Chapter 173: The Midnight Shadow

Harper’s POV

By the time we finally decided to leave the karaoke bar, my throat was completely raw.

My legs ached from standing, and Justin had somehow transitioned from looking like a man carrying the crushing weight of the world on his shoulders to laughing so hard he nearly choked on his Sprite. We had spent hours inside that neon-lit room. Singing. Laughing. Drinking an embarrassing amount of soda because neither of us touched alcohol.

At some point, I had completely stopped keeping track of how many songs we’d sung. Justin had definitely stopped keeping track long before me.

"Okay, superstar," he teased as we finally stepped out into the cool night air, shaking his head. "Let’s go home before you demand a record deal."

I laughed, nudging his arm. "Excuse me? You’re the one who sang six songs back-to-back."

"Because you kept shoving the microphone into my face."

"You were enjoying yourself, Justin."

"I was not."

"You definitely were."

"I wasn’t."

"You literally stood up on your own and requested another track."

He paused, looking down at me. "That was only because you were completely butchering the lyrics."

I burst out laughing. "Sure, keep telling yourself that."

He shook his head, but a genuine, soft smile lingered on his lips. And seeing that smile made me feel ridiculously, achingly happy.

Because I had watched him all night. Really watched him.

When we first walked through the doors of that bar, his shoulders had been locked tight. His face had been carved from stone, carrying a suffocating heaviness in his eyes that wouldn’t lift no matter how hard I tried to pull a smile from him.

But after a few rounds of music, something shifted.

His posture relaxed. The harsh tension in his jaw melted away. He laughed deeper. He teased me back. He even started stepping up to the microphone without me having to drag him by the hand.

It wasn’t a permanent fix. It didn’t erase the trial, or the documents, or the ghost of Diane.

But it was something. He looked lighter. And that was all I had wanted for him.

We started walking home the exact same way we had come. The streets were vastly different now—much quieter, swallowed by the late hour as midnight ticked closer and most businesses locked their doors.

Justin walked close beside me, his hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets. Every few steps, our shoulders would bump against each other, neither of us pulling away.

"I’m exhausted," I murmured, leaning slightly into his side.

"You’re the one who insisted on karaoke at midnight."

"And I enjoyed every single second of it."

"You screamed half the lyrics, Harper."

"I was expressing my artistic soul."

"You were aggressively destroying innocent people’s eardrums."

I gasped playfully. "You are so rude."

He chuckled, and I smiled into the dark. For the first time in days, it felt like we were simply Harper and Justin again. Not Harper and Justin navigating high-stakes court dates, corporate corruption, family secrets, and terrifying legal files.

Just us.

When we finally climbed the steps to the house, I flipped my phone screen on to check the time. 12:07 a.m.

"Wow," I breathed.

Justin glanced down at his own screen. "It’s late."

"No kidding."

We walked up to the front door, and I reached for the brass handle.

Before my fingers could even wrap around it, Justin’s phone suddenly screamed to life, cutting through the quiet night air with a sharp, jarring ringtone.

He froze instantly.

I turned back around, dropping my hand.

He pulled the phone from his pocket and frowned down at the glowing display. The warmth of the smile he’d worn all night vanished from his face as if it had never been there.

I searched his eyes, my chest tightening. "Who is calling you at this hour?"

"I don’t know," he muttered tightly.

He stared at the screen for another agonizing second, his thumb hovering over the glass. Then, with a stiff jaw, he slid his thumb across to answer.

"Hello?"

He listened. I watched the color drain further from his face.

"...Yeah. I need to take this," he said, his voice dropping into a flat, dangerous register.

Without another word, he pushed past me, stepped straight inside the dark house, and headed with heavy strides toward the glass doors of the back balcony.

I stood frozen on the porch for a moment, a cold knot twisting violently in my stomach.

Nobody called Justin at midnight for casual conversation. Not ever. And judging by the sudden, brutal shift in his expression, whoever was on the other end of that line was not delivering good news.

Ah, I swallowed hard, the warmth of the evening completely evaporating. This is serious.

I didn’t want to intrude. I knew better than to trap him when he went into defense mode.

So, I quietly gave him his space. I walked into the bedroom, grabbed my pajamas and fresh clothes, and took a quick, scalding shower to wash away the illusion of a normal night.

When I stepped back out into the hallway, Justin was still out on the balcony.

The glass door muffled his voice, but I could still catch the heavy cadence of his replies through the barrier.

"Mm-hmm." A pause. "Okay." Another pause, clipped and cold. "Alright, I’m opening my laptop now."

I stopped dead in my tracks in the hallway.

My eyes darted toward the living room. Through the opening, I watched him step back inside from the balcony, walk straight to the coffee table, flip open his laptop screen, and drop heavily onto the couch.

Instantly, the familiar blue glow illuminated his face. I heard the frantic, rhythmic tapping of his fingers flying across the keyboard.

Then came the sharp ping of an incoming email attachment.

My heart sank like a stone. Whatever that midnight phone call had been about, it was the continuation of the nightmare.

I stood in the shadows watching him for a few seconds, aching to walk over and pull him away from the screen, but knowing it was useless. He was locked in.

Quietly, I turned and retreated into the bedroom.

I climbed onto the mattress, pulled my own laptop onto my lap, and stared blankly at the screen. If I couldn’t sleep, I might as well force myself to be productive.

I pulled up the final timeline of the documentary. I forced myself to watch the entire film from start to finish, hunting for flaws, checking the emotional beats, and reviewing the transitions.

Eventually, my mind drifted to the title card. I needed something that captured the raw heart of my mother’s story without giving away the bitter ending. After cycling through a dozen ideas, I settled on one that felt right, clean, and deeply personal.

Then I sat there adding the final subtitle layers, checking them once, twice, three times.

When I finally glanced up at the clock on the wall, nearly an hour had slipped away in total silence.

I closed my laptop and set it aside.

Justin still hadn’t come back to bed.

I slipped off the mattress and walked out into the dimly lit living room on barefoot steps.

He was still sitting there. Frozen in the blue light of the monitor. Still grinding through whatever fresh hell those late-night documents contained.

I hovered near the edge of the rug for a few seconds. "Justin?"

He didn’t hear me. His eyes were glued to the text scrolling down the page.

I stepped a little closer, my voice softening. "Babe?"

He finally blinked, lifting his head slowly. His dark eyes met mine, looking completely hollowed out.

"Hey," he rasped.

"You’re still working?"

He glanced down at the open files on his screen, his jaw tight. "Yeah."

"What is it, Justin?"

He hesitated, a muscle ticking in his cheek. "Just... something that came up."

I gave a slow, heavy nod. "Okay."

I didn’t press him. I didn’t beg him to explain. I knew that exact look on his face—the look of a man trying to shoulder an avalanche entirely by himself because he didn’t want the debris to crush anyone else.

I turned around and walked silently back into the bedroom.

I couldn’t fight the walls he put up tonight. I was utterly drained.

I pulled the covers up over my shoulders, turned off the bedside lamp, and lay staring into the dark. I didn’t even realize when exhaustion finally dragged me under.

Sometime deep in the middle of the night, I felt the mattress dip.

The bedroom door clicked shut with a faint whisper. I kept my eyes closed, pretending to be fast asleep.

Justin slipped into bed beside me, moving with exaggerated care so he wouldn’t disturb me. But I could feel the stiff, rigid tension radiating off his skin. He stayed strictly on his side of the mattress, wrapped in a suffocating bubble of silence.

In the dim light cutting through the curtains, I opened my eyes just a fraction and looked at his turned back.

Even in the dark, I could tell the digital ghost of whatever he had read tonight was haunting him.

I didn’t know what that midnight call had exposed. I didn’t know what new secret was buried in those files. But lying there in the dark, my chest ached with a sudden, fierce certainty:

This couldn’t go on much longer.

Something was going to break soon. The trial was only days away, the pressure was reaching its boiling point, and Justin couldn’t keep carrying this entire war alone in the dark without shattering completely.