Chapter Two

Harper's POV:

I signed the papers on the kitchen counter where I'd made Connor breakfast this morning.

The pen kept slipping because my hands wouldn't stop shaking, so I had to grip it harder just to make my name come out right. Harper Blake. Except I wasn't going to be that anymore, was I? I'd go back to being Harper Lane, the girl from Montana who had nothing, the girl I'd tried so hard to leave behind.

"Done already?" Connor's voice came from behind me. "I thought you'd at least cry or beg or something."

I didn't turn around because I couldn't look at him without seeing Jenny's hands in his hair, her body pressed against his in our bed.

"Where do you want me to go?" My voice came out flat and dead.

"That's not my problem anymore, Harper." He walked past me and picked up the papers, flipping through them like he was checking if I'd signed every page correctly. "You can stay tonight if you want. I'm going to Jenny's place. But tomorrow morning I want you gone, and don't take anything that isn't yours."

Tomorrow morning. Less than twenty four hours to pack up a year of marriage, a year of believing someone finally wanted me to stay.

"Connor." I forced myself to look at him even though it hurt. "Did you ever love me? Even just a little bit at the beginning?"

He stopped walking but didn't turn around. His hand was on the doorframe and for just one second I thought maybe he'd say something that would make this hurt less.

"I thought I did," he said quietly, still facing away from me. "But then my father started treating you like you were the best thing that ever happened to him. He'd come home from work talking about you. Harper designed this, she should lead the new collection." His voice got louder and angrier. "Do you have any idea what that felt like? Watching my own father choose you over me?"

"I never asked him to do that," I whispered. "I was just doing my job."

"Just doing your job?" He spun around and his face was twisted with something that looked like hate. "You did way more than that, Harper. You made everyone love you. Poor Harper whose mother died, who worked so hard, who came from nothing." He laughed but it wasn't a happy sound. "You used your sad story like a weapon and it worked on everyone."

The words cut into me like glass. "That wasn't an act. That was my life. My mother did die. I did come from nothing."

"Yeah? Well maybe you talked about it too much." He grabbed his jacket off the chair. "Congratulations, Harper. You manipulated your way into a marriage and a career. I hope it was worth it."

He walked out and the door slammed so hard the walls shook.

I stood there staring at where he'd been, my chest so tight I couldn't breathe right. Was he right? Had I used my past to make people feel sorry for me without even knowing I was doing it? All those times James had asked about my childhood and I'd told him the truth, had I been manipulating him?

My phone buzzed on the counter. A text from a number I didn't recognize.

"This is Jenny. You're so bitter that you've blocked me? Well wanted your defeated ass to know Connor and I are going out to celebrate tonight. We're finally free of you."

I turned my phone off and shoved it in my pocket before I could read any more.

The apartment was too quiet now. I walked to the bedroom and opened the closet, pulling out my old suitcase from the top shelf. When I did, something fell and hit the floor. My mother's photo album.

It landed open to a page I knew by heart. My mother's face looking up at me, smiling even though she was so thin and sick in that picture. A piece of paper slipped out from between the pages. A letter in her handwriting that I'd forgotten was there.

"My sweet Harper," it started. "If you're reading this, I'm already gone."

I had to sit down on the bed because my legs went weak. I hadn’t seen her handwriting in years. My throat closed up just looking at it.

"I'm so sorry I couldn't stay longer, baby. I'm so sorry I had to leave you. But I need you to know something. You're going to do amazing things. I know you think you're not strong enough but you are. You're the strongest person I know."

My hands were shaking so hard the paper rattled.

I pressed the letter against my chest and the sob that came out of me was ugly and loud. My whole body shook with it and I couldn't stop, couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything except cry into my hands until my throat burned and my eyes were so swollen I could barely see.

My mother had been wrong. I wasn't strong. Strong people didn't let themselves get destroyed by men who never loved them. Strong people didn't trust friends who secretly hated them.

I don't know how long I sat there crying, but when I finally stopped, the sun was coming up outside the window. I folded the letter carefully and put it back in the album, then started packing. Everything I owned fit into two suitcases and a backpack. I didn't take the dresses Connor bought me or the jewelry or any of the expensive things. Just my clothes from before, my laptop, and the album.

I called a cab and when the driver asked where I wanted to go, I pulled out my phone and searched for flights leaving New York today. The cheapest one was to Los Angeles in two hours. $312 one way.

"JFK airport," I told him.

I watched New York pass by through the window and everything looked different now, smaller somehow, like it had never been mine to begin with.

At the Airport, I grabbed my things and got in line after I got my ticket. This was it. I was leaving everything behind and starting over from nothing, just like I did when I left Montana five years ago.

Except this time I didn't have any hope left.

Six hours later I landed in Los Angeles with $535 in my bank account and nowhere to go. I found the cheapest motel I could, a place that smelled like cigarettes and regret, and sat on the stained bedspread opening my laptop.

I applied to every fashion company in Los Angeles. One application after another until my eyes burned and my fingers cramped. By midnight I'd sent out over sixty applications.

I checked my email before trying to sleep.

Forty two rejections already.

I closed the laptop and lay down without even taking off my shoes. Tomorrow I'll be stronger, I'll figure it out.

But when I woke up three hours later from a nightmare where Connor and Jenny were laughing at me, I reached for my backpack to hold my mother's album.

It wasn't there.

I tore through my suitcases, checked every pocket, dumped everything on the floor.

I'd left it in the cab.