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“I can’t!”
“Then tell me what this was,” I demanded as I pulled away from her and got off the bed. My voice rose as I took a few steps away, then turned to look at her again. “Tell me why you just gave yourself to me after seven goddamn years, Harlow!”
She pushed herself up with one arm, and her face showed how much all this hurt her—but it was hurting me more.
I continued when she opened her mouth to respond. “Was it some goodbye? Did you want to see what we would be like together since I wouldn’t touch you before? To see what you’d given up?” I sneered, and she exhaled heavily, like I’d punched her.
“Knox.” My name was barely audible, but her tone told me everything.
I already knew that had been low; I’d known it the second it had left my mouth—but I hadn’t been able to stop it. “I told you, you made a decision today,” I began again, though this time the anger was fading from each word. “I know you, Harlow, and you know me. You know I would never be okay with only having a portion of you, and I know you would never ask me to do that. What we did before, we did because I knew I would have all of you one day. What we did today, we did because I know I have all of you. And now that I do, you can’t try to take part of you away again.”
Tears had been steadily falling down her cheeks since I’d gotten off the bed, but at my last words a muffled sob left her, and she dropped her head so I couldn’t see her face anymore. “I did make a decision today,” she whispered when I knelt onto the bed and pulled her into my arms. “But it’s not the one you think I did, and it’s not the one I wish I could have.”
My body tensed, but I remained quiet.
“I made a decision to love you—completely—for the rest of my life.”
In any other situation, those words would have made me happier than I could begin to describe . . . but not now. The way her voice broke on the last few words told me exactly what she meant, and told me exactly what I didn’t want to hear.
She’d already hinted that with Collin’s unpredictable behavior, she didn’t think she had long to live. So Harlow was giving herself to me the only way she could until the day came where Collin didn’t stop himself.
And I wasn’t going to accept that.
“You just said that you would do anything to have me take you away.” I tried to hold some type of accusation in my tone, but my words were shaky and sounded defeated.
“I would, Knox. If my fam—” She broke off and inhaled audibly. “Collin.”
“What?”
“He’s home!” she hissed, and looked around wildly.
“How do you know?” I asked as I jumped off the bed and began grabbing clothes off the floor. I tossed Harlow’s in her direction as I came across them.
“His car is in the driveway.”
I stood quickly from where I was pulling on my boxer briefs and looked toward the window—the curtains were closed.
Before I could ask, she answered: “It’s like he’s trained me to be terrified of the sound of his car on our driveway; I couldn’t miss the sound of it even if I tried.” She pulled her shirt over her head and immediately began tidying the bed. “Oh God, oh God, oh God! Why is he coming home early?” she whispered to herself. “He never does this, why does he keep doing this?”
As soon as I was dressed, I pulled her away from the bed and into my arms. I cut off her harried whispering with my mouth, and even though her body was tense at first, it quickly melted against mine until we heard the key in the lock.
“You have to go!” she said, but I knew in her hopeless expression that there was no way I was getting out of there without her husband knowing about it.
“I’m a firefighter, Low. I can just climb out the window,” I suggested.
“No!” she said too loudly, and began pushing me toward the closet in the room. “All the windows have alarms on them. If you open one, it’ll chime throughout the house. Just—”
“Harlow!” Collin yelled, and her body seemed to crumple while remaining upright.
“We have his parents’ anniversary dinner tonight, it’s hours away, but you’ll be—”
“Harlow?” Collin called out again, his voice sounding farther away, but more aggravated.
My eyes narrowed and my body prepared to fight.
“Please,” Harlow whispered. “Don’t.”
With that she turned and walked calmly out of the room, and I strained to hear every sound, and every word.
