Chapter 66: Five Minutes of Peace

Harper’s POV

The parking lot was only a short walk away. Justin reached into his pocket for his keys. Then stopped. He looked at me. I looked at him. Neither of us moved.

"I don’t want to go home yet," I said. The words came out before I’d even decided to say them.

Justin smiled slowly. "I was hoping you’d say that."

I raised an eyebrow. "You were?"

"I’ve had enough drama for one day," he said simply.

"So have I," I admitted.

A comfortable silence settled between us, the kind that didn’t need filling. Then my stomach growled. Not quietly. Loudly. The kind of sound that had absolutely no business coming out of a person standing in a public parking lot.

I covered my face immediately. "Oh my God."

Justin burst out laughing, the full kind that reached his eyes. "Was that your stomach?"

"No," I said.

"It absolutely was."

"It was a truck," I said firmly, with as much dignity as I could manage.

He looked around the empty parking lot. "Harper."

"What?"

"There are no trucks."

I sighed. "I want a burger."

His eyes lit up like I’d just said the most wonderful thing he’d heard all day. "I knew I liked you."

I blinked. "What?"

"I want one too," he said simply.

I stopped walking. "Aren’t you an athlete?"

"I am," he confirmed.

"Aren’t you supposed to eat grilled chicken and broccoli around the clock?"

Justin looked genuinely offended. "Harper. I have eaten meal-prep chicken six days in a row." He held up six fingers. "Six consecutive days. I deserve fries. I deserve seasoning. I deserve to taste something that reminds me food is supposed to bring joy."

I laughed so hard I had to grab his arm to stay balanced. "You sound traumatized."

"I am traumatized," he said seriously. "I dream about condiments."

"What happened to discipline?" I asked.

He considered this for a moment. "I have discipline," he said, nodding solemnly. "But I also have taste buds. Both things can exist simultaneously."

I shook my head, still laughing. He held out his hand. "Burger?"

I slipped my fingers into his. "Burger."

Twenty minutes later, we were sitting in a little diner just off campus. Nothing fancy. Red vinyl booths, laminated menus with photographs of the food, the warm smell of grilled onions hanging comfortably in the air. The kind of place that had probably looked exactly the same for thirty years and was completely unbothered by that fact.

Justin took one enormous bite of his burger the second it arrived. He chewed slowly. Closed his eyes. Then let out a long, deeply satisfied sigh.

I stared at him. "Are you communing with it?"

"I’ve missed this," he said solemnly, eyes still closed.

"You’re talking to your burger," I said.

"I’m acknowledging it," he corrected, opening one eye. "There’s a difference." He stole a fry off my plate without looking down. "This is love. Real, unconditional love."

I shook my head. "You are genuinely ridiculous."

"So I’ve been told," he replied, completely unbothered, stealing another fry.

I pointed at him. "Those are mine."

"I’m sampling," he said pleasantly.

"You have your own fries."

"Mine taste different." He gestured vaguely. "Different energy."

I opened my mouth to argue and then just laughed instead, because there was no winning this conversation and I didn’t actually mind losing it. For the first time all day, my shoulders were exactly where they were supposed to be. No whispers following me down hallways. No anonymous posts. No Diane standing in a parking lot with an envelope. No Ethan with his hand around my wrist. Just a red booth and grease and someone stealing my fries like it was his full-time job.

Halfway through my meal, my phone buzzed on the table. I glanced down out of habit. A banking notification. I recognized the amount immediately and looked up at Justin.

He was cheerfully stealing another fry and studying the ceiling.

"Justin," I said.

"Hmm?" He didn’t look at me.

"You sent it again."

He looked up, the picture of perfect innocence. "Sent what?"

"You know exactly what," I said.

"Oh." He took another bite. "That."

I crossed my arms. "We talked about this."

"We did," he agreed.

"And?" I pressed.

He tilted his head thoughtfully. "You bought me gifts. Very thoughtful ones. I thought maybe we were even." He shrugged one shoulder. "Then I remembered it’s Thursday."

I stared at him. "That is your entire explanation."

"It’s a solid one," he said.

"It is not," I replied.

He smiled. I sighed and leaned forward slightly, lowering my voice. "Justin. I still have almost twenty thousand dollars sitting in my savings account. I haven’t touched most of what you’ve already given me."

"I know," he said.

I blinked. "You know?"

He nodded slowly. "Good. That means you’re saving it." He held my gaze steadily. "If spending it makes you happy, spend it. If saving it makes you feel secure, save it. It’s yours either way. No conditions. No expectations."

My throat tightened. Every time someone had given me something in my life, there had eventually been a reminder attached. A price. A condition. A moment when the person decided to hold it over me. Justin just sat there across a diner booth, looking completely untroubled, like the money was the most straightforward thing in the world.

"I still don’t know how to get used to this," I admitted quietly.

"You don’t have to get used to it," he said, reaching across the table and covering my hand with his. "You just have to let me take care of you sometimes."

I smiled. "And let me take care of you too."

"You already do," he said immediately.

I looked up. "I do?"

He nodded. "You listen. You believe in me when I’ve stopped believing in myself. You remind me to sleep when I’m spiraling. You force me to drink water."

I laughed. "I do not force you."

"You absolutely do," he said. "Last Tuesday you texted me, ’please hydrate, you play better when you’re not a raisin.’"

I covered my face. "I forgot about that."

"I screenshot it," he said. "I’m keeping it forever."

I shook my head, laughing into my hands. He gently pulled one hand away from my face and held it. "See? You’re already doing it. You’ve been doing it for weeks and you haven’t even noticed."

I looked at him across the small table, warm light, good food, the comfortable noise of a diner that didn’t know or care who either of us was.

Maybe he was right. Maybe taking care of someone didn’t always look like grand gestures. Maybe sometimes it looked like a text about hydration and showing up and staying.

A notification appeared across my screen. TikTok. Then Instagram, two seconds behind. I glanced down, curiosity winning before common sense could stop it. Someone had recorded the confrontation outside Professor Silas’s building. The whole thing. Ethan grabbing my wrist. Justin’s voice. His hand on his phone. Ethan letting go and walking away. The comments were flying past faster than I could read them.

Justin handled that perfectly.

Leave Harper alone.

How many times is she supposed to reject this man?

The anonymous account suddenly makes a lot more sense.

Someone had edited dramatic orchestral music over the clip. Another person had turned Ethan’s final expression into a meme with a caption I couldn’t read without laughing despite myself.

I covered my face. "Why does everyone record everything?"

Justin chuckled quietly. "It’s the internet. Everyone wants to be first."

"I hate it," I said.

"I know." He leaned over. "Anything interesting?"

I handed him the phone. He scrolled for a moment. Then suddenly laughed, the sharp surprised kind. "You’ve got to be kidding me."

"What?" I asked.

He turned the screen toward me. Ethan had commented on the video.

I’m not pathetic. You don’t know the full story.

The replies underneath were immediate and merciless.

She rejected you in 4K.

Brother, let it go.

This comment isn’t helping your case.

You’re proving their point.

I stared at it for a second before the laughter came, quiet and helpless. Justin shook his head. "He really thought commenting would fix it."

I locked the phone and pushed it to the side of the table. "Let’s stop reading," I said.

He nodded. "We’ve got bigger things to worry about anyway."

"The scouts," I said.

"My documentary," I added.

"Our collective sanity," he offered.

I smiled. "Our sanity definitely."

For a few easy minutes, everything felt normal. Uncomplicated. Just the two of us in a booth, the diner noise around us, the easy back and forth of a conversation that didn’t require anything from either of us except showing up.

Then Justin’s phone vibrated against the table. He glanced down. The smile disappeared from his face so quickly it was like watching a light switch off. His jaw tightened. His shoulders pulled back. He stared at the screen without moving.

I frowned. "Justin?"

He didn’t answer immediately.

"What’s wrong?"

He swallowed once. Then looked up at me slowly, something shifting behind his eyes that I couldn’t quite read.

"It’s Coach," he said quietly.