Never Been Tamed

Prologue and Chapters 1-3

Ares drives toward Infinity Ridge with one goal in mind: avoid conflict. He wants the quiet of his grandmother's house, a place to disappear without anyone asking questions. He wants to be anonymous, to exist without the weight of his own name pressing down on him, to sit in a room where nobody knows what he has done or what he has lost. The road, however, has other plans. A crash with an old man shatters that intention before he even arrives, forcing him into a dispute he cannot easily walk away from. The irony is not lost on him, even in the moment. He came here to escape conflict, and conflict found him before he even reached the town limits.

The old man is rattled, panicking in a way that tells Ares everything he needs to know. His hands shake. His eyes dart. He fumbles with his words like a man who has already calculated the cost of being caught. Ares wants the man to accept fault and exchange information, the normal steps after a fender bender, the kind of mundane interaction that should take five minutes and end with insurance cards and apologies. Instead, the old man offers him twenty dollars and a bakery coupon, fumbling for a way out, trying to make the problem disappear with pocket change and pastry. Ares recognizes the truth quickly: this man is likely driving without permission, maybe without a license, and any official report would bring down consequences far beyond a scratched bumper. The old man is not just afraid of a ticket. He is afraid of something larger, something that would unravel if the wrong person asked the wrong question. So Ares backs down. He takes the scratch on his car and leaves, choosing to avoid trouble rather than win a pointless argument. He tells himself it does not matter. It is just a car. It is just a scratch. But the decision sits uneasily in his chest, another small surrender in a life that has already seen too many.

But the accident refuses to stay small. The old man knows Ares's grandmother. In an instant, the collision becomes a small-town complication, one tied to his grandfather's reputation and the web of relationships Ares cannot escape no matter how far he drives. The old man says her name. He mentions the family. He connects Ares to a history that Ares thought he could leave behind. He came to Infinity Ridge to be anonymous. The town is already pulling him back into its orbit, and he has not even arrived yet. The scratch on his car is nothing compared to the weight of being known.

When Ares finally arrives at his grandmother's house, he wants rest. He wants to collapse. He wants to close his eyes and let the exhaustion of the drive and the accident and the last several months of his life wash over him until he feels nothing at all. What he gets is a lecture. She scolds him for showing up unannounced, unimpressed by his sudden appearance and unmoved by whatever exhaustion he carries. She does not ask if he is okay. She does not ask why he is here. She tells him he should have called. She tells him the guest room is a mess. She tells him he looks terrible. Then she makes him drive her to bingo. There is no negotiation, no space for his mood, no acknowledgment that he has just driven hours to see her. Ares, who came here to avoid conflict, finds himself chauffeuring his grandmother to a church basement, the absurdity of it settling over him like a coat he cannot take off. He wanted peace. He got bingo.

He escapes to the Barley Beast, wanting a drink and nothing else. The bar promises anonymity, a dark corner where he can be nobody. He imagines sitting alone, nursing a whiskey, letting the noise of other people's lives wash over him without having to participate in any of it. But he is recognized as new immediately, and the locals draw him into conversation before he can retreat. They ask where he is from. They ask what brings him to town. They ask if he is related to the old doctor, the one who used to run the clinic. He is not invisible here either. Infinity Ridge keeps pulling him into its current, and every question is another hand reaching for him.

Then his phone lights up. Cressida texts him about the investigation into his patient's death, and the words land like a blow. The threat to his medical license is no longer abstract. It is real, documented, and moving forward without him. Cressida wants him to engage, to face the psychologist, to do the work of recovery. She wants him to fight for his career, to prove that he is still the doctor he trained to be. Ares refuses. He orders another drink instead, deciding that numbness is preferable to confronting what he has done and what he has lost. The real work can wait. The bottle will not judge him. The bottle will not ask him to explain himself. The bottle will not tell him that he failed.

Harper approaches the bar wanting drinks for her friends. She is not looking for anything complicated, just a round of shots and a return to Zoey and Jasmine. She has no interest in meeting anyone new. She has no interest in the kind of man who sits alone at a bar with a look on his face like he is carrying something heavy. But Ares misreads her smile. He assumes she is hitting on him, and he rejects her before she can even speak, his walls up so high that he cannot see past his own assumptions. He tells her he is not interested. He tells her he is not looking for company. He tells her, in so many words, that she should find someone else to bother. Harper does not let it slide. She confronts him, and their exchange becomes a mutual rejection, sharp words traded back and forth that leave them both irritated and, beneath it, attracted. The friction between them is immediate and undeniable. She tells him he is rude. He tells her she is presumptuous. Neither of them is entirely wrong.

Then Ares says something that cuts through the sparring. He admits he is "nothing anymore." The words hang there, raw and unguarded, revealing a self-image so broken that Harper's irritation gives way to sympathy despite herself. She introduces herself and shakes his hand. The touch is charged, a current that unsettles Ares more than any confrontation could. He feels it in his chest, in his throat, in the place where he has been keeping all of his grief locked away. He finishes his drink and leaves abruptly, choosing destruction-avoidance over continuing whatever just sparked between them. Better to walk away than to let someone see him clearly. Better to be alone than to be known.

Harper returns to Zoey and Jasmine wanting a normal night out. Instead, they interrogate her about Ares immediately, sensing something. They saw the way she looked at him. They saw the way she walked back to the table with her jaw set and her eyes bright. Her friends remind her of her reckless drunk history, forcing her to defend herself and confront her own pattern of bad decisions. They remind her of the men she has chosen before, the ones who looked good in dim light and turned out to be disasters in the morning. Harper admits to herself what she will not say aloud: she watched Ares leave. She tracked him with her eyes until the door closed behind him. She is attracted to him, despite her resolve not to date, despite everything she knows about men like him. She tells herself it does not matter. She tells herself she will never see him again.

She goes looking for her father, wanting to keep him safe. She finds him working on a broken car, avoiding supervision, doing exactly what he should not be doing. His leg is bothering him. She can see it in the way he stands, in the way he shifts his weight, in the way he pretends everything is fine. Harper tries to bring him back to the office so she can work, but he deflects, turning the conversation to her love life with the ease of a man who knows exactly how to avoid being managed. He asks about the man at the bar. He asks if she met anyone interesting. Harper refuses to discuss love. Privately, she decides she is fine being single. Her family's romantic losses prove that love is too costly, and she has no intention of paying that price again. She has watched what love does to people. She has watched it take everything and leave nothing behind.

Harper wants her father to come with her, but Clyde refuses to move until the pain in his leg forces him down into a chair. When he finally sits, the truth comes out: a severe bruise spreading across his leg, dark and ugly enough that Harper's worry sharpens into something closer to fear. The bruise is not small. It is not the kind of bruise that comes from bumping into a table. It is the kind of bruise that means something is wrong underneath the skin, something that cannot be fixed with rest and stubbornness. She pushes him to see a doctor, and he refuses outright, bargaining instead for a two-day delay before he will even consider it. She has no choice but to accept, and the cost is immediate: two days of not knowing whether her father is seriously hurt, two days of watching him pretend nothing is wrong. Two days of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Nana's Couch

Ares wants nothing more than to sink into his grandmother's couch and wallow in self-loathing, but Nana will not allow it. She confronts him directly, demanding to know why he is really there. She does not accept his vague answers. She does not accept his silence. She does not accept the way he tries to disappear into the cushions. He tries to hide his failure, to keep the wreckage of his life behind his teeth, but Nana presses him without mercy until he admits the truth: he needed to be there for her, and he needed to fix his life. Even that is not enough for her. She keeps pushing until he confesses the guilt underneath it all, that he should have been there for Paw before the end. The admission costs him the emotional distance he has been hiding behind, and there is no taking it back. The words are out. The truth is on the table. Nana looks at him with something that might be pity and might be understanding, and Ares cannot decide which one is worse.

Nana wants Ares to reopen his grandfather's clinic. He resists hard, arguing that he is not like Paw and that he does not want to stay in this town. He tells her he is not the man Paw was. He tells her he cannot be what this town needs. But something in him still wants to find his love of medicine again, the thing that made him a doctor in the first place, and so he agrees to at least visit Paw's clinic. It is not a promise to stay, but it is enough to give Nana hope, and hope is a dangerous thing to hand her. She smiles. She pats his hand. She tells him he will see. Ares does not know what he will see, but he knows he cannot take the hope back now.

The Clinic

At the clinic, Ares wants to see patients, to do the work he came here to do. He wants to prove to himself that he is still a doctor, that the years of training and practice still mean something, that he has not lost everything. Instead, Gabriella and Monica hide the patient files from him and tell him no one has asked for him. Monica does not soften it. She tells him plainly that no one in this town knows him, and that he should have built that foundation long before now. She is protecting the town's trust, and Ares is an outsider with a famous name and nothing else. The rejection lands exactly where his guilt already lives. He is not Paw. He will never be Paw. The town knows it, and now he knows it too.

Then Harper arrives at the clinic with her father Clyde, and Ares recognizes them both. Harper is the woman he met before, the one from the accident, and the collision of those two worlds happens in silence. Clyde recognizes Ares too, but he wants to hide that he was driving when he hit Ares's car, so he pretends not to remember him at all. Ares, reading the room, plays along, and the lie settles between them unspoken. It is a small conspiracy, a shared secret, and Ares does not know why he agrees to it except that he understands what it means to want to hide.

Harper wants her father's leg examined. She explains the bruise, asks for it to be checked, and in doing so hands Ares the chance he has been waiting for, a real patient, a real reason to be here.

Chapters 4-7

Harper steps into her father's house with a plan already formed. She will take charge of Clyde's care, manage his recovery, and keep him safe from his own stubbornness. She has done this before, in one form or another, stepping into the gap her father leaves whenever he decides that vulnerability is a weakness and that accepting help is a defeat. She knows the shape of his pride. She knows how he will grumble and resist and pretend he does not need anyone. She has prepared herself for all of it. What she does not plan for is Ares. He is already there, already kind, already competent, and his history with Dr. Pierce gives him a familiarity with her family that unsettles her. He moves through the house like someone who belongs, checking on Clyde, adjusting pillows, speaking in the low, steady voice of a man who has spent years delivering bad news and good news with the same even keel. She watches him work and feels the sting of her own past rudeness, the memory of how she treated him when he first arrived. She had been sharp with him, dismissive, suspicious of a stranger who seemed to know too much about her father's condition. Now she sees the same man she brushed aside, and he is not what she assumed. The guilt sits uncomfortably alongside her gratitude, and she cannot decide which feeling to trust. She wants to believe that her suspicion was justified, that she was protecting her father from someone who might take advantage. But Ares has done nothing to deserve her distrust. He has only been patient, capable, and present. The contradiction gnaws at her.

She decides the best way to manage her discomfort is to help Ares fit into Infinity Ridge. She advises him to join the community, to put down roots, to let people know him. It is practical advice, the kind anyone would give a newcomer. She tells herself she is being neighborly, that she is simply helping a stranger adjust to a small town where everyone knows everyone and outsiders are treated with polite distance until they prove themselves. But when she pats his leg, the gesture lingers a beat too long, and she feels the emotional distance she was counting on slip away. She pulls back, but the damage is done. She has touched him, and she knows it meant more than she intended. The warmth of his leg under her palm, the slight tension in his muscles, the way he looked at her when she pulled away, all of it tells her that she has crossed a line she did not mean to cross. She tries to convince herself that it was nothing, a friendly gesture, a moment of encouragement. But she knows better. She has been careful for so long, keeping her distance from men, keeping her heart locked away. And now, with a single touch, she has let something slip.

Later, Fallon corners her with the question Harper has been avoiding: is Ares attractive? Fallon's teasing is relentless, and Harper finds herself admitting interest before she can stop herself. The admission opens a door she wanted kept shut, and behind it is the reluctance she has carried since Branson, the fear of dating again, the certainty that she will make another mistake. She tries to laugh it off, but Fallon sees through her. Fallon knows her too well, knows the way she deflects, knows the way she hides behind humor when she is afraid. Harper wants to take the words back, to pretend she was joking, but it is too late. The truth is out, and it hangs between them, uncomfortable and undeniable. She has admitted that she finds Ares attractive, and now she has to live with the consequences of that admission.

Harper turns the conversation around. Fallon has been avoiding finishing school, letting her teaching dream stall, and Harper pushes her to reclaim it. The shift is deliberate, a way to stop talking about Ares, but it is also genuine. Harper wants Fallon to have the life she planned, the career she worked for. She knows that Fallon has been drifting, that she has been letting fear and uncertainty hold her back. Harper has seen it before, in herself, in the way she let Branson's betrayal define her. She does not want Fallon to make the same mistake. Fallon resists, but the conversation has changed, and for a moment Harper is not the one being examined. She is the one asking the questions, the one pushing for answers. It feels good to be on the other side, to be the one offering advice instead of receiving it. But she knows that she cannot avoid her own problems forever.

Then Harper remembers the dent in her father's bumper. She has been turning it over in her mind, and now she pieces it together: Clyde likely hit Ares with his truck, and Ares may be covering for him. The realization explains Ares's presence, his patience, his refusal to press charges or make a fuss. It also explains Clyde's hostility. Harper wants to explain it, to make sense of it, but the more she thinks, the more she sees Ares protecting her father from consequences he probably deserves. She does not know what to do with this information. She wants to confront Ares, to demand the truth, but she is afraid of what she might learn. She is afraid that Ares is not the man she thinks he is, that he has been hiding something from her. But she is also afraid that he is exactly the man she thinks he is, and that he has been protecting her father out of kindness, not deception.

Fallon wants Harper to confront Ares, to demand the truth and stop letting him carry the weight of Clyde's actions. Harper refuses. She cannot bring herself to push, because Branson's betrayal still defines her. She trusted someone once, and it cost her everything. She will not risk another mistake, another person who seems kind and turns out to be something else. The fear is not rational, and she knows it, but it holds her in place. She tells Fallon that she cannot confront Ares, that she is not ready, that she needs time. But she knows that time will not make the fear go away. It will only give it more room to grow.

Ares, meanwhile, cannot stand idle waiting. He wants to be useful, to prove himself, so he joins Josiah's ambulance squad for free. He accepts the humiliation of working without pay, of being the new man on a crew that does not know him, because it gives him access to patients. It gives him purpose. He has spent too long waiting, too long hoping that something would change. He needs to be doing something, anything, that reminds him why he became a doctor in the first place. Josiah watches him with the wary eyes of a man who has seen too many doctors come and go, but he lets Ares stay. He does not say much, but Ares can feel the weight of his scrutiny. He knows that Josiah is waiting for him to fail, to prove that he is just another outsider who will not last.

Josiah wants to test him. On a call, he lets Ares take over the emergency scene, forcing him to prove he can practice beyond cardiology. Ares steps up, assesses, directs, and for a moment he is not the interloper but the doctor. He feels the familiar rhythm of emergency medicine, the quick decisions, the clear communication, the sense of purpose that comes from knowing exactly what to do. Josiah says nothing, but his silence is not disapproval. Ares takes that as a good sign. He knows that he has not won Josiah over, not yet, but he has taken a step in the right direction.

Then the call is for Clyde. He has chest pain, and Ares wants to treat him, but Clyde resists. He belittles Ares, calls him names, refuses to cooperate. The authority Ares just earned evaporates in the face of Clyde's contempt, and Harper watches anxiously, caught between her father's cruelty and the doctor's steady hands. She wants reassurance that Clyde is safe, and Ares gives it. His calm assessment, his refusal to be rattled, changes her fear into trust. Clyde keeps joking, but Harper hears the truth underneath: Ares knows what he is doing. She watches him work, watches the way he speaks to her father, the way he ignores the insults and focuses on the task at hand. She feels a surge of gratitude, mixed with something else, something she does not want to name.

Clyde wants to avoid the hospital, but Ares and Josiah insist on transport. The family scare becomes a formal emergency run, lights and sirens, Clyde strapped to a gurney and still complaining. Harper rides along, and during the drive she reaches for Ares's arm to steady herself. The touch is small, practical, but it deepens the attraction she does not want to name. She lets go quickly, but not quickly enough. She can still feel the warmth of his arm under her hand, the solidity of him, the way he did not flinch or pull away. She tells herself that it was nothing, that she was just scared, that she needed something to hold onto. But she knows that it was more than that.

Clyde wants to warn Ares off. He makes a remark that things "always end badly," a comment that lands like a threat and a prophecy. It exposes his suspicion of Ares and Harper, his fear that whatever is growing between them will destroy what is left of his family. Harper hears it and says nothing. She does not know what to say. She wants to defend Ares, to tell her father that he is wrong, but she cannot find the words. She is too tired, too confused, too caught up in her own feelings to fight that battle.

Later, Harper wants a normal girls' night. She wants to sit with Veronica and Fallon and not think about Ares or her father or the mess her life has become. But Veronica and Fallon force her into the smash-or-pass game, holding up photos and demanding she admit who she wants. The pressure is playful but relentless, and Harper tries to deflect, to avoid choosing anyone. She laughs, she jokes, she tries to change the subject. But her sisters will not let her off the hook. They want answers, and they are not going to stop until they get them.

Then Branson walks in with her ex-best friend. The betrayal she has not escaped is suddenly in the room, smiling, holding hands with the woman who was supposed to be her friend. Harper freezes. She wants to hide her reaction, to pretend she is fine, but Veronica covers her hand with her own. The game becomes a crisis, and her sisters see her pain. There is no more pretending. Harper feels the familiar sting of betrayal, the wound that she thought had healed. She wants to run, to hide, to disappear. But she cannot. She is trapped, surrounded by people who love her, and she cannot escape.

Harper turns away from the sight of Branson and Cynthia, unwilling to let them see her face or the hurt she cannot hide. The movement tears at something still healing inside her, a wound she thought had closed. She endures it rather than give them the satisfaction of witnessing her pain. She tells herself that she is stronger than this, that she has moved on, that Branson does not have the power to hurt her anymore. But she knows that she is lying. The pain is still there, raw and fresh, and she cannot escape it.

Fallon wants to leave the game, but Veronica pushes Harper to continue despite her protests. Harper wants to quit, but her sisters insist on one more person before letting her stop. They want to see who enters next, and when they do, it is Ares. Harper, caught off guard, admits she would "smash" him. The words are out before she can stop them, and she feels her face flush with embarrassment. She wants to take them back, to pretend she did not say anything, but it is too late. Her sisters are laughing, teasing her, and she knows that she will never live this down.

Branson wants to talk to Harper, but Fallon tells him off before he can get close. He pales under her hostility, shrinking back from the force of her anger. Whatever he intended to say dies in his throat. Harper watches him retreat, and she feels a small sense of satisfaction. She knows that she should not be happy about his discomfort, but she cannot help it. He hurt her, and now he is paying the price.

Harper wants to end the conversation, so she coldly congratulates Branson on his engagement and demands to know what he wants. Cynthia wants to reconcile, so she asks Harper to move past the betrayal and be friends again. Harper wants to avoid looking like the asshole in public, so she lies that she is completely over it.

Chapters 8-11

Harper stands in the bar with Ares, the weight of the town's eyes pressing in on her, and makes a choice that will cost her the one thing she has always guarded: her honesty. She agrees to fake-date him. The decision is not romantic. It is tactical. If she refuses, she faces humiliation at the hands of the gossips who have already decided she is the woman who slept with the new doctor and got discarded. If she accepts, she salvages her dignity and gives Ares the respectable reputation he needs in a town that will not trust a man who beds and abandons its daughters. The price is a lie told to everyone she knows, and she pays it.

Ares accepts her terms. He does not argue or negotiate for more than she offers. He simply agrees, binding himself to whatever rules she sets, and in doing so he hands her the only power she has left in this arrangement. Harper does not trust him, but she trusts his desperation. He needs this as much as she does, and that mutual need is the closest thing to a foundation they have.

They leave the bar together. The act itself is a statement, a public declaration that whatever happened between them is not over. They gain privacy from the crowd inside, but the moment they step out the door they become visible to anyone watching, and in a town like this, someone is always watching. The gossip that drove Harper to this decision now becomes the engine that will carry their lie forward.

Harper insists they plan their story in secret. She cannot bear the thought of hashing out the details of their fake romance in front of an audience, and she cannot stomach the idea of being seen with him more than necessary. This costs her the comfort of avoiding Ares, of keeping him at arm's length where he cannot confuse her or hurt her again. Instead, she has to sit with him, talk with him, build a shared fiction with him, and every hour spent in that work is an hour she cannot spend pretending he does not exist.

Ares admits that his grandmother will see through the lie. The woman knows him too well, and she will expose the truth without hesitation if they try to pass off a sudden romance as genuine. This forces them to change their cover story. They cannot claim a whirlwind courtship. They have to build something that will hold up under scrutiny, something with a history that predates the bar and the gossip and the humiliation.

They ride to Infinity Ridge. The journey gives them seclusion, a place away from prying eyes where they can talk without being overheard, but it also forces Ares to confront his poor riding skills. He is a doctor, a man of precision and control, and on horseback he is clumsy and uncertain. Harper sees him struggle, and something in her perception shifts. He is not the smooth, confident man who took her to bed and then walked away. He is a man who cannot ride, who needs her guidance, who is out of his element in her world.

Ares sees the ridge and learns what it means to Harper. It is her family's sanctuary, a place of memory and belonging, and standing there with her he begins to understand the town differently. It is not just a gossip mill or a trap. It is a place where people have roots and histories and sacred ground. His view of the town changes, and with it his view of Harper, who is not just a woman he slept with but a person with a family and a past and a place she loves.

Harper and Ares agree that they must admit she lied about how they met. The original story, whatever it was, cannot survive his grandmother's scrutiny, and so Harper has to swallow her pride and confess that she fabricated the first version. It is a small humiliation, but it is hers, and she pays it because the alternative is worse.

Ares offers to simply break up. He gives her an exit, a way to end the deception before it goes further, but Harper refuses. She has already committed. She has already lied. To back out now would mean admitting defeat, and she will not give the town that satisfaction. Instead, she locks them deeper into the deception, choosing to continue rather than retreat.

They decide to continue dating publicly. The fake relationship becomes a performance they must sustain, a commitment that requires them to be seen together, to act like a couple, to sell the story to everyone who is watching. Harper imposes a no-sex rule. It is a boundary meant to protect her, but it also reveals how deeply she fears being hurt again. She can fake a relationship, but she cannot fake intimacy, not after what happened between them.

Ares asks for public appearances and dates. He wants visibility, the kind that will convince the town and his grandmother that the relationship is real. Harper agrees, knowing that every appearance increases their risk of exposure, every date brings them closer to the moment when the lie collapses under its own weight.

Harper questions Ares to build their fake history. She needs details, facts she can reference, a timeline that will hold up. She discovers he is forty-two and from Denver. The age surprises her, the place fills in a blank, and she begins to assemble a version of him that she can present to the world.

Ares reveals that he does not date and has no friends. The admission changes how Harper sees him. He is not a player or a heartbreaker. He is a man who has been alone, who has kept everyone at a distance, and his isolation makes her reconsider what happened between them. He did not discard her because she meant nothing. He discarded her because he does not know how to keep anyone.

Ares admits he killed someone during a pacemaker procedure after his grandfather died. The confession shocks Harper. It is not the kind of thing a man shares lightly, and it explains something about his guilt, his distance, his refusal to let anyone close. He carries a death with him, and he has been carrying it alone.

Harper takes his hand. She does not offer pity. She offers understanding. It is a small gesture, but it deepens their intimacy despite the lie, binding them together in a way that neither of them planned and neither of them can easily undo.

Ares pulls his hand back from Harper. Whatever comfort she is offering, he will not take it. The outcome of his mistake cannot change, he insists, and so he refuses to let himself be consoled for it. Harper pushes back, arguing that intentions matter. She is trying to give him a way to live with what he did, a framework that does not require him to carry it as an unforgivable weight. Ares then admits the deeper wound: after a patient died, he lost the feeling of knowing the right path. The trauma broke his confidence, and he has been operating without that internal compass ever since. He explains that his boss forced him to take six months off, with the explicit goal of falling in love with medicine again. That mandate is what brought him to small-town work, a life he did not choose but is now living. He states his goal plainly: rebuild his grandmother's practice, sell it, and set her up. His future is tied to this town, at least for now, and the plan gives him a finish line even as it keeps him rooted in place.

The conversation turns more personal. Harper and Ares exchange details about their lives, and Harper reveals that her mother died seven years ago. The admission deepens the intimacy between them, moving them past the surface of their arrangement. Harper then tells Ares about walking in on Branson and Cynthia together. It is her deepest humiliation, and she offers it to him directly. She admits she once begged Branson for another chance, showing Ares the full extent of her self-blame. She is not just telling him what happened; she is showing him how she turned it inward, how she made herself the one who needed to earn her way back. Ares responds by telling Harper she is beautiful and that Branson is a fool. The statement directly challenges her damaged self-image, refusing the story she has been carrying. Then Ares asks to kiss her, despite their no-sex rule. She agrees, and the kiss turns their fake relationship physical. Afterward, Ares asks if she believes him now. The question shifts the emotional stakes of their arrangement, turning a performance into something that requires belief.

Gabriella confronts Ares about the dating rumors. He lies, saying they met at the bar and are seeing where it goes. It is a convenient cover, and he does not correct the record. Gabriella predicts the gossip will bring patients, and Ares decides to use the rumors to his advantage. The lie becomes strategy. Tammy Godwin arrives as Ares's first gossip-driven patient, but she is not there for her ear. She quizzes him about Harper instead, treating the appointment as an opportunity to gather information. Ares discovers the waiting room is full of bingo club women, all there to interrogate him about Harper. The practice is suddenly busy, but not for the reasons he wants. The attention is on his personal life, not his medical care, and the women have come as a collective force.

Then Clyde Stone confronts Ares and orders him to stop dating Harper. The demand escalates the conflict, turning gossip into a direct challenge from her father. Clyde is not asking; he is ordering, and the implication is that Ares is not good enough or not welcome. Harper storms in and defends Ares against her father. She declares that their relationship is none of his business. The declaration is a turning point: she is not just defending Ares, she is drawing a line with her father in public. The confrontation raises the stakes of the fake relationship, because now it is not only about appearances. It is about Harper's autonomy, Ares's place in the town, and whether the gossip will define them or whether they will define it.

Harper confronts her father, determined to end his intrusion and find peace with Nathan. Despite his anger, she succeeds in making him leave. She then approaches Nathan to apologize for her father, wanting to smooth things over, and their closeness deepens their mutual attraction. Nathan kisses her nose, showing affection and blurring the line between their fake relationship and real feelings. Harper pulls him into his office to debrief their performance, confirming Gabriella witnessed enough to spread the news. She explains her father's reaction stems from how he learned of the relationship, wanting Nathan's reassurance, and reveals he actually likes him. Nathan keeps the secret of her father's driving episode, wanting to protect Harper, gaining private leverage. They agree to a low-key Friday outing out of town, wanting to appear casual, with Harper leading the strategy since she knows the town. Nathan reveals five patients came in that morning, sharing the plan's success and showing their fake romance already draws attention.

Chapters 12-15

The Kiss and the Interruption

Harper stands with Ares in the kitchen, the moment stretching between them. She knows exactly what she is doing and exactly what it will cost her. Ares is leaving. Whatever this is between them has an expiration date stamped on it, and she decides she does not care. She leans in to kiss him anyway, choosing the fleeting thing over the safe thing. Before their lips meet, Monica walks in and catches them. Harper pulls back, the moment shattered.

But Harper does not retreat. She doubles down. If Monica is going to see something, Harper will make sure she sees the right thing. She kisses Ares in front of Monica, deliberate and visible, selling the story that they are a real couple. It works. Monica sees what Harper wants her to see. But once Monica is gone, Harper draws a line for herself. She tells Ares that private kissing is off the table. The public performance is one thing. Letting herself actually feel it, alone with him, is another. She is protecting herself from the very thing she almost gave in to moments before.

The decision costs her something she does not fully admit. She wanted the kiss. She wanted it before Monica walked in, and she wanted it after Monica left. But wanting it is the danger. If she lets herself kiss Ares when no one is watching, then the performance stops being a performance. It becomes real, and real means she can be hurt. Real means she has something to lose when he leaves. So she builds the rule and tells herself it is strategy. It is not strategy. It is armor, and she knows it, and she puts it on anyway.

Branson's Suspicion

Branson corners Harper not long after. He has heard about her and Ares, and he is not buying it. The relationship seems to have come out of nowhere, and Branson wants answers. Harper lies smoothly, telling him they have only been together a few weeks. It is a small lie, but it is a lie she commits to, and it buys her the cover she needs.

Branson is not satisfied with just interrogating her. He tries to cancel the double date, clearly hoping to create distance between Harper and Ares before whatever this is goes any further. Harper refuses to let him. She insists the date is happening, and she makes it clear that if Branson and his date are too busy, then they will be the ones to decline. She will not let Branson control the story or the schedule. She is holding her ground, and she is doing it publicly.

The refusal matters more than it looks. Branson is not just being nosy. He is testing her, probing for weakness, looking for the crack in the story that will let him pull the whole thing apart. If Harper lets him cancel the date, she gives him room to keep digging. If she lets him dictate when and where they appear together, she hands him the power to expose her. So she takes the power back. She forces the date to happen on her terms, in front of witnesses, where the performance has to hold. Branson walks away without the answers he wanted, but he does not walk away convinced. He walks away suspicious, and suspicion does not go away. It waits.

The Father's Fury

Harper goes home and walks straight into her father's anger. He is outraged that she is dating a man he did not choose for her. The implication is clear: Harper's love life is supposed to be a family decision, and she has gone around him. Her father does not frame it as concern for her happiness. He frames it as a violation of his authority.

Tristan, trying to be reasonable, suggests that their father should simply get to know Ares. Meet the man, form an opinion, move forward. It is a sensible middle path, and Harper shuts it down immediately. She does not want her father anywhere near Ares. She does not want him evaluating, judging, or approving. The idea of her father getting to know Ares is not a compromise to her. It is another form of control.

Her father escalates. He demands that Ares come to him and ask his permission. It is a demand rooted in ownership, not tradition, and it lands badly. Tristan, hearing the word permission, jumps to a conclusion. He assumes Harper and Ares are engaged. The misunderstanding hangs in the air, absurd and revealing. Harper is not engaged. She is barely holding her own life together, and her father is already planning a wedding he was never invited to.

Lark steps in and defends Harper's right to date whomever she wants. Lark does not hedge or soften it. She tells the truth plainly: Harper gets to choose. Harper backs her up and refuses to obey her father. She will not bring Ares to him for approval. She will not ask permission. She will not bend. The confrontation ends with Harper standing her ground and her father left with nothing but his outrage.

The outrage does not disappear when the argument ends. It sits in the house like smoke. Her father has been told no, and he is not a man who hears no well. Harper knows this. She knows that refusing him does not close the matter. It opens it. He will come back at her another way, through another door, with another demand dressed up as concern. But for now, she has held the line, and that has to be enough.

Nana's Interrogation

Across town, Ares is panicking. He is about to introduce Harper to his grandmother as his girlfriend, and the lie is eating at him. Nana is not someone he can easily fool, and the weight of deceiving her sits heavily on him as he prepares. He knows what he is asking Harper to do, and he knows what it will mean if Nana sees through it.

Harper arrives at Ares's house with flowers for Nana. It is a small gesture, but it is a genuine one, and it matters. Nana welcomes her warmly, and for a moment the plan seems like it might work. Harper is charming, Nana is delighted, and Ares can breathe.

Then Nana traps them. Cake and coffee appear, and there is no polite way to leave. Harper and Ares are stuck at the table, forced to stay longer than they planned, and Nana has them exactly where she wants them. The conversation turns to the relationship. Nana wants to know how serious they are. Harper, careful and measured, says they are taking things slowly. It is the safest answer she can give, and it keeps the story intact.

Nana is not deterred. She tells them her love-at-first-sight story, and the room softens. Ares and Harper banter about their own first meeting, playing along, and for a moment the lie feels almost true. The ease between them is real even if the timeline is not, and Nana watches them with the satisfaction of a woman who believes she is seeing something genuine.

That satisfaction is the problem. Nana believes them. She believes the story, she believes the ease, and she believes the version of Ares that sits across from her holding another person's hand. Ares sees it, and it hurts him more than getting caught would have. He is not lying to a stranger. He is lying to the one person who has always taken him at his word, and she is taking him at his word now. Harper sees it too. She sees what the lie is costing him, and she cannot fix it, because fixing it means telling the truth, and the truth would break Nana's heart in a different way. So they sit there, both of them, smiling at a woman they are deceiving, and the warmth of the room turns into something heavier.

The Diner and the Town

Ares and Harper leave Nana's and go to the diner. The town is watching. People stare and whisper, and Harper feels the weight of every glance. She and Ares are a spectacle now, and there is no hiding from it. Ares holds her hand, not for her benefit but for the room's. It is a public display, a performance for the audience that is already dissecting them.

Then Ares says something that is not part of the act. He admits that his feelings for her make no logical sense. It is a crack in the performance, a moment of honesty that Harper did not ask for and does not know what to do with. He is not supposed to mean it. She is not supposed to hear it. But he says it, and it lands.

It lands because it is the first thing either of them has said about the relationship that is not scripted. Everything else has been for Monica, for Branson, for Nana, for the town. This is for her. Harper does not know what to do with a sentence that has no audience. She cannot file it under strategy. She cannot dismiss it as part of the act. So she holds it, and she says nothing, and the diner keeps humming around them while the ground shifts quietly under her feet.

Daisy Greene Makes Her Move

Harper gets up to use the bathroom, and the moment she is gone, Daisy Greene slides into her seat. Daisy corners Ares, taking advantage of Harper's absence to get close to him. Whatever she wants, she wants it without Harper there to interfere. Harper is still in the bathroom, unaware that the ground is shifting beneath her, and Ares is left to handle Daisy alone.

Harper and Ares sit with Daisy, recounting how they first met, and the story falls apart almost immediately. Their versions do not match. One account places their meeting at a bar, the other at the clinic, and the discrepancy hangs in the air while Daisy listens. Harper scrambles to merge the two stories into something coherent, hoping Ares will follow her lead and smooth over the inconsistency before Daisy can press on it. Instead, Ares adds a detail about his office to Harper's bar story, deepening the contradiction rather than resolving it. Daisy notices.

Harper tries to seize control of the story, claiming they hated each other at the bar. Ares contradicts her, insisting he asked her out right there. The ground shifts under Harper, and she improvises, calling him a dick for saying he wasn't interested. Ares concedes the point, admitting he was interested by the time he left. It is a small surrender, but it gives Harper something to build on.

She invents a secret dating timeline on the spot, saying Ares asked her out officially at the clinic. Daisy, still listening, asks the obvious question: why hide the relationship at all? Harper has to improvise a reason, and what comes out is more honest than she intends. She admits she was afraid to be hurt again. The words carry the weight of the Branson betrayal, the real fear underneath the performance. For a moment, the lie and the truth occupy the same sentence.

Ares takes her hand and promises he won't hurt her. The gesture feels real to Harper, and that is the problem. She resolves to keep her guard up, to remember that this is fake and that when it ends, she will be the one left standing in the wreckage if she isn't careful.

Ares walks her to her door and calls the gesture practice. Then he admits he hasn't been on a proper date in years. The confession lands with a quiet weight. Harper tells him she would consider a relationship with him if he weren't leaving town. It is as close to a real answer as she has given anyone.

Then Ares kisses her on the porch. Harper drops her clutch. Every rule she has carefully constructed falls away in that moment, forgotten entirely.

The door throws open. Clyde stands there, catching them mid-kiss, and immediately accuses Ares of taking advantage of Harper. Harper refuses Clyde's demand to come inside. Clyde doesn't back down. He warns Ares that he is watching him. The tension is sharp, the protective fury real, and Ares is on notice.

Before leaving, Ares gives Harper a second, softer goodnight kiss. It is gentler than the first, and somehow more dangerous. Harper admits to herself that she is screwed.

Later, Veronica confronts Harper about Ares. Harper insists she is only attracted to him, not interested, drawing a line she clearly wants to believe in. Veronica doesn't let it stand. She argues that Harper's no-sleeping-with-him rule is a prison, a cage built out of fear. Control, Veronica warns, won't protect Harper from getting hurt. The words land hard because they are true, and Harper has no good answer.

The conversation is cut short when Clyde interrupts to announce that Cynthia is there to see Harper. Whatever ground Harper gained, whatever clarity she was reaching for, evaporates.