Chapter 2

Brayden

It all came rushing back to me. As soon as I saw that hair, I knew who she was. It was that shade of ash-blonde that women spent hundreds to get, but there was no way you could buy that cloud of natural curls. Harper had always been built like a buxom pixie. It was the first reason I’d been attracted to her in high school, but her personality soon magnified anything physical.

Harper was an enigma, half sunshine and half scientist. She could aggravate the piss out of me with her stubbornness. Maybe it was the challenge of dealing with her that made me so hot for her. I knew she didn’t do it on purpose; she never broke character. I knew because I’d tried. I took a lesson from psychology class in high school and tried to find a middle ground. She wasn’t one for middle anything; she wanted to win. The problem was that I did, too.

“Well, if it isn’t Brayden. What was your last name again? I seem to have forgotten.” She was smirking, and I could see that if anything, the old Harper had perfected the art of occupied disinterest.

“Campbell, Brayden Campbell,” Bernadette supplied obliviously.

Why won’t that horrid woman go away and let me talk to Harper?

“Oh, yes, Mr. Campbell. It’s been a few years,” Harper said, nodding with a smirk on that familiar face.

I could already feel the hardening in my pants. I’d never gotten into her pants, not after two years of dating in high school. I did all the things I thought I was supposed to: class ring, proms, homecoming, buying her flowers. It never got me to home plate and Jesus, but I’d wanted her. I’d had to sit in the back of the room in any class we shared just so no one would notice my woody.

I’d finally had all I could take of it. After all, I was the man, right? I balled Mary Ann Whittaker in the girls’ bathroom and took her to our senior homecoming. I knew Harper had taken it for granted that I’d invite her, and when I didn’t, she took pity on some loser just so she could have a date to shove in my face.

I remembered the look on her face that night. The gym was decorated with some corny, outdated Harry Potter theme. There were cardboard stand-ups of wizards and pitifully not-creepy ghosts and monsters everywhere. You couldn’t even dance without knocking them over. Black and dark gray crepe paper hung in strips from the ceiling so it felt like you were continually walking through curtains. It had been a royal pain.

I’d just bent to pick up yet another stand-up of Dumbledore when this tiny body came flying at me through the crepe paper strips—green eyes flashing fire and a string of unladylike curses raining down on me. I’d had to pick her up off the floor to get her to quit kicking me. I’m not sure what happened to Mary Ann Whittaker, but I carried Harper outside and plopped her in the damp, nighttime grass.

“Calm down!” I’d told her.

“To hell with you!” she shot back, not seeming to care who overheard. I was a senior so I didn’t give a shit what people thought, but she still had two more years to go. “What the fuck are you doing with that cow?” she’d demanded, springing to her feet and taking up a fighting stance with her feet spread wide and that hair all wild around her head. Whatever she’d spent at the beauty shop had been wasted.

“Harper, look. Things weren’t going anywhere with you, you know? I’ve got, well, needs.” I tried to explain it to her and at that moment, I hated all women.

“You dumped me because you can’t fuck me?” she’d screamed and I saw others gathering at the open door. I grabbed her hand and dragged her to my car. I had to pick her up again to stuff her inside, but she’d calmed down some by the time we reached the beach.

“Oh, no, you don’t. Not our place,” she growled, eyeing the stretch of sand that led to our little grotto in the side of a dune. We’d spent so many nights there, but never did the deed. I’d gotten her bra off and my hands couldn’t stop pumping those magnificent tits. But she never let me in.

“You’ve got a problem, you know that?” I’d told her.

“Me? You’re like a dick in size thirteen gym shoes. You think I don’t notice? You think I don’t see it right there in class?” she’d accused.

“Jesus, Harper, that’s what guys do! Girls know that. I mean, what the hell? You spend hours getting prettied up and then freak out if a guy lays a hand on you. What the hell?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” she’d muttered, crossing her arms over her bountiful chest.

“Really? Then perhaps you’ll be so kind as to tell me how it does work.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Don’t change… oh, shit, Harper. Do what you want. You will anyway. Hit me, cuss at me, kick me in the balls. In fact, please kick me in the balls. I need pain right now to get rid of this ache.”

Her eyes had shot to my crotch, and she could see I was turned on. She shook her head, like I was being some crass caveman or something. What does she expect?

Instead, something kind of unexpected came out of her mouth. “I can’t, don’t you see that?” she’d asked me, her tone sort of pitiful.

“I guess not,” I said, crossing my arms. It was my turn to wear that stance.

She got out of the car and ran down the beach, headed to our spot. Naturally, I followed her. I mean, shit, I was hard and emotions were running high. Maybe this would be the night.

She was huddled in the shallow, carved-out spot in the dune. The winds changed its shape continually, but somehow, it had always been just deep enough for our two bodies. I plopped down next to her and ripped off the bow tie of my rented tux, tossing it toward the waves. “Okay, so tell me.”

She didn’t say anything for a few minutes. We both needed to let our blood cool. I guess we sensed it was one of those “last time” kind of conversations.

That was the first time I noticed what she was wearing. Harper never did things conventionally. Her dress was more of a two-piece thing, all filmy and her slender middle was bare. It looked like something out of I Dream of Jeannie. Her tits were spilling out of the top, and I knew an ocean’s worth of cold water couldn’t help me then. Her voice brought me back.

“I can’t do it,” she was saying.

“Why?”

“Because.”

It was going to be one of those conversations. “Why not, Harper? Everyone does it.”

“Not me.”

“I noticed.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You and Miss Cow got it on already, I suppose?”

I didn’t say a word. In later years, I tried to remember that silence was the worst thing you could not say to a woman. It condemned you to instant guilt.

She rolled to her knees and confronted me. “You ass! You did, didn’t you?”

I was a dead man. They would find my body the next morning, still in my tieless tux and assume I’d gotten drunk and drowned. Maybe I’d have a leg missing, like in the old, original Jaws. Harper would wear something odd, like a sombrero covered with flowers, and people would think she had gone mad with grief. She’d get away with it, though. She always did. “Well, god damn it! I’m no saint, Harper. I’m a senior, almost ready to start college! You sure as hell can’t expect me to take a vow of god-damned abstinence! It’s not healthy to store it all up!”

“I thought guys, well, you know, had ways?”

It took me a second to figure what she was talking about. “You mean to fuck another girl or to jack off?”

She’d just stared at me. The words were out and then I could tell she was surprised. Maybe she gets it? Was she finally seeing it from my point of view? Shit! Was that even possible?

“I can’t fall in love with you because you’re leaving,” she’d said, almost in a whisper, which might have been louder if it hadn’t been for the sound of the waves. “I won’t have a fighting chance. You’ll go to college and find someone, or a dozen someones, and I’ll be left here holding the broken heart.”

“Oh, shit, Harper, is that what this has been all about? I’m not leaving you!”

“Oh, really? What about Miss Cow?”

She’d had me there. The condoms in my wallet were a dead giveaway. I’d hoped that when that shark took off my leg, he’d take the wallet, too. That would have been embarrassing.

That was when she must have cold-cocked me, because when I came to, Harper was on her knees before me. Her top was missing and my face was filled with nipples and breasts. “Does Miss Cow offer these?” she’d asked, cupping her breasts and holding them out to me in offering. I hadn’t been unconscious. I think my mind just blocked what it couldn’t believe was happening.

I’d pulled her toward me and fallen into those incredible gifts. I’d gotten little tastes before, but nothing like the full-out offering she was giving me then. I’d fed on her, sucking the nipples until they looked ready to burst, even in the moonlight. I’d ripped off my tux jacket, followed by the pin-tucked girly shirt I’d hated. I’d wanted to feel her skin against mine. Jesus, but she’d felt good.

I’d spotted those gauzy pants while looking over her shoulder. It would have been so easy to rip them off and finally get what I’d wanted since the day I’d seen her, a fresh-faced pixie walking into the gym with the ninth-grade girls’ gym class. I knew what she would taste like. It was killing me and there was just one god-damned sheer curtain between me, and that.

“Harper…” I’d begun, and she sprang to her feet, out of my reach, those beautiful tits high and proud.

“I knew you’d go there, you ass. You’ve only got one thing on your mind,” she’d accused me. “You can’t stay true to me at college, and I’m not some whore toy you can play with until you go away!” She’d rotated in the sand before me and began her best stomping toward the car.

I’d cussed, pulled myself together, and caught up to her. “Where’s your top?” I’d asked.

“I threw it toward the water,” she shouted and I hesitated, deliberating whether it was better to hunt down her top or stay with her. I’d decided on the latter and put the tux jacket over her naked shoulders and chest, all the while dreading my dad’s anger since he’d have to pay for the whole tux. Women were just too much trouble.

Harper hadn’t spoken to me as I took her home, wearing my jacket as she flounced into her house. She’d never spoken to me again… until now.

All those memories had flitted through my head in what seemed like an hour, but had only been a few moments. I’d never gotten her out of my head. I’d always regretted that last night. She was like that song you couldn’t get out of your brain, playing over and over until you thought you would go mad. I never found anyone like her again. Never.

Now, there she was, that impudent pixie face having filled out to that of a well-chiseled, beautiful woman. She was daring me, waiting for what I would say. I knew she wanted an apology. I couldn’t do that, not there in the lobby of the resort I’d fought off hell to own. Certainly, not in front of a woman who looked like a harpy and was apparently Harper’s boss. I shuddered at the thought.

I answered her finally. “Yes, Harper, it has been a long time, a very long time. You look wonderful. What if we meet in the Cabana bar at ten and catch up?”

I saw her head begin to turn, as if she was going to ask Bernadette for permission. She caught herself just in time and never even gave the black-haired woman a look. “I’d love to,” she said, and they moved away, blending in with the crowded lobby.