Chapter 33 "No." I lurched to my feet, too intent on stopping Harmony to care how it looked to Dean Carpenter. "You're not at fault. We are." I pointed at all three of us. Roberto and Stephen had stood as well, and they backed me up with the loyalty that had made us friends for so long. "Matthew's right. Harmony's not to be punished for what we did." Stephen fisted his hands. "We used our positions as her professors to our advantage." "Stop." Harmony's voice whipped out with the force of a lightning strike. I'd never heard that tone from her, but it showed her strength and range ... and her tenacity. That was what made her perfect on stage. She kept her distance, even backing up a step. Probably to stay out of arm's reach. "Harmony." The pleading note in Stephen's voice caused her to flinch, but she kept her focus on Dean Carpenter. "Don't do this." Stephen's defeat was hard to hear, and even harder to watch. Harmony gulped even as she locked her stance. "Don't make this any harder than it has to be." Tears sheened her eyes, but there was no reluctance in the look she gave us. "I refuse to be responsible for the destruction of your careers." "This isn't right." I faced Dean Carpenter. "Punish us. Hell, I'll quit on the spot." "No." Dean Carpenter's weathered face fell. He steepled his fingers and tapped them against his chin. "You're withdrawing from school?" Harmony's clipped nod brought a ragged gasp from Stephen. "I agree to your terms. You leave school and they keep their jobs." He stood and held out a hand toward Harmony. "I'm truly sorry." "I'm not." She shook his hand. "This has been the best year of my life, and I'm leaving with good memories. It's worth it for you to be able to keep them." I hated the way she inclined her head toward us but refused to meet our eyes. Was she afraid to? Afraid she wouldn't have the strength to give up her dreams if she had to see our reactions? Roberto touched her elbow with nothing more than a fingertip. "We need to talk about this." "There's nothing left to talk about." She turned on her heel and left the room. No goodbye. Nothing. I started to follow. "Sit, Matthew. I'm not finished with you three." The dean talked down to us like we were kindergarten students in trouble for breaking a rule. My chin jutted forward, and I very nearly ignored the demand. Stephen grabbed my arm and yanked me down. "Give her a minute." He hissed into my ear, too low for the dean to hear. He might have known what Stephen said anyway, just from the way we all reacted to her leaving. But I sat, and I managed not to curse the dean for accepting Harmony's deal. "I better not hear anything else about you three." He sat forward with his hands in his lap. It wasn't quite a power move, but it was meant to remind us of our place. Rumors could ruin us. And if we left here on bad terms, we might never teach again. I understood the threat, and the implications. And I was willing to give it all up if it meant we had Harmony in our lives. I wrapped both hands around my knee to keep from slamming them down on the chair arms. "It wasn't our intention to have this become a problem." "Meaning you thought you wouldn't get caught." Dean Carpenter huffed. "But you did, and you will if you ever do anything like this again. I'm going to make this absolutely clear. Do not mingle unprofessionally with any of your students. You are outstanding in your fields, so I would rather not fire you." I snorted without remorse. "You don't have to worry about it happening again." Harmony was the only woman for us. "Good to hear. Because I will fire you, even if I don't want to." He halfway stood and reached over the desk to shake our hands. "Get out of here." We shook hands, though it irritated me to no end to do it, and walked single file from the office. No one spoke until we stood outside, alone beneath one of the pavilions meant for the employees to use during breaks. Stephen halfway tore his hair out from the constant scraping of both hands across his scalp. Regret for the problems we'd put on Harmony drove me down onto one of the seats around the perimeter. Roberto sat across from me, on a matching bench in front of the metal table. "What now?" "We talk to Harmony." I ran my hands down my thighs to stop the prickling sensation my anger caused. Stephen turned a slow circle. "I don't see her around here. She probably went home." Home to the sorority house where everyone there would try and overhear our conversation. "How did this happen?" Roberto stood and stalked to the rail. Gripping it with both hands, he cursed loud and long. "We have to fix it. We promised to protect her." "We need to find her." I pushed up from the bench and headed down the sidewalk. It twisted between buildings and would eventually spit me out near the parking lot where Harmony usually left her car when she drove. Stephen and Roberto fell in step alongside me. We had nothing left to discuss. Nothing left at all except a deep, burning pain in our hearts. We'd made a mistake by not fighting harder. Dean Carpenter was too ambivalent toward our confession of fault. How dare he let an innocent student go down for us. A dozen cars were parked in the lot, and I recognized Harmony's right away. The dented fender and scratched paint were impossible to miss amid the newer models her peers drove. We hadn't asked about her life or her past. We barely asked about her dreams for the future. I planned on remedying that too. It was time we learned everything about Harmony. She sat in the driver's seat, her arms across the steering wheel and her forehead on her arms. The defeated posture was everything I'd been afraid of. I knocked on the window, anticipating her shock. What I wasn't prepared for was the cold mask she slipped on when she saw me. I'd never known Harmony to hide her emotions behind a wall like I did. It deepened the hurt as I realized we'd pushed her to this. She reached for the keys, and I opened the door, halfway surprised when it gave way beneath my hand. "Wait." I didn't touch her, but the pain in my voice cracked the exterior of her hard shell. "We feel terrible, Harmony. Please just talk to us. Tell us what's going on." "Why did you do that?" Roberto stood at my shoulder. He held the door open with one hand and dropped into a crouch. "Please don't." She swept her hair away from her face and stared straight ahead. "I've made up my mind. You all promised that if I said stop, you'd listen." When she tilted her head to look up at me, I lost the ability to do anything but stare. She'd called us out, right then and there. "We meant it, but this feels wrong. This feels bigger than you saying no." "It isn't. What we had was great. But it's over. I'm going home." Hands locked around the steering wheel, she gave us all a searching look. "You need to let me go. It's over." "Bullshit." Roberto stood. "I know we agreed to stop if you were uncomfortable, but Matthew's right. There's more going on here." "No." She squeezed the steering wheel tighter. "This is me saying goodbye. We had fun, but college isn't for me." "I thought you were taking a semester off," Roberto challenged. I almost told him to stop, that he was bordering on sounding more like a control freak than a lover, but he had a point. Harmony kept changing her story. She wanted nothing to do with us, but then she protected us when she could have let us take the reprimand. Who knew what Dean Carpenter would have ended up doing if we'd all denied the rumors. "This was never supposed to be anything more than sex." She cranked the car and jerked her head toward Stephen. "That's what we all agreed to." "What if we changed our minds?" Roberto was the first to say what I was sure all three of us were thinking. I'd given up trying to control my heart and the love that I held for Harmony. Would it make a difference if I told her? She'd never given any indication that she cared about us like that, and her cold stance now made it harder to admit I'd fallen in love. "You haven't. You feel guilty for what happened, and you're trying to make it right." She reached past Roberto to grasp the door handle. "Let it go. Let me go." An immediate no tore through me. "Where's home?" Surprise flashed in her expression before it closed off again. "Milwaukee." She tugged on the door, causing it to bump into Roberto. He locked his legs and stayed crouched in the open space. "I don't want you to go." The spunk I'd fallen in love with pulsed to life, but the way it came out crushed us all. "It's not about what you want. This is what I want." It felt like a lie, but all the times we'd promised her we wouldn't pressure her into anything she didn't want drove me back a step. "Harmony's made her choice. I don't agree with it, and it makes me mad as hell, but it's her choice. We have to honor it." I grabbed Roberto's shoulder and pulled him to his feet. Stephen had stopped talking, but heat radiated off him in angry waves. He took his time moving out of the way so I could drag Roberto backward. "If you change your mind, we'll be here." "I won't." It sounded so final, so uncaring, that I almost believed her. If I hadn't spent half a semester watching her perform on stage, and countless hours in the bedroom where her every emotion was on full display, I might have been fooled. The hint of hurt in her eyes gave me a glimpse of the truth. "You deserve to be here, Harmony. You're the most talented woman I've worked with in years. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. All those dreams of Broadway that you talked about, you can have them. Even if you never see or speak to us again, please trust me when I say that you are incredible, and the world deserves to hear your voice." She closed the door and locked it before putting the car in gear and backing up. Roberto tensed under my hand, the sudden motion causing me to tighten my grip before he ran after her. "Let her go." I squeezed his shoulder. "None of us are thinking straight right now. We need to take a little while and sort this out." No doubt her feelings were hurt because of Leighona's accusations. She was running, panicked and scared. And for whatever reason, she either didn't trust us enough to admit the truth or she was afraid of our reactions. I didn't care for any of those possibilities, but we were beating our heads against a brick wall by talking to her while we were all so keyed up. Stephen stalked away from the empty parking spot, turned, and walked back. "I can't believe this. What the fuck just happened?" "Harmony left us." It came out as shocked as we all looked. I continued to watch the parking lot exit, some part of me expecting her to come rolling back up and tell us it was all a mistake. A single mother returns to the city she left seven years ago after breaking up with her ex to seek treatment for her son’s leukemia. Upon learning of her return, the ex immediately searches for the lo...