“We are so screwed. There is no way out of this. We have to tell them.”
“And when we do, your mother is going to come unglued. She will stand in the way of everything that belongs to you.”
“I don’t give a damn about the money.”
“I know you don’t, but you care about your father, his legacy. Your mother doesn’t have the right to give you hell, but she will. We’re going to play this a different way. Make it my fault.”
“Why? None of this is your fault.”
“It’s not yours either. It’s different for me. If I make a ballsy move, it impresses my father. I know how to make that move, put you in the right, and end this fake love affair.”
“And how is that?”
“I’m going to give this ring to Quinn.”
“Um, yeah, that’s ballsy.” She smiled when she heard him laugh again. “You really love her?”
His tone grew serious, deep. “Everything that drew me to you, she has, only more so because she’s meant for me.”
“I’m happy for you, Collin,” Harley said quietly into the phone.
“I can wait a little while, think about how this will cross over, what we can say or do.”
“Don’t wait, Collin. If you know, don’t wait. Any moment can change your life forever. If you love her, you hang up with me and you pull her on that balcony and tell her that you do. Sweep her off her feet.”
“You know I’m still going to take care of you.”
“I need to take care of myself.”
“And you will, but first I’m going to find a way to end this and make it my fault. I know at this point no gossip or backlash from your mother would ever hurt you, but if we came out and said surprise, we were just kidding, never were a couple, someone, somewhere will attach the word scandal or say you can never take your family’s word—some twisted something, and I don’t care how much Garrison Tatum states he does not give a damn what people think, he doesn’t deserve to have lived the life he has, only to die with a mark on his name. I’m going to make this right. It was my idea, and you know as well as I do the Grants are known for bold moves.”
“Your father is no spring chicken either. I don’t see why you think it’s okay to risk some kind of gossip about your family.”
“My father is one of four. I’m one of three. There are a lot of Grants, and Grants are known to be unpredictable up until the last moment. It’s almost a family mantra. I think the best bet is to still use this separation, time apart excuse, but say I fell for Quinn when we were apart…I was adding it up just before I called you. We have only been in the same state for nine days in the last ten months. We could easily tell them we broke up just before then and tell them we did not announce that because we thought we just needed a pause, but I fell for Quinn while we were apart. That way, no one will ever know we never were what they thought, the break up will seem reasonable. If anything, those that do care to gossip will assume they were just not paying attention. It will end all of this in the cleanest way possible.”
“And you want to do this on a world stage?”
“No, I’m not that cruel. I’m thinking just before the party. I want to explain it to your father, then mine, and move forward. The only ones we need to shock are our mothers in front of a crowd, both our fathers will allow that, I’m sure of it, as long as we do this with class.”
Harley didn’t say anything. In her mind, she kept asking what was the worst that could happen, and she could not come up with anything she couldn’t live with. Her gut was telling her just to tell her parents, lay it out there for them, not play the games. She bit her lip when she realized that the Doran mantra of ‘say what you mean and mean what you say’ must have been instilled in her as well.
At the same time, she could see Collin’s point. Family names were important in the world they grew up in. Her father was proud of his bloodline, of the wealth he had built, his legacy; shaming that didn’t feel right either.
“You may have a point. Maybe this is best.”
“I think it’s perfect. Hell, if anything you can tell your mother if she wasn’t such a bitch you would have told her that we had drifted, make it her fault.”
Harley smiled. “Collin, go propose to your girl. I promised a boy I would go on a walk with him.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah…”
“Harley…do me a favor.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t think too much. Take your own advice.”
“I’ll try.”
As Harley took a shower and got dressed, she went over Collin’s plan in her mind. It really was perfect. Their mothers never would have caught that she and Collin had been apart as much as they were. At least half those days she and Collin were together over the last few months were at an event with their families, events that everyone acted the same, all with the fake smiles. Harley imagined throwing that in her mother’s face, telling her if she did not live in such a fake world it would have been even easier for her to see this coming.
Those thoughts left her, and all of her life back home drifted deep into the back of her mind as she took in her reflection. She was wearing a summer dress that was almost identical to the one she had worn that first night with Wyatt in the back seat of his truck. Very little had changed about her since then, simply because here, she never really bothered with much makeup, never ran a brush through her hair over and over or made sure it was just so; here, she was the raw version of Harley.
When she went to leave, she walked to the window and had pulled it all the way up before she realized what she was doing. She caught herself smiling as she pulled it down as silently as she could. She grabbed her phone and made her way downstairs. She wasn’t really sure what she would say to anyone if they asked her where she was going, but thankfully she made it to the front door with no one crossing her path.
She thought about leaving the phone on the porch, wasn’t even sure why she grabbed it, but as she looked out into the dark fields she decided she needed the light.
Harley halfway expected to find Wyatt waiting where he had always parked the golf cart in the past, but he wasn’t there.
Wayward thoughts that she had read this all wrong or maybe he read her wrong crossed her mind as she began to walk down a path that looked far more worn than it had in the past.
Breathe.
That was the only word or thought in her mind.
Chapter Thirteen
Wyatt’s heart had yet to settle from this morning. Just the thought of Harley, or the casual brush of her against his body, would cause that thunder in his chest. He kept hearing those words of hers before that electrifying kiss. How cold she was.
It was hard for him to shift blame in his mind. One second he was furious that she was with someone now and saw fit to be cold to him because he had dared to sleep with a girl here or there, but the next thought, he felt like an ass. He regretted his past, regretted trying to get over her, for not fighting harder.
In his mind, he should have demanded a final goodbye. Before he took another girl to his bed, he should have found a way to come eye-to-eye with her and had her tell him it was over, to move on. He could halfway argue that they had never broken up, that in some way they had both just cheated on the other and now he needed to beg for forgiveness.
All of that sounded perfect in his mind, but he had no idea how he would make sure his words would not get caught in his throat.
When he had come home after dinner, he hung white lights in the trees around the bank of the creek, then took a shower. Once he was dressed in fresh jeans and a shirt, he turned every light out in his house and the power on to the lights he had hung.
And as he lit a few candles and let them float where the creek pooled, then began to light candles in carefully placed sand bags on the path to the creek, he said over and over in his mind what he had to get out, what had to come off his chest. As far as he knew, he only had one shot at this, one chance to make the l
ast years seem as if they were nothing but a nightmare they both woke from.
He kept staring off into the distance, waiting for her truck lights to creep down the path. Each moment they didn’t show, he felt himself sink a little further.
Wyatt was wrestling with his thoughts as he sat on his four-wheeler that he had parked off to the side of the path he’d made. He was watching more than one candle burn out or float away, trying to gather the nerve just to climb in her window, make her listen, not allow her to hide or act like she didn’t know he was waiting on her, when he saw a small light move through the darkness.
He felt like an ass then. She was walking, and it wasn’t a short walk by any means; over a mile. Hope came to him, though, when he imagined her walking to the edge of the fence looking for him or a golf cart; that meant her mind was in the past, right where he wanted it to be.
Harley was well into her long, dark, lonely walk when she saw a twinkling of lights in the distance. She had just about convinced herself he would not be there when she got there, managed to tell herself if she faced the memories, it would help her in the long run. One. Foot. In. Front. Of. The. Other. That was what she said with each step.
She turned the light off on her phone and gazed at each and every candle lighting her path, feeling her breath hitch, adrenaline saturate her body; she was near numb. Just the idea of him was making her body hurt with want. That last night on this creek side, all the nights before when he held her and they counted the stars above, she was swimming in those sensations.
The path led her right to the very tree they laid under, the one that at one time had a blanket wrapped in plastic nestled in its trunk.
Down below her, she saw candles floating, not only in the part of the creek that pooled, but down its path, snaking through the distant darkness.
She felt him before she ever saw him, the gravity of him emerging behind her, the scent of his cologne, that hint of leather, the touch of Earth glided by her on the breeze that brought chills to her shoulders.
That dress. God, that dress. It was going to be the death of Wyatt. If it wasn’t the same one, it might as well have been. He could remember how it moved against her skin before, how easily his hands slid beneath it, all the secrets that one little piece of cloth hid from him long ago and on this night.
“It’s…beautiful…” she whispered into the night.
“I thought to hang these lights before…but each time I went to…I decided it was best for some things to stay in the dark.”
Harley turned to face him, not sure how to read the tone in his voice, it sounded so hard, coarse. He was making her head spin again. All around her was the most romantic gesture she had ever witnessed. It meant twice as much because of where it was, who was standing there with her, but that tone didn’t match up.
His haunted blue eyes gleamed within the night that was kissed by those twinkling lights. His jaw was clenched, his body tense. “This morning…you and me started an argument…we never finished it.”
Harley tilted her head slightly. This morning was a lifetime away in her mind, and until he said that she had forgotten how they even managed to end up against that wall. Then she remembered how cold she was, how she had accused him of sleeping around, but that was done because she thought that blonde was his, a null and void point now.
Harley had to admit to herself that it still burned her that he had never denied being with another, that she was sure there had to be someone. But at the same time, she knew she had no right to feel that way, not really. She’d been with Collin, four, very awkward, times.
Four times that she regretted, not because he was a bad lover, because he was a bad partner, because in all truth, anyone else would have walked away from her after that first night, as she silently cried for the boy she was still in love with; instead, Collin became her closest friend, her defender, someone who was willing to bare blame in the path they took before all those back home.
“Wyatt…I just wanted to know who you are now…I asked the question wrong.”
He raised his hand to stop her, saw her flinch. That action almost infuriated him. He wanted to know who had managed to make her so fragile, more fragile then when she was his. She’s still yours, he said to himself. You can make her feel safe again.
“You deserve an answer,” he said in the calmest tone he could manage.
“So do you. You misunderstood my life now, why it’s the way it is—j...” She stopped short. He’d looked away, sucked in a breath, even stepped away, almost turned his back on her. “Wyatt,” she breathed.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Harley, I have a lot to say, and if you go on I won’t say it…I just need you to listen…I have to say this before you and me make a mistake…”
Harley drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, tried to prepare herself for him to tell her that this current between them, this pull that was taunting her body with a want she had never felt for another soul was nothing more than a fallacy, an aftershock of a past that was just that.
“I’m not innocent. When they ripped you from me, they took all I was,” he said in a husky voice. His stare was trained on that creek below. “I have never felt a fear like that before, a pain. My head was swimming, looking for a way out…Easton and me…we drank, a lot. We skipped school,” he cursed under his breath, “then all that happened on your birthday.” He dared to glance at her, lost his words for a moment.
“I knew if I stayed here…I would never get over you.” He dropped his head. “I saw you everywhere…at times I was sure I could smell you…hear your voice on the wind.”
She moved closer to him, feeling a pain in her chest, the same pain she had endured with him, states away in a different kind of hell. Somehow, knowing their pain was shared, that he ached for her as desperately as she had for him, made this seem poetic to her. She knew that this pain had left a gift behind; a lesson that taught them both that what was between them was unbreakable, unconditional.
“I left,” he said, still keeping his eyes away from her. “All at once, I was in a different world with my uncle…Easton was the only real trace of home…but the thing was, just like me, he was trying to find some kind of divide…some escape…”
He turned to face her, his eyes rushed over her visage. “Harley,” he said in that slow, deep, southern tone that always seemed to reach deep inside of her, “it didn’t matter what I did or where I went. Each night, each morning, you were the first and last thought, image, in my mind.”
Harley reached for him, but he stepped back, his eyes glazed over.
“At first you never left my mind…then I tried to move past us, and when I did, when I was with someone else…all that did was make me think of you more…because I felt so guilty…it always made me feel so sick, miserable, and the more miserable I felt, the more shit I got myself into…”
Harley looked down, feeling the inside of her shattering. She knew how he felt; she’d endured it.
“It wasn’t worth it,” he said with a rasp. “I stopped trying to move on. I decided to just live. Live with it. And when I did, I finished school, I worked this farm, I joined the fire department, I hung out with my friends, and I just lived…”
His eyes met hers, fell deep within the pools of blue and green. “I lived the life that we used to dream about as I held you under these stars…and right when I figured out that I had slipped into another life, a life that was altered enough that I didn’t face your memory with every turn—an alarm goes off…just a call, just like all the times before.”
He stepped closer. His fingertips grazed her cheekbone, the trace of the burn from the airbag. “It wasn’t just a call…it was a moment that gave me the second chance that I had asked for a million times over.”
His fingertips slowly moved down her face, down her neck. He noticed how all the tension in her body drifted away, how her eyes slowly closed, the long, deep breaths that were causing her chest to rise and fall.
“The sight of you brough
t it all back, past and present colliding with a magnitude that is so great…that I have no choice but to stop and realize that the only thing holding us back this go ‘round is us.”
He reached his arm around her waist and pulled her body against his, causing her eyes to fly open, those breaths to come even faster. “And Harley, I’m going to fight like hell for you. And as soon as I make you mine again, I will die before I ever let anyone take you from me again.” His hand rose to her face, his thumb grazed her flesh, his eyes dipped to her lips, then met her gaze once more. “You’re the only woman I have ever loved. That I ever will love.”
All at once, they both moved forward, their lips connecting as if they were molded from one source, a well-practiced dance of flesh, the perfect rhythm, teasing brushes of tongues that knew just when to fall into a deeper kiss, a kiss that was so devouring that all thought, all reason vanished. The impulse of the heart, that deep passion that lies dormant within erupted to a euphoria that made it impossible to fathom life outside of that very instant.
Harley dropped her phone, her hands moved up his chest, pressing into him but pulling him at the same time. She felt the power of his hands rushing over her body, grasping, savoring.
Her hands moved under his shirt, her arms hooked under his shoulders, wanting to pull him down, not caring that there wasn’t a blanket waiting on them.
Wyatt leaned forward, but only to reach for her legs, to let his hands move against her flesh. “Not here…we don’t have to hide anymore,” he said as he lifted her around him.
Harley didn’t understand what he said or meant. Even though she felt him moving, walking with her wrapped around him, her lips caught his, her hands fisted through his hair, she moved against him, feeling the grasp of his hands on her thighs. A few seconds later, she felt off balance and their lips were ripped apart as he reached to hold her tight and sat down. She gasped, taking inventory of where she was, on a four-wheeler.