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I have to scrape my shit together so that I can —
The sound of a child’s laughter brings my brain to a screeching halt.
The sound…it’s Ivy’s contagious little giggle.
I look around me. Where is she? Where are they?
The Manhattan skyline dims in the background behind her, the wind whipping her hair in a wild swirl about her face. Ivy is leaping up in the air trying to catch the bubbles Harper’s blown, the bubble wand still to her lips. Harper sees me and waves a tentative hand. Seconds later, she and Ivy are heading my way.
Oh, God. My pulse is racing. My palms are sweaty.
“Look!” Ivy says. “Bubbles!”
I smile at her, my whole being flooded with relief. “Yeah, baby. Bubbles.” My voice shakes. I look up at Harper. How is she doing?
“What’s the matter?” she asks, her brow furrowed in concern. “Are you alright?”
I’m about to say no, when Ivy raises her arms to be lifted on my knee. “Bubbles, Daddy.”
Daddy? Startled, I look at Harper. She heard it, too, I know she did because her eyes are misty.
“I thought you were gone,” I say in a whisper because I don’t trust my voice right now. “I tried to reach you and you weren’t there. I came back and — and I?—”
“I wanted to leave,” she says, her head bowed. “I even packed a bag. But then we got to the door and Ivy pulled the bubbles out and I— I couldn’t do it. I needed to see you. I needed to fight for this. Forus.And I didn’t want to take Ivy away again, not after everything she’s been through.”
I reach for her hand and squeeze it. “I’m sorry, Harper. I’m a fu— I’m a jerk,” I say, censoring my words so Ivy doesn’t hear me. “I’ve had decades of only caring for myself and that won’t happen anymore. Itcan’t.”
“I know,” she says with a deep sigh. “And I’ve had years of running. When you accused me, those thoughts in my head came up again and I?—”
“‘Those thoughts?”
“Yeah,” she whispers.
Ivy leans in and gives me a big hug before she slides down from my lap and runs after a particularly large bubble. I reach for Harper and drag her onto my knee. We watch Ivy chase the bubbles.
“I want to hear what they say, Harper. Tell me. What do you hear?”
She licks her lips and shakes her head. “I don’t want to tell you.”
I think about it before I speak. “I hear my own voice tell me shit that I shouldn’t listen to,” I say in a low voice. “Shit likeyou’ll never be loved. You won’t have happiness. You’ve done too much. You don’t deserve this.And it takes effort for me to push those thoughts away.”
“I think of the things my parents said to me,” she says, in a voice only I can hear. “Whore. Disgrace. Slut. Liar.”
She turns away and swipes at her eyes.
I hold her hand. “I wanted you to tell me yours, because it will help me replace them.”
Ivy squeals when she pops a huge bubble with her index finger, and it bursts into little droplets. Harper blows a few more, her eyes fixed on Ivy. I watch the bubbles float her way.
“Replace them?” Harper says softly. “What do you mean?”
“When you go to bed at night, I want you to only have good thoughts. When you wake up in the morning to face the day, I want you to think again,I am worthy.I want you to think,I am sexy.But most of all, I want you to think,I am loved.”
“Loved?” she asks in a throaty whisper. I pull her closer to me and kiss the apple of her cheek.
“Loved, Harper. Because I love you.”
Emotion overtakes her and she quickly closes her eyes. She draws in a breath. Whispers back, “I love you, too, Aleksandr Romanov.”
