The Ex I Hid Away

At a bar, Harper listens as her friends trade stories of their worst exes. Pressed to share hers, she calls him an uneducated thug with a bad temper who did time in prison, a scumbag who took her in at sixteen and dumped her four years later. Yet she also whispers that he saved her life.

At sixteen, Harper was sold by her stepmother to a man rumored to be a killer fresh out of prison. Jax refused the deal, dragged her home, and when her stepmother struck her, he threw the money back and took Harper with him. He gave her a cot behind plywood in his room, enrolled her in school as his sister, and shielded her from the neighbors and his own violent reputation.

Harper followed Jax everywhere, guarding him from the women who circled him, especially Vanessa, the high school sweetheart whose troubles sent him to prison and who married another man while he was inside. Harper's fierce loyalty hides a question she cannot answer: what is the man she calls her worst ex to her now?