📖 The Story Continues
The story doesn't end here.Continue reading the full story adaptation below and discover what happens next.
How to Tame a Silver Fox – Episode 05
By the time Chris drove Harper home, the rain had eased, but her nerves had not. She sat wrapped in his shirt with the party supplies at her feet, replaying every embarrassing moment since he had appeared. The night was supposed to transform her social life, not resurrect a man from her childhood and turn him into a problem she could not ignore.
Music reached them before the house came fully into view. Cars lined the street, colored lights flashed behind the windows, and silhouettes crowded every room. Harper’s little kickback had grown while she was gone.
She tried to see the crowd as proof that her plan was working. “You might actually make friends tonight, Harper,” she murmured, holding on to the hope that had made all the effort worthwhile.
Chris stared at the house with mounting disbelief. “This is a small kickback?” The hard line of his mouth made clear that he was not impressed by her definition.
“Looks like a goddamn circus in there,” he added. People spilled near the entrance with plastic cups in hand, and the bass made the vehicle vibrate.
Harper gathered the alcohol, already bracing for an argument. If she could get inside quickly, perhaps Chris would decide his favor to Mark ended at the curb.
“Does your dad know about that?” he asked. The question found the rawest part of her before she had time to defend it.
“Maybe if my dad actually bothered to visit, I’d give a shit what he thinks.” The words came out sharper than she intended, but she did not take them back. Mark could not disappear for months and still control her life from a distance.
Chris regarded her in silence. She hated that he had heard the hurt beneath the anger, and she hated more that he knew her father well enough to understand it.
“But he doesn’t live here,” Harper continued. She opened the door and looked back at Chris with deliberate finality. “And neither do you.”
“Yeah, about that.” His calm reply stopped her halfway out of the vehicle.
Harper slowly turned. Chris’s expression carried the certainty of someone delivering a decision already made elsewhere. “I live here now.”
For a moment, she thought she had misheard him. The house was hers while she finished school, her one private place beyond her father’s reach. Chris could not simply step into it because Mark had decided she required supervision.
“He put me in charge,” Chris said. The statement confirmed every fear rising inside her: her father had not only sent someone to collect her but had installed him in her home.
Chris looked toward the party again. His protective concern hardened into command. “And I’m kicking everyone out.”
Harper forgot her anger in the face of immediate disaster. If Chris stormed inside and emptied the house, everyone at Yale would remember her as the pathetic transfer student whose guardian had shut down her party.
“Wait—Chris, no, please.” She stepped in front of him, forcing him to meet her eyes. Pride made begging painful, but loneliness hurt more.
“This might be my only chance to make friends,” she admitted. Music thundered behind her, promising belonging on the other side of the door, while Chris stood before her with the power to destroy it. His expression shifted, but Harper could not tell whether she had reached him before he made his choice.
