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“I’m sorry that fucker is dead,” Luca muttered. “I have a few things I’d like to say to him.”
Conor grinned slightly, then forged on. “I moved out of his house when I was twenty-one, he died the next year. For the past eleven years, I’ve still made the choice to remain alone.”
“Why?” Luca asked.
Conor lifted one shoulder. “I couldn’t bear to put anyone—a spouse or a child—through what I went through. How could I ask someone I love to live with me with this ticking time bomb in my head?”
Luca scowled, clearly upset by Conor’s choice of description. “Ticking time bomb? What the hell does that mean?”
“I never had the chance to talk to my mom about her mental illness. I don’t know if it started as anxiety attacks or…” Conor hated that he’d never taken the time to talk to his mom during one of her lucid days. He knew why he’d kept quiet. At the time, he’d been terrified his admission would push her into a depressed state. He clung to the days when Mom was herself and happy, so he’d never wanted to take a chance on ruining any of them.
“So what’s been going on here, Conor? Why have you been with us at all if your plan was to push us away?” Harper’s tone made it clear she did not like that idea.
“I’m with you because I can’t stay away. Besides, you two are damn hard to shake.” He smiled as he said it.
Mercifully, Luca laughed. “We’re not hard to shake. We’re impossible to shake, and don’t you forget it,” Luca warned, reaching out to squeeze Conor’s knee firmly.
Conor placed his free hand on top of Luca’s. “I won’t. I just…I thought it fell to me to be sure I lived a solitary life so no one would ever be hurt by my attacks. Then you two showed up, and I got swept away in this because…fuck. It’s everything I’d never let myself dream of having.”
Harper smiled. “I like the sound of that.”
“But then you started talking about kids and my anxiety took over, like it always fucking does. By the time we got back to Philly, I’d convinced myself it was time to break things off.”
Luca started to interrupt, but Conor held him off.
“Until my brothers broke into my penthouse this morning and staged an intervention,” he said wryly.
“Intervention?” Luca chuckled. “Sorry I missed that.”
“I guess turnabout is fair play because I’ve been on the other side of those Russo meltdown interventions. I should have reached out to Matt and Gage on my own, but the three of us weren’t close up until a year or two ago.”
“I didn’t know that,” Harper confessed. “You seem as close to your brothers as Luca is to his.”
Conor liked that, liked that she thought that, because he longed for that kind of relationship with his brothers. “We’re getting there. It’s definitely a work in progress as we try to break free of those shitty lessons from our father. All of us succumbing to his voice in our heads, telling us we can’t fail, we can’t be weak, we can’t be gay, we can’t be mentally ill.” Then he added another. “We always have to be in control.”
“Did your brothers give you good advice?” Luca asked.
“Of course they did. Matt went hardcore CEO on me. Told me I was going to start using my office at Russo Enterprises to be closer to them both, and he recommended his therapist.”
Luca nodded, clearly pleased. “I like the sound of that. Those are good places to start.”
Conor looked at Harper. “I really am sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me.”
She squeezed his hand. “You already apologized for that, and I forgave you. Now that I know why…well, you didn’t even have to say you were sorry. I’m the one who’s sorry we weren’t here for you.”
Conor sighed. “I’m glad you weren’t. I hate the idea of you seeing me like?—”
Luca leaned over Harper’s lap, cupping the back of Conor’s neck. “You’re not hiding this part of yourself from us. Have you ever had an attack in front of someone?”
Conor shook his head. “Refer back to my father issues. I view the attacks as weak, something I can’t let anyone see.”
“Except us,” Harper said. “Because that’s what people in a relationship do. They hold each other up through the bad times, cheer them on through the good.”
“Relationship,” Conor whispered, trying out the word.
Luca, the confident bastard, as always, never missed a beat. “Yep. Harper’s my girlfriend. And you’re my boyfriend.”
“Neither one of you is afraid this is going too fast?” Conor asked. “I mean, there’s obviously still so much we don’t know about each other.”
