How to Tame a Silver Fox Episode 12

📖 The Story Continues

The front door closed behind the last guest, leaving the house painfully quiet. Harper stood in the wreckage of her party with wet clothes, ruined hopes, and Chris’s warning still hanging in the air. “What the hell was that?” she demanded.

Chris faced her as though the answer should have been obvious. “She hurt you.” His anger had not faded; it had simply shifted into concern.

“Chris, I’m fine.” Harper wiped at her face and looked away. The movement only drew his attention to the tears she had failed to hide.

He came closer. Harper repeated herself, firmer this time. “Chris, I said I’m fine.” If she admitted otherwise, Christina would have taken more from her than a party and a few private pages.

“You’re crying.” Chris’s voice lost some of its edge. “Why are you crying?”

Harper almost laughed at the impossibility of explaining it. He saw two cruel women and a crowd that deserved to be thrown out. She saw the people she would have to face on campus after tonight.

“You wouldn’t understand.” Chris did not know what it was like to enter a room and feel invisible, or to measure every invitation against the fear of graduating without a single real friend.

“Those aren’t your friends, kid.” The hated nickname returned at the worst moment. “They just tried to hurt you.”

“I don’t need you to fight my battles for me.” Harper’s voice shook with anger now. She had needed help in the rain, but that did not give Chris the right to take over every conflict that followed.

He studied the soaked hair clinging to her face and the diary she held against her chest. To him, the evidence contradicted every claim that she could handle this alone.

“I’m not stupid,” Harper said. “I know they’re not my friends.” Speaking the truth aloud hurt more than Christina’s mockery had.

She had known, at least in part, from the moment Christina called her Heather. She had simply chosen the possibility of acceptance over the certainty of loneliness.

“But that was Christina Fawkes,” Harper continued. Chris’s expression hardened at the name, but she pushed on.

Christina was not merely another student. She was the queen of their school, the person who could decide whether Harper’s final year became bearable or socially impossible.

“You just embarrassed me in front of—” Harper began. Chris cut her off before she could finish.

“I’m going to stop you right there.” His tone returned to command, dismissing the hierarchy that governed Harper’s world.

“And she’s the queen of our school—” Harper tried again. She needed him to understand the consequences waiting beyond the walls of the house.

“I said stop.” Chris’s refusal landed like another locked door. Harper stared at him, furious that the man who defended her dignity in front of strangers would not let her explain what that defense had cost. The party was over, but the battle between them had only begun.