Chapter Twelve — The Breaking Point
523 Words
(Harper’s POV)
I avoid him for three days.
Not because I want to — because I have to. Every time I see him, I feel that same tug, like gravity itself is conspiring against me.
But Jace doesn’t make it easy.
He’s everywhere — in the kitchen making coffee when I come down, in the driveway helping Noah with the car, in my peripheral vision no matter how fast I walk the other way.
When I finally retreat to my favorite escape — the library downtown — I think I’m safe. I’m wrong.
He finds me in the aisle between fiction and poetry, leaning against the shelf like he belongs there.
“Are you seriously hiding from me in the library?” he asks.
I close my book sharply. “You make it sound ridiculous when you say it like that.”
“That’s because it is ridiculous.” He steps closer. “We need to talk.”
“About what? The part where you nearly kissed me and then walked away again?”
His jaw flexes. “You think this is easy for me?”
“Oh, right,” I snap, shoving the book back onto the shelf. “Because being treated like a secret project is so flattering.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“Then what is it, Jace?”
He exhales, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s complicated.”
“No,” I say, stepping closer, my voice shaking with all the words I’ve held in. “It’s only complicated because you make it complicated. You want me, but you don’t want to admit it. You pull me in, then push me away like I’m the one who crossed the line.”
He stares at me, silent, the tension between us stretching until it almost hurts.
Then—quietly, like it costs him—he says, “You’re not wrong.”
My heart lurches. “Then why keep fighting it?”
“Because if Noah finds out, I lose him. I lose you.”
The honesty in his voice hits me harder than any argument could.
For a long time, we just stand there in the dim aisle, breathing the same air, caught between what we want and what we shouldn’t.
Finally, I whisper, “You can’t keep doing this. You can’t keep running from me and expecting me to wait.”
He nods, eyes on the floor. “I know.”
“Then what do we do?”
He looks up, and for the first time, I see it—fear and hope tangled together. “I don’t know. But whatever it is, we can’t hide forever.”
Before I can respond, a librarian coughs loudly from the next aisle. We both flinch, stepping apart like guilty teenagers.
I grab my bag. “Then figure it out, Jace. Because I’m done pretending this doesn’t hurt.”
I walk past him, but as I reach the door, he says quietly, “Harper… I never meant to hurt you.”
I pause, just long enough to say, “You did anyway.”
And then I leave.
- Writer
