“Where’s my goddamned dog?” He pushed past his parents to the kitchen, remaining only long enough to scoop up Bubbles and curl her against his chest. “I don’t care what you do with your life, Dad. I don’t care what you do with yours either, Minerva. The only thing I want is for everyone to leave me the fuck out of it. I’ve been fine on my own for years, and I’ll be fine long after the entire lot of you leave.”

Sophie didn’t know if that last bit was meant to keep her away as well as his parents, but Harrison had to know it would never work. Like the goiter she’d always been and always would be, he was stuck with her.

With only one meaningful look at Wallace—full of equal parts sympathy for his position and annoyance at him for putting her there next to him—she followed Harrison and Bubbles out the door.

“Goddammit, Sophie. Can’t you leave me alone for five minutes?”

She took a page from his book and kept doggedly following his tracks with one hard syllable. “No.”

“It’s the least you can do after stabbing me in the back like that.”

“No.”

He kept moving toward the direction of the barn, his steps long and furious. Sophie had to pick up to a jog to keep up, but she didn’t mind. As she’d already shown, she could more than keep up with this man.

Harrison knew it, of course. He came to a stop at the barn door and waited for her to catch the rest of the way up.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice prim. “I was starting to get a hitch in my side.”

He snorted on a laugh. “Bullshit. You could have followed me for hours. Over mountains and through lakes—into a fucking volcano, if that’s where I was heading.”

She tilted her head and watched him, careful to give nothing of her feelings away. Her heart ached for this man—for the little boy—and the only thing she wanted to do was pull him into her arms and tell him that everything was going to be okay. But that wasn’t what Harrison needed right now.

“I’d probably make it over a mountain just fine, and I might be able to survive a fall into a volcano, but I’d definitely die in the lake. I can’t swim.”

Her distraction worked, his attention caught. “What are you talking about? Everyone can swim. You just wiggle your arms and legs.”