“Right,” he says, throwing the ball against our garage door, making it ring out loudly. “Like hell you didn’t.”

Grunting to myself, I shift the wood in my arms so I can hold it tightly to my chest, and I walk back around the corner of the house until I can see him. His eyes are different now. They’re…sad. But they’re angry, too. And it’s the shades of angry that won’t let me trust him.

“Really,” I say, coming to a stop a few feet away from him. “Like hell I didn’t. It was my dad. You kind of left a mess, and my dad doesn’t put up with bullshit.”

There’s stillness in the air after I tell him this, and I’m caught in it, my eyes unable to move away from his. He’s chewing at the inside of his cheek. His brow falls a little, and there’s a shift in his eyes, the sadness making room for the danger that usually lives there.

Willing myself to walk away, I let my weight shift, and I bring my lips into a tight smile and begin to turn on my heels.

“So who does your dad talk to late at night, out here in the driveway?” he asks, suddenly interested in my family.

“Uh…my mom. She works a lot of overnights. And my dad gets home late,” I say, realizing I have yet to see Owen’s mom—or anyone else in the Harper house.

“Right, that’s what I thought,” he says, and I turn with a shrug, really missing the warmth and easiness from just a few minutes ago inside. “But I meant the other times.”

Something about what he says—the way he says it—slams into my chest, and I halt, hugging the heavy wood even tighter, bits of the bark cutting into the palms of my hand.

“You know…” he continues, my back still to him. “Who does he talk to out here while your mom is asleep in bed? Those times.”

The tear surprises me, and my hands are full, so there’s no way I can stop it, so I let it slide down my face into the threads of yarn in my scarf.

“I bet it’s whoever drives that blue BMW I see parked here when I come home for lunch. I bet that’s who it is. Whoever…she is,” he says, every word purposely hurtful. I hear his feet shuffle toward his ball, and soon, it hits the ground again, only this time it’s dropped and discarded, rolling by my feet until it stops at the tire of my mother’s car. He’s casting one more stone, just to let me know who’s in charge. And for the first time since I’ve met Owen Harper, I’m willing to relent—he’s in charge. And his words just broke my tiny shred of happiness like a thin sheet of glass.

My arms ache from flexing with the weight of the wood, so I force my feet to climb the steps inside, and I busy myself with the fire, sparing a quick trip to the restroom to wash my hands, and wash my face of any trace of that one solitary tear.

By the time I come out of the bathroom, my mom has the fire roaring, and she’s holding out a mug for me, her smile innocent.

She doesn’t know. She can’t know.

Owen’s words—his hurtful, despicable, mean, purposeful words—are all I can hear through the next two hours of pointless television. I sit there next to my mom and feign our world is fine. If I could only shut off the sounds echoing in my head, I could maybe find a way to forget, to chalk this up to just some cruel prank.

But I can’t.

When my mom busies herself with housework, I turn to my piano, pulling out the books of sheet music I’m supposed to be memorizing—only now, it’s not just a thing I’m not interested in. Now it’s a thing I want to fight against doing with all I have. I open those pages and I see his face—my father’s face. I play those notes and I hear his voice, his expectations and condemnations for the music I like.

Playing from these books has quickly become a thing that represents something ugly. Something I realize I haven’t felt love for in a year, maybe more. Something disappointing. My father.

With a smooth stroke, I take my finger and push the loose sheets of music and the book behind them from the ledge to the floor, leaning to the side to see them slide in various directions. A mess—a beautiful, classical, fake mess.

My hands do as they wish, sliding into place, running smoothly over keys until notes blend into one another, sliding from one note to the next sloppily, while sad-sounding blues chords fill the giant dining room and foyer of my house.

My house. This fake house. This place he made me move.

I pound harder, playing runs, pausing to breathe and look out the window. Owen’s truck is framed perfectly by the picture window in our living room, the taillight like that of a lighthouse, guiding me to truth.