Snow Storm

Chapter 7

Harley

It didn’t take long for Harley to get comfortable. It was clear several members of the staff knew who he was—likely from the video and not from his books—but they were kind about it. No one brought it up, he hadn’t been asked to talk about it, and apart from a few side-eyes, he didn’t feel overly judged. It was the best he could have hoped for.

His body was tense again by the next morning though. The massage had been wonderful—the masseur even better—but it hadn’t cured him of the pain he was holding in his body. He still had tiny sparks of mortification coursing through his veins every time he thought about Ethan.

He had no regrets about walking away from the reader, but to lose control like that? It wasn’t just humiliating—it was terrifying that he didn’t know himself well enough to have stopped it before his fist flew. More than one person had told him that Ethan deserved it, and maybe he had. But Harley never wanted to be that man.

Now, he was fighting the urge to sell everything he owned and become a total hermit so he’d never be in that position again. He could do it. If he lived small and frugal, he could stretch his investment and his inheritance for the rest of his natural life. And that was starting to sound pretty good.

Wes would likely never forgive him, but it did mean he’d never risk having to run into Darren ever again, and that was a giant bonus. He felt a little like he was losing his mind.

He’d been cooped up in silence for too long. He’d taken breakfast in his room that morning and had intended on staying there until his massage, but he realized being alone with his thoughts was not the best idea. His body was tense and uncomfortable, and while it was colder than Satan’s balls outside, a walk sounded nice. And, at the very least, the cold would distract him from the hurricane of emotions he was currently fighting off.

As he made his way to the back doors and toward the hiking path, he was almost knocked to his knees by a wave of grief. He missed his dad. He would have loved the ranch. He would have been making friends with every member of the staff and booking every spa service they had. He would have said yes to Christmas tree lighting and holiday cookies and charades. He would have been able to pull Harley out of his head.

He would have had all the right words to make Harley feel like he wasn’t a total disaster.

Maybe. Probably.

There was a chance Harley was idolizing his father a bit more than he should have been now that he was gone, but he couldn’t help it. His father was the only person who had ever believed in him. Losing that had been hard. He could live without having Darren in his life. He knew he was better off without him.

But Darren’s exit wasn’t the reason for the gaping hole in his chest.

Turning the corner, Harley stepped off the deck and into the snow. It wasn’t deep enough to need snowshoes, but it was bright enough for his shades. He dug them out of his pocket, and when he could see again, he realized the path he was on was going to take him toward a massive barn.

Cattle, the woman from the front desk had told him. He couldn’t remember what kind until he got a little closer to the fence and saw several big, fluffy, amber-colored heads poking up from one of the snowbanks.

“Oh my God, is that—” he said aloud.

“Highland cattle,” came a voice to his right.

He spun so fast he nearly tripped over his own feet. The woman from the front desk—Aminah—was hunched up in a thick coat, the hood pulled tightly over her forehead. “Sorry. I didn’t realize you were out here.”

“I was just checking on those two,” she said. She gestured with a gloved hand, and he managed to make out two figures off in the distance. “Lyric and Sam were making sure the barn’s secure for the night. We’re expecting some back-to-back storms over the next day or so.”

He glanced over at Lyric, but he hadn’t met Sam yet. He looked strangely familiar. Almost like…

“He’s my brother,” Aminah said, clearly reading his face. She laughed. “And he’s nice, but he’s also a giant pain in my ass.”

Harley flushed. He had no idea how transparent he was until he’d come up here, and he wondered if maybe it was just a side effect of fresh mountain air instead of city smog. He didn’t mind it so much, but he wasn’t used to being called out like this either.

“Younger?” Harley chanced.

She snorted. “Older.”

“Oh. I know the feeling,” he told her, and she swayed close to him and leaned her elbows on the fence. “It must be nice to be close though.”

“It can be. It makes being stuck here in the winter a little less lonely. I’d be fine with just Lyric, but my family’s really big and close, so it was hard to give that up when Claude asked me to move onto the property.”

“Was it worth it?”

She tilted her head to the side. “Curious, or are you taking notes for a character?”

His flush deepened. “Right now, I’m curious, but I can’t promise I won’t use it later. I—I don’t mean to be rude or anything. I just like writing about the human condition. Not that it’s a condition . I just mean?—”

She held up a hand, laughing softly. “Relax. I get it. I was just teasing you.”

Harley’s shoulders deflated. “Sorry. I’m, ah…not the best with social or conversational cues. It’s a thing .”

“You’re good, I promise. No one here needs your social media face or whatever. This is a place where people come to escape all that.”

Harley shoved his hands into his pockets, and his gaze moved back out toward the cattle. He wished he could get closer, but he was also terrified of animals that were much larger than him. They could kill him with a single well-placed kick. Or, like Wes had said, it would be just his luck to get gored to death by one of their massive horns.

“I like it here,” he eventually said. “It’s relaxing. I have to face the music when I get home, but it’s nice to be able to forget for a while.”

Aminah hummed as she leaned forward and rested her arms on the fence. “Feel free to tell me to screw off, but?—”

“Why did I freak out at the book signing?” He had a feeling that question was coming, and he couldn’t help but feel grateful the first person who asked about it was her. Aminah wasn’t like a lot of the strangers he came across. She was kind without expectation, soft-spoken, which set him at ease, but she also had the look of someone who didn’t take shit.

He needed more of that in his life.

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “I wasn’t going to ask it like that…but yes. You don’t seem like the kind of man who flies into a violent rage for no reason. Are you doing okay from whatever set that off?”

Harley let out a puff of air, watching the steam billow in front of his face. There was the easy answer, and then there was the more complicated one. “My fianc—my ex -fiancé left me a few weeks ago,” he said quietly. “For the therapist we were seeing about how to better connect with each other.”

“Oh,” Aminah breathed out. “Wow. That’s…wow.”

Harley snorted. “Yeah. It happened right before the anniversary of my father’s death.” Those words were harder to say that morning since he was missing him so much. His throat felt hot and thick, and he swallowed against the sensation. “He was the only person I was really close to. He was the person I would have gone to after learning about Darren. But it feels like in the last year, my entire life has fallen apart. I just wanted some space to grieve, but my agent decided he didn’t give a fuck and threatened me with my contract. And when I was put in front of a room full of people, they broke all the rules regarding the questions they were allowed to ask. When Ethan told me to suck it up and apologize for walking away…it was too much.”

“Yeah,” Aminah breathed out. “I saw the video. I heard what he said.”

He glanced down at his feet. “I don’t even remember it, really. So much of it is a total blur. I remember feeling like I was going to pass out when he said—” He couldn’t get the words out. “I remember a feeling of panic. I remember wanting to run, but I couldn’t figure out which way to go. I don’t know why I hit him though. I wish I did because I never want to do something like that again.”

“Does it help to know that ninety percent of the world who saw that mess is on your side?” she asked.

He glanced at her and hated himself for shaking his head, but she’d been kind and deserved the truth. “The other ten percent is always louder. Their cruelty is more profound than the kindness I’ve experienced. I want to pretend like I can’t see it, like I can’t read what people post about me online. I haven’t looked since I got here, but…I don’t know. Maybe this was the wrong job for me.”

“It didn’t used to be like this,” she said. When he looked surprised, she laughed. “My grandmother wrote romance novels. Like, the kind with Fabio on the covers in the seventies.”

Harley choked. “Really?”

Aminah shrugged, smiling a little. “Yeah, she did. And she made good money, but also no one knew who she was. She used a very white Western European pen name, and she made enough to invest and pay all her grandkids’ college tuition. She gave me and Lyric a down payment for our house.”

Harley startled. “You don’t live here?”

She laughed. “Oh, we do. Lyric loves it out here now more than I do, so Claude is letting us build a house on the far side of his land. That way, we can stay close but have a place of our own.”

“Claude?” He’d heard that name once before, but for a moment, he couldn’t place it.

“The owner.” Right, yes. The owner. “He’s—oh, there he is.” She pointed off into the distance, and Harley squinted. It took him a second, but then he saw a man in a fluffy dark jacket and beanie moving along a dark path. He was in a wheelchair, so he had to be the man who almost knocked Harley on his ass when he first arrived.

He couldn’t see his face, but something about him seemed kind. And almost a little familiar.

“It must be nice to work for someone like that.”

“He’s a good guy,” Aminah said. “Sad a lot. He had a shitty ex-wife, so he probably understands your woes.”

“Did she sleep with their therapist?” Harley wondered aloud, then regretted it because that wasn’t his business what the man’s ex did.

But Aminah answered him anyway. “No. She fucked his TA in his office. He used to be a professor before he inherited this place. He lost everything when it happened, and he’s sworn off the whole love thing for good. I think he’s on the path to becoming some reclusive mountain man.”

“I don’t blame him,” Harley said, thinking about his current plans to scout out some caves to build himself an intricate home beneath the earth. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he realized it was his alarm for his appointment with Daniel. His heart kicked up a notch, and he felt a wave of anticipation, but in the best way. “Sorry, I have to go.”

“Big meeting?” she asked with a smile.

He shook his head. “Massage.”

At that, her expression fell. “Oh. Did no one tell you? Daniel broke his arm yesterday morning. All the massage appointments were canceled.”

Harley had taken two steps away, and he could feel his heart beating in his throat. “Um. What? When was this?”

“Kind of early. Right around eight or nine, I think. I’m so sorry no one told you.”

“No, it’s…” He licked his lips. If Daniel broke his arm, who the hell was the man in his room because that happened much later. “That’s…well, that’s fine, but who did my massage yesterday morning?”

“What do you mean?”

Fear crept up Harley’s spine. “Well, a man who introduced himself as Daniel came into my spa room and gave me a very lovely massage. It was right around eleven. And he had me book an appointment the same time for today. So…who was that?”

“What did he look like?” she asked in a tense voice.

“Dark silver hair with a young face, pretty eyes. Big shoulders.” One of the most gorgeous men I’d ever laid eyes on , he added to himself, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. Especially now that he was wondering if some stranger had come and put his hands all over Harley. God, that would be just his luck. “Oh, and an accent? I thought it was maybe French? Am I missing something here?”

She let out a small breath. “I’m sorry. Did I say Daniel?”

He nodded.

“I meant…uh, Fred.”

He blinked at her. “Fred?”

“Yes. Fred. He broke his arm yesterday morning. Daniel is totally fine. I forgot he was on the property this weekend doing massages. It’s been kind of hectic since Da—uh, Fred broke his arm.”

Harley didn’t buy it. But what reason did she have to lie? “Okay,” he said slowly.

“Why don’t you head down to the spa to get ready, and I’ll send Daniel a text and let him know you’re on your way.” She already had her phone out, her thumbs flying over the screen. “I hope you have a nice session, Harley. Thanks for chatting.”

It was a dismissal if Harley had ever heard one. And yeah, he was shit at social cues, but he definitely got that one, and he quickly turned on his heel, heading back to the hotel in hopes of figuring out what the hell was going on.