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“I prepped a plan. I didn’t act, but I was close. I even negotiated with the banks that Kingston uses for their credit lines to strip them away. Now, ask the next obvious question.”
“Why didn’t you do it?”
“You.Youare the reason I didn’t do it.”
“You say that now but—”
I drag her to me. “Ask Grayson. I was sixty seconds from pulling the switch but you stopped me.”
“Me? You hadn’t seen me in years.”
“I did. I had. I went to Denver to finish the takeover. I was at the bank when you walked in. You fought with Isaac. I didn’t know why. I couldn’t hear you, but you fought with the same fierceness I always felt when I fought with him, when I believed I was rightand he was wrong. When something mattered to me. Watching you with him made that night in the cottage come back to me. That conversation you and I had about your need to protect your father’s empire came back to me. You’re the reason I backed out of the takeover. I know it sounds impossible. I knew it then, and I know now, but I fell hard for you the moment I met you, harder than I wanted to admit. That’s why I never forgot you. That’s why I tattooed you on my damn arm.”
“Fell for me? You hated me enough to try to destroy me then. That wasn’t a long time ago. It’s present day and now you dare to say you love me?”
“I never hated you and I would have told you all of this but the events of the past week have been lightning speed.”
“You’re only telling me now because someone else knows. You’re telling me because the message on the back of that business card made you believe that someone else knows about your plans to destroy me.”
“Do you think I want you to know what a vengeful asshole I was? I am? I didn’t, but Iwouldhave told you.”
“When?”
“After you agreed to stay here with me. After I saved your mother so you believed I would.”
Her fingers curl on my chest. My hand comes down on her face, tilting her gaze to mine. “I know this is happening fast, Harper, and I’m not an easy man to understand or live with. This savant thing is hell. I’m hell sometimes in ways you don’t know yet, but I don’t want to do this without you.”
“Do what without me?”
“Everything. Anything.” My voice lowers, a tremble in the depth of my words that I can’t control. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. Stay with me.”
Harper doesn’t immediately respond, her intelligent eyes searching my face for the sincerity in my apology, and my desire to have her with me. “Stay because I can’t live another day, let alone another six years, without you,” I add softly. “Stay because I hope like hell you feel the same.” And with that confession, I wait, I hold my breath, and pray that she doesn't walk away from me and us.
Chapter ninety-one
Harper
I’m reeling. I’m confused.
Eric and I stand in that alcove of the window in his office, the warmth of our bodies doing nothing to wash away the coldness of what he’d planned to do to me and the Kingston empire. “You tried to ruin me,” I whisper. “I still don’t even know what to do with that information.” I step back, force away his touch, and lean against the stone wall behind me; needing the extra support as I search his handsome face, probing his blue eyes that tell a story I need desperately to understand. “It all feels like a lie. We feel like a lie.”
“We’renota lie.” He steps toward me and presses a hand to the wall just above my head, but he doesn’t touch me. I want him to touch me. I want to push him away. I’m a conflicted mess where this man is concerned.
“NothingI have told you is a lie, Harper. If I wanted to ruin you, you know me well enough to know I would have. I stopped before I went too far.”
“I can’t get over how far you took it. You met with bankers.”
“But Ididn’tdo it.”
“You should have told me on your own. Not because that message I was given at the hospital forced you to. Not because I overheard your conversation with Grayson.”
“What you overheard was pieces of a bigger picture, not the full picture. It’s been a crazy few days. I would have told you.”
“Grayson didn’t believe you were going to tell me.”
“Grayson doesn’t know all that’s transpired the past few days. He doesn’t know how much either of us have had to digest. He doesn’t understand the extent of this war which we’re in together.Together,Harper, and fuck, I want to touch you right now, but Ifeel like you don’t want me to. I would have told you. I swear to you on my mother’s memory, God rest her soul.”
“No.” My hands come down on his chest, heat and emotion spiking between us with the connection. “No, don’t do that. Don’t swear on your mother’s memory. I believe you. I have to believe you would have told me because any other place my mind goes is not a good place. I don’t want to believe that you saw my visit as a way to attack that family.”
