How to Tame a Silver Fox – Episode 69
Chris’s flight left before sunrise. Harper drove him to the airport in his own vehicle, partly because she wanted the extra hour and partly because surrendering the driver’s seat had become their private measure of progress.
His luggage fit into one suitcase and a carry-on. The apartment above the club remained furnished, evidence that Paris was an assignment rather than an escape.
At the terminal, Chris checked the departure board twice and Harper’s face more often. Neither mentioned that this was the first separation they had chosen while wanting to stay together.
“Passport?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Company files?”
“Encrypted.”
“Unrequested bodyguards hidden near my house?”
Chris hesitated half a second too long. Harper narrowed her eyes until he admitted one patrol would remain on the public street for the first week.
“Cancel it.”
He sent the message in front of her. Letting go had become a series of small, verifiable acts rather than one grand promise.
They reached security with twenty minutes remaining. Around them, travelers performed ordinary goodbyes without knowing how extraordinary normal departure felt to Harper.
Chris touched the necklace Caroline left her. “Call when you need me.”
“I’ll call when I want you too.”
His smile carried pride and loss together. “Better.”
Harper kissed him beneath the departures sign. No cameras waited, no father interrupted, and no danger turned affection into urgency.
When boarding was announced, Chris walked away without looking back until he reached the security line. Then he turned, abandoning every attempt at dignity.
Harper remained until he disappeared from view. The ache in her chest did not mean the choice was wrong; it meant leaving mattered.
Outside, rain had begun to fall. She stood beneath the terminal awning and remembered another wet night when she called her father because she believed she could not get home alone.
This time she opened the car herself. A message arrived before she started the engine: Already miss you. Still not sending the bodyguard.