her brother slumped down into the sofa they hardly ever sat on in a room they rarely used.
It seemed like a metaphor for all the parts of her life she’d closed off when her parents died. And, like a metaphor, it was also the room Will had carried her to that morning he’d surprised her with a sexy visit. God, she really needed to stop thinking about him. Especially now that he was gone...and it felt like her heart had broken into a million, billion little pieces.
Turning back to Jeremy, she said, “Is that how you see me? Always yelling?”
“No.” His brow knitted as he thought. “You don’t yell.” Then he shrugged. “You just tell me what to do all the time.”
She did. She took him to school, to work, nudged him to do his homework, to clean his room, to go to bed because it was late and he’d be tired in the morning. But when he was with Will, they’d had fun. They’d raced around Laguna Seca a few days ago and ridden the Giant Dipper at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk a couple of weeks ago on one of Will’s fun Sunday excursions after the Saturday work on the car. Whereas she’d never even taken Jeremy to the Exploratorium.
She could suddenly see that Jeremy had been starving for some fun. Harper wondered how much more guilt—and how much more sorrow—she could handle before her heart collapsed beneath the weight of it.
“I’m not going to yell at you today, but we have to talk about your phone.”
“I know. I was just so excited. And Ronnie—he works in the supply room—drew me a map of how to get there. And it was so cool and there was so much stuff to do that I forgot the time. Until they were closing, and they said I had to leave.” He had done all that himself—found the museum, paid to get in, wandered the exhibits.
“I’m glad you had fun,” she said, and she truly was. Still, she needed him to know how serious the situation had been. “Your phone is your lifeline. You could have called Will, and he would have told Benny where you were.”
“I’ll take it next time. I promise.” He nodded expansively.
Next time? “You can’t go wandering off by yourself like that. You got lost. You need to wait for me to come with you on your next adventure.”
He frowned. “I should have had Ronnie draw me a map of how to get back, too.” Then he brightened. “I showed Benny the map, and he said I would have been fine if I’d just turned right instead of left when I came out of the museum. That’s what I did wrong. I can do it, Harper. Next time, I won’t turn left.”
He’d followed the original map. Jeremy had figured out the streets and he’d walked there. He’d made only one small mistake that had thrown him off. A simple mistake that plenty of people could have made in a part of the city that was new to them.