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“Explain,” Grayson presses and I hold my breath, waiting for what comes next, my stomach in knots.
“It translates to a saying we had in the SEALs.If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying. It means to win, you have to break the rules.”
Grayson’s silent for several beats and I imagine him studying Eric, before he says, “And you think that means someone knows what rules you were going to break with Kingston.”
“Don’t you?” Eric challenges. “It’s a fucking threat. They want me to do something for them, pay them off in some way, or they’ll tell Harper.”
“Then you tell Harper. That’s why I came here. You have to tell her.”
“Tell her I betrayed her? Tell her I lied to her? Hell no. That’s not happening.”
“We both know it’s not that simple. Explain it to her but tell her. Before someone else tells her.”
Not because he loves me, I think. Not because he trusts me. Because someone else might tell me. Because someone else knows. This reasoning guts me more than the secret, the lie, that is obviously between me and Eric.
“She’ll walk away,” Eric bites out, his voice low, rough, guttural, “and I can’t,I cannot, let her walk away.”
And I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe and my heart is beating so fast that I feel like I’m going to pass out. The voices go silent, or my heartbeat blasts over them, I don’t know which. I don’t even remember the moment that I exit the bedroom. I don’t remember the walk down the stairs. I’m just standing at the office door. I open it and Eric and Grayson turn to me.
“I was upstairs. I heard you talking. I wasn’t trying to, but—” I turn to Eric. “Tell me. Tell me everything. Is nothing between us real? Is this all a lie? Why can’t you afford to let me walk away, Eric? What is this really all about?”
Part Three: The Empire
Chapter ninety
Eric
Only moments before, I stood here in my office, in a heated conversation with Grayson, with no idea that Harper could overhear from the bedroom upstairs. No idea that I was jeopardizing our relationship.
With Harper staring at me, caging me and Grayson inside my office and demanding answers, my world shifts and spins, the ground no longer solid beneath my feet. I’m not solid without her. It’s a realization that shakes me to the core.
She stares at me.
I stare at her.
A million unspoken words fill the space between us with her pain and accusations pulsing through it all.
“Harper,” I say softly.
Her response is to cut her gaze sharply, as if her name on my lips guts her, while her attention lands hard on Grayson. “We need to be alone.” Her voice quakes and trembles. “We’ve needed to be alone and—”
“Understood,” Grayson says, and I can feel his gaze on me as he says, “I’m going home, but we need to finish the conversation.” I’m not looking at him though. I’m focused on Harper, and Harper only, the woman I want in my life and could easily lose.
Numbers punch at me and my hand goes to the Rubik’s cube on my desk. I don’t pick it up, but I mentally solve the puzzle, each block I turn, taking me down one notch and then another.
Grayson moves toward the door and Harper steps into the room and out of the archway to allow his exit. He pauses next to her and waits for her to look at him. She resists, her attention on the Rubik’s cube that I know she knows my mind reaches for. I know she knows I’m mentally trying to work through how to make this right with her.
“Harper,” Grayson finally says, compelling her attention.
She jerks her gaze to his, and then and only then, with her focus, does he say, “It’s not what it seems at first glance. There’s a reasonable explanation for what you heard. Listen to it all before you react.”
She swallows hard and nods but doesn’t speak. I notice the delicate line of her neck in profile, which might seem like an odd observation to some, but to me, it’s about how easily it would be to those who didn’t know her well, to assume her to be as delicate as her petite, feminine body. They’d be wrong. She’s strong; strong enough to walk away from me no matter how much we might share.
Grayson grips her shoulder, a gesture of support and friendship that I appreciate in this moment. It’s him telling her that she’s family now. It’s him telling her the confession she just overheard, the secret I appear to have kept from her, means nothing and it doesn’t. It’s not as big of a deal as she might appear, but I didn’t tell her, because I knew how she’d react. I didn’t know if I’d get her to hear every part of the story.
Fuck.
