Page 116 of Archer

Archer stood a few feet to my right. He’d barely spoken since we arrived, but his presence settled over me as steadily as the afternoon heat. He’d positioned himself at the dock’s edge with a clear sightline to the water and the shore access path. His hands stayed loose at his sides. His expression formed a warning for anyone who took notice.

Archer was lethal, I had no doubt, and any attempt at breaching my safety bubble would result in serious pain.

“You don’t have to watch me,” I told him. “You can watch for Webb.”

His eyes swept the water, then came back to me. “I am watching for Webb.”

A pelican glided low over the inlet and settled on a post twenty feet out. The crowd onshore grew louder by the minute, a low hum of voices rising from the grassy bank where people clustered with phones already raised.

I spotted a handmade cardboard with block letters that read HARPER LIVE.

This was really happening.

“Six twenty-eight,” Colton said. “You want to warm up?”

I ran a quick scale on the guitar, adjusted my capo, and ran it again.

“Six twenty-nine.”

“I heard you.”

Archer’s hand grazed my shoulder blade once, there and gone, so brief and light that anyone watching might not understand how much it meant to me. I hoped Archer did.

I hit go live at exactly six-thirty.

The viewer count climbed before the interface even finished loading. Five hundred. Two thousand. The number rolled upward as I settled my guitar across my lap and forced a smile that didn’t feel forced at all, because the people showing up were real. Their faces appeared in the comments, their names stacking too fast to read.

“Hey, everyone.” My voice came out steadier than I expected, projecting through the nearby mic. “I know it’s been a minute. I’ve been down here on the Carolina coast working on some new music, and tonight I want to share something I haven’t played for anyone yet. Not even my label.” I let a beat pass. “Turns out that this beautiful place is inspiring in so many ways. I hope you’ll like the new songs.”

The comment flood surged. Screaming capital letters. Heart emojis. A dozen variations of I LOVE YOU. I exhaled the last of my nerves and brought my fingers to the strings.

“The song is called ‘Still Standing Here.’”

I’d written the final verse at two in the morning two nights ago, sitting on Knox and Sloane’s guest room bed in the dark with my notebook on my knee. It was about everything I hadn’t let myself put into words before now. About the year of hiding. About Gram’s cottage and what it cost me to stay inside it when the world outside was still moving. About the night Archer ran barefoot across the sand and came back to me, and how that exact moment changed the shape of everything I thought I knew about being alone.

I set my phone in the holder on the stand before me and got started.

I kept the curtains drawn so nobody could see me

Convincing myself that safe was the same as free

But fear’s a quiet cage and I forgot the key

Until the tide came in and pulled me back to me

The dock was achingly still. Every kayak on the water had stopped paddling. Every voice, other than mine, had gone silent.

So here I am, feet on the ground, face to the weather

Not the girl I was, maybe something better

I’ve been low but I’ve been learning how to rise

Still standing here with the salt air in my eyes

I was lost in the lyrics until they’d all been sung. I held the final chord until it dissolved into the inlet air.

Silence stretched as I rested my guitar on my legs once more and turned my eyes upon the brightly spotted water, filled with teary eyed boaters and kayakers, mouths agape.