Chapter Three
HARPER
It takes me several minutes to gather myself together under the Huntington Beach Pier. The city is coming to life now. Dawn has come and gone while I was having a personal crisis and the streets are alive with foot and car traffic. Horns honk, people are laughing, bikes whiz by on the path. Even some early-morning beachgoers are present now. A game of volleyball is just starting up near the steps that lead to Pier Plaza.
I stand and start making my way up the beach, sand scratching my skin inside my wet clothes. I drag the tank over my head so I’m just in my sports bra.
That was not sexual. That was… an attack. That’s it.
It felt sexual though. He said some very sexual things, even if all he did was steal a kiss.
I take a deep breath and deal with my bare feet as I reach the cement. Having to walk the streets barefoot grosses me out to no end. I don’t mind no shoes on the sand, or the deck of a boat, or inside my own home. But anywhere else—gross. I climb the steps that bring me to street-level Pier Plaza, looking down Main Street.
I cross Pacific Coast Highway and head north one block, dodging bikers and early-morning joggers, and then turn right on Fifth Street, towards the police station. I live across the street. Well, not exactly across. The Mexican restaurant in front of my building is kitty-corner to the HBPD, but it’s close enough. And if my brother ever knew…
I allow myself a smile and a laugh. Even though my morning sucked and some guy sexually assaulted me—but you liked it, Harp. You know you did—my brother would die laughing if he knew I was living right across the street from the cops.
Cops in HB drive cars, sure. This city is more than the beach. But they have their share of shorts-clad hot men riding beach cruisers, too.
And there are several of them standing outside the station drinking coffee when I walk past. I make a point of ignoring them completely. I’m definitely not in the market for a cop and the last thing I need is for one of them to take notice of me.
Not that they would. I’m the invisible girl—except in the case of one very beautiful green-eyed man.
I try my best to be as unattractive as possible. My hair is never styled, pony-tails only. I never wear makeup. I’m tanned and my hair has bleached strands that make it look like I spend a fortune dying it in fancy salons. But I can’t help any of that. That’s just the natural me.
Mr. Beautiful is the kind of man everyone notices. Tall—my chin only came up to his shoulders. Dark, yes. But with those brilliant green eyes, it made his brand of dark more exotic than most. And he was hard.
I mentally shake myself for that Freudian slip. His muscles were hard. And thick.
But he was hard in that other way, too.
He was solid. And strong. And for those few moments when he was holding me there underneath him, gently cupping the back of my head to keep the rushing water from overtaking me as we regained our breath… he was everything I’m looking for. And everything I should run from.
I cross the street at the Mexican place, then walk to the side yard where a six-foot wooden gate stands guard for the building behind. I work the latch, which is some stupid rope contraption that pulls a lever on the other side, and then enter the walkway that leads to the hidden apartment building.
Only four people live back here. Two people live in the small studio apartments that divide up the ground floor. One older man lives in the second-floor penthouse—which is a relative term, since it’s only two stories tall, but whatever. And me. I live in the garden-level apartment. Better known as the basement.
Even though I’m the only one on this level, I share the space with the building laundry, so my place is small. Only a half-galley kitchenette, a bathroom, and the living room that does double duty as a bedroom.
If Beautiful had his way, he’d be fucking me here tonight.
God. Where did that come from?
He did get his way, Harper. He got your name.
I shake my head and enter the building, walk past the laundry and into the mechanical room where I keep my key. I carry nothing on my person when I leave here. No phone, no key, no ID. When I leave this building, I am nobody. I cease to exist.
It’s like that thought experiment—if a tree falls in the woods… If a girl is not noticed, does she still exist?
I grab my stashed key behind the hot water heater and make my way to my door. Zero is my number. For mail and stuff, my address. Zero is my spot in this world. And it’s so appropriate to be nothing, and not all in a negative way, either. I like being nothing.
I don’t mind being zero, because when I come home to this place, my little space of nothingness, I feel safe.
Being invisible. Being nothing—a zero. It’s good.
I’m not safe, of course. No one is ever safe. But I need the illusion, now more than ever. Because someone, after living here for eleven months—eleven long and lonely months of no friends, no family, and no hope of ever having a normal life again—someone wants to know me.
Not fuck me, although he did say that too. He ended the conversation with know me.
The apartment is nothing special, but it’s not infested with cockroaches so I count myself lucky. I looked for that before I moved in and paid my rent up front for one year. Cockroaches. No. That’s worse than bare feet on the street.
I have one more paid month and then decisions have to be made, because I’m out of money. This place might be small, have no ocean view, and be about the farthest thing from where I grew up. But it’s one block off PCH, one block from HB Main Street. It’s a five-minute walk to the sand. And it’s eighteen hundred dollars a month. The only way I’d be able to stay here after my pre-paid year is up is if I robbed a bank.
I’m not that desperate. Yet.
My phone vibrates on the counter and jolts me from my pity-party introspection. In a second my heart is racing again. Who the fuck? I walk over and pick it up just as the vibrating stops. ‘I know where you live.’
What? My heart is beating so fast, for a moment I think I might fall over and collapse. I stagger to a chair and sit down, gasping for air in short little bursts as the fear takes over. I lean over and put my head between my knees just as the phone vibrates again.
No. No. No. What’s happening?
But I can’t think straight. The only thing I hear are the staccato beats of my adrenaline-induced heartbeat.
The phone vibrates again and again, but I can’t move. I’m paralyzed with fear. I’m dead. I’m a dead girl. The phone vibrates again. I thought Beautiful was my killer, but he let me go. And now… this?
I rock. Back and forth.
I cry huge silent tears.
If they’ve found me, then my life is over.
I force myself to get up and stumble into the bathroom where I keep the pills. I haven’t used them in months. But that little white pill is calling my name. That little white pill is the only thing that will keep me from losing my mind right now.
The bottle shakes, making the pills clatter around inside, but I manage to get a few to fall into my open palm. I gulp a handful and then stick my mouth under the tap and slurp water to wash them down.
My phone is still ringing out on the counter, and even though I know the drug is not in my bloodstream yet, just the fact that I took the pills calms me. I breathe for stretches of minutes, and after some time, I am calm.
Thoughts of sleep jolt me from my slumped position on the bathroom floor, so I get up and walk into the living area where my bed is pushed up against the far wall to leave space for the chair and small coffee table. I grab the phone as I walk by and then fall on top of the messy bed, rolling around a little to get under the covers, and then close my eyes.
The phone rings and now that I’m relaxed, I can deal.
“I’m ready, motherfuckers,” I bark into the speaker. “Come get me if you know so much.”
“What?”
I sit upright as the voice of the beautiful man registers. “How did you get this number?”
“I’m the only one who’s coming, Harper.”
I press end on the phone and page through my missed calls. All him! That stupid asshole! They were all him! I go to the messages and begin reading.
‘Dinner’s at eight.’
‘Beach tacos or fancy view?’
‘Harper, I do not like to be ignored.’
‘I’ll just come over, I’m just down the street.’
That message was five minute ago. Before the call.
My phone rings again and I answer. “What do you want?”
“I asked you a question, I expect an answer,” he growls into the phone. I absently log the sound of people, cars, a siren that I can hear both inside my apartment as it leaks in from outside, and through the phone. He’s close by. Just outside my building, probably.
Is he one of them? I’m not sure. “I’m confused,” I confess, the anti-anxiety drug kicking into full force now, making me slur my words. My body falls back into the covers. My head is spinning and my eyes are heavy. “I’m so confused…”
“Harper?” Beautiful demands from my phone on the blankets. I reach down, fingertips feeling for it. My vision blurs as I bring it to my face and stare at the fuzzy keypad.
“Go away, Beautiful,” I whisper to the fading light. “You can’t see me. I’m invisible. You don’t want to know me. Because I’m no one. I’m zero.”