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“Mr. Evans,” I began, cutting him off. “I ran into Harlow just over two weeks ago. That was the first I’d seen or heard from her in over four and a half years. But I never once stopped loving her or thinking about her in all that time. These past two weeks have consisted of her trying to hide what her husband has been doing to her, and me doing everything to help her—even though the idea of anyone helping her has terrified her. Please understand that I say this with as much respect as I still hold for you—which right now isn’t much because I hate that you never noticed what was happening to your own daughter,” I seethed. “Not that I will ever talk to you about our romantic relationship, but neither Harlow nor I have anything to answer for when it comes to us. Having said that, we’ve always meant something to each other throughout the past seven years.”
Silence stretched on for long minutes, but given how I’d just laid everything out, I expected him to be even more upset with me than he already was, so I let him have his time with his thoughts. He sounded worn out again when he finally spoke. “If you weren’t right, I wouldn’t let you speak to me that way.” He exhaled heavily and began speaking before he was done. “I always wondered what happened to you. My wife and I—well, we always thought it would be you.”
“Me?” I asked incredulously. “You were the one who made me promise to push her into enjoying a life away from me when she left for college. If you hadn’t, we probably wouldn’t have spent years without each other. She wouldn’t—” I cut myself off before I could say any more, but it was clear where I’d been going with that. If I hadn’t agreed to his conditions, Harlow probably would have never had to feel the pain Collin had inflicted.
“Yes, you,” he answered after a second. “We respected you, and the way you respected our daughter. If we hadn’t, we never would have let you fill her head with ideas of being together later in life. I never would’ve given you permission to . . . I guess it ended up not mattering. None of us had expected it when that day came and went, and suddenly Collin was there instead, but it was even more surprising when you never came back.”
My jaw clenched tight. I didn’t need to be reminded that I hadn’t fought for her.
“That, however,” her dad continued, his voice stern again, “does not mean that we would be okay with you two together now. Despite what is going on, my daughter is a married woman, and you would be wise to let her have her own space until all of this is worked out. She will need plenty of time to deal with what has happened, and then more to decide what she wants with you—if anything. Do you understand that, Mr. Alexander?”
His words were so similar to ones I’d heard before. Back then I’d smirked the entire way to the jeweler, because I’d known there was nothing keeping me from making Harlow mine in every way once she turned eighteen. I wasn’t smirking now.
I’d had a lot of women since losing Harlow—too many to count or even remember. All had been single, that was my only rule, until this afternoon with Harlow. Marriage, to me, was sacred. I knew that when I married I would marry for life; which is why I had only ever mentioned it to one girl—unless you counted joking with Grey to make Graham mad. And not only was Harlow married to a man who wasn’t me, but I wasn’t stopping us from being together, and I knew I wouldn’t continue to.
In my mind, she was mine. Collin had made a decision to break their vows the first time he’d hurt her, and Harlow had left him and their marriage emotionally at the same time since she couldn’t leave physically. But others wouldn’t see it that way.
“As I said, I will never talk to you about my romantic relationship with your daughter,” I responded, my voice assertive, but not defiant. I didn’t want to be in a position with Harlow that people questioned, but I also wouldn’t let them question us.
I could tell he was disappointed, but the slightest hint of respect was back in his voice. “Well then, I guess I’ll be speaking with you in the morning. Please watch over my daughter, and if anything . . .”
“I will let you know.” I finished for him when he couldn’t. “Safe travels, Mr. Evans.”
“Thank you, Knox,” he said softly before he hung up, and I knew it wasn’t for my parting well wishes.
I released a heavy breath, dropped my elbows onto my knees, and let my head hang. A million thoughts were rushing through my mind. Some about my past with Harlow . . . some about our future. A lot about Collin and what he was doing now—or if he even knew Harlow was alive yet. And the rest about Harlow’s family and if we did the right thing in having them fly out of the state.
A knock sounded on my bedroom door, and my head snapped up, but I didn’t move from my spot on the edge of the bed. I’d told Harlow I wasn’t going anywhere, and the edge of the bed already felt too far for me.
After a few seconds, the door slowly opened, and Graham popped his head in. When he saw me sitting there, he took a few careful steps in.
“Asleep?” he whispered, and I nodded. “She okay?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions, and don’t act like you give a shit.”
He seemed to deflate on himself, and crossed his arms over his chest to try to recover his original stance. “I do—we do,” he amended, then looked behind him and called for Deacon.
A second later, Deacon rounded the corner into my room, and I rolled my eyes at his wounded expression.
“Can we talk in the living room?” Graham asked, but I didn’t bother responding in any way. He took my silence and stillness as my answer, and sighed. “We do care,” he said, still speaking soft enough that he wouldn’t wake Harlow. “But it’s hard when we’re worried about what the consequences could be, when we’ve always worried about that.”
“Try to see it from our perspective,” Deacon cut in. “We were in college, and you only cared about a girl who was too young for you—who was considered illegal. And, I mean, for shit’s sake—” He cut off when Graham gave him a look for talking too loud. When he started again, his voice was so soft I could barely hear him. “You told us everything. We were already sort of worried, but when you first told Harlow you would wait for her, and she told you that you would be wasting your time, that was it for us. We knew she was playing you. And then every time the two of you talked, she told you the same thing. We didn’t know why you were the only one who didn’t see that you were.”
“It was—that’s not what she meant.” I groaned and rubbed at my jaw. I scrambled for a way to explain it, but didn’t know how to. “It was . . . our thing, I guess.”
“That’s a weird fucking thing,” Deacon mumbled, then waved off my warning glare. “Were we dicks during those first few years? Yeah, we took it too far. We’ll admit that now. But then she turned eighteen, and she did exactly what we’d always worried she would, and did we rub it in your face?”
I didn’t answer.
“And now this. You haven’t seen her in years, but it’s like no time has passed for you. You’re ready to take up
where you left off. Once again, we’re worried. Even more so, because not only is she married, but we had to watch the kind of person you turned into for those first couple of years after what she did to you the first time.”
Graham was nodding, and before I could ask what Deacon meant, Graham explained, “You never showed us that you were upset, but you were suddenly . . .” He trailed off and searched for the right word. “Uncontrollable. In everything. It wasn’t until Grey’s fiancé died three years ago that you finally snapped out of it and calmed down. Well, calmed down into the Knox we’d always known growing up.”
“I-I didn’t know,” I whispered, but swallowed roughly, because now that I was thinking about it, I did. They drank and hooked up with girls, but I pushed for the nights to go longer, and the girls to multiply.
“It’s okay,” Deacon said when he noticed what I’d just realized. “Like I said, we know we took things too far back then. We know we made it hard for you two then, but can you understand our side at all?”
