Chapter 5: Slick

It was Cole who finally asked it. The question Harper had been dying for three years to have answered.

"Hey, Myles. Real talk. Why'd you propose to her at the Olympics? If you never meant to marry her?"

Myles chuckled and swirled his drink. "Oh, that."

Harper's heart stopped.

"The family had a few scandals brewing. The sort of headlines that send investors running." Myles glanced into his drink. "We needed a better story. So I arranged for someone to make the platform slippery before her dive. Nothing dramatic. Just enough for a stumble."

He shrugged.

"I didn't expect her to get hurt that badly." For a moment, he looked almost uncomfortable. Then he smiled. "But the cameras were there. The proposal was perfect. By morning, nobody wanted to talk about the scandals. They wanted to talk about us."

The words hit Harper like the water had that day.

The stumble. The slick platform. The pain. The shoulder that never healed. The medals she'd never won. Everything she'd lost, everything she'd mourned for three years, hadn't been an accident.

It had been a publicity stunt.

Some of the men winced. A few smirked into their glasses. Keaton looked angrier than Valentina had.

"Damn," said Mike, shaking his head. "You're cold, man. So what's the plan for Serena?"

"Serena's the right choice." Myles smiled at her. "I'm taking her to meet my grandfather. He wants someone who can stand beside me at the company events, someone with her own career and connections. Someone the family can be proud of."

Serena beamed, and they started kissing. The men hooted.

Myles pulled away, swaying slightly, and laughed. "I loved Harper once," he said. "Or I thought I did. But she doesn't belong in my world. You know what my grandfather would say if I brought home a girl from some little Oklahoma town?" He tapped his glass. "I could give her a house, maybe a couple of kids. She'd be happy enough. Serena has an actual career to think about."

Harper felt something ice-cold slide through her.

Her career is important. Mine wasn't.

He had taken her career, then convinced her that giving it up was an act of love. And now he was discussing her future as though she were a problem to be managed. She wanted to hate the girl who had said yes on that pool deck. But that girl hadn't known. She had trusted him.

But the fog in her head was finally gone.

I will not clean up after him. I will not be his pet. Not for one more day.

Then Brandon, a sleazy guy with a greasy smile who had always looked at Harper a beat too long at parties, leaned back in his chair and swirled his drink.

"You know, she's got a killer body, though." He grinned, slow and ugly. "When you're done keeping her around as your pet, why don't you pass her to me?"

The laughter at the table thinned out. Not by much. Just enough to notice.

Behind the glass, Harper's skin crawled. Valentina's fingers locked around her wrist like iron.

At the far end of the table, Keaton had stopped swirling his whiskey.

He wasn't moving at all. His knuckles had gone white around the heavy crystal glass, and the ice inside it trembled, a tiny rattle in the sudden quiet. The ice clicked against the glass. Harper watched his grip tighten.

All eyes turned to Myles. He just laughed, short and careless, and shrugged.

"Maybe," he said. "We'll see."

He didn't say no.

For one long second, nobody breathed. Derek cleared his throat like he wanted to say something, then thought better of it. Owen stared hard at his plate. Even Serena's smile faltered, like she'd sensed a storm in the room and couldn't tell where it was coming from.

Then the glass left Keaton's hand.

He hurled it without warning. Crystal and whiskey flew the length of the table and exploded across Brandon's face with a sound like a gunshot. Glass sprayed. Brandon shrieked and tumbled backward out of his chair, hands clamped to his face, blood pouring bright red between his fingers, soaking into the white tablecloth.

Someone screamed. A woman's chair scraped back. Valentina's breath hitched against Harper's ear.

Keaton rose to his feet. Slowly. Every inch of him was calm, and that was the terrifying part. He walked down the length of the table, his shoes crunching over broken glass, and stopped over Brandon, who was curled on the floor.

"You're talking about a person," Keaton said quietly. "Not something he can hand over when he's finished with it."

He slammed both hands on the table. Plates jumped. Wine glasses toppled. Every man there froze like prey under a hawk's shadow, and not one of them dared to look him in the eye.

Myles scrambled to his feet, his drunk smile suddenly pale and nervous, hands raised. "Hey, hey, Keaton, man, I'm sorry about that. I know you hate the crude stuff. Let's get back to business, okay?" He snapped his fingers at the others without looking at them. "Derek, Owen, get him out of here. Go deal with your wounds, Brandon."

Derek and Owen hauled the bleeding man up by his arms and dragged him from the room.

Keaton didn't say another word. He gave Myles one long, flat look, the kind that said we're not finished, and then he turned and walked out of the room too.

Harper stepped out of the small room into the hallway. Her head buzzed, like she'd just surfaced from a dive too deep.

Behind her, Valentina was cursing in two languages. "That lying, filthy, cheating—I'm going to have his head on a plate. I'm going to burn his company to the ground."

A large figure stepped into the hallway and blocked the way.

Harper looked up.

Keaton.

Up close, he was even more overwhelming. His eyes were dark and steady, and for the first time she noticed they weren't cold at all. Something in them looked almost... pained.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice quiet and rough. "I'm sorry you had to hear that. But I wanted you to know the truth." He held her gaze. "You deserved to hear it from him, Harper. I'm sorry."

Behind her, Valentina grinned, wiped a stray tear of fury from her cheek, and pushed forward.

"See?" she said. "This is the friend."