Page 47 of The Truth of Us

Why wouldn't she tell me?

Why did she have the money she had?

Why did she hide things?

Why had she never let me into her home?

Why did I know so little about the woman I couldn't stop thinking about?

The thoughts grew teeth, and by ten thirty, I couldn't seem to stop them. By ten forty-five, they were eating me alive, because another realization had slipped in beside them. One I hated even more. I loved having Harper in my life, but I did not know if she wanted me in hers. And if she didn't...

If this mattered more to me than it did to her, then I was about to hand her the ability to destroy me. The feeling that followed felt suspiciously familiar. Like I was twelve years old, and finally giving up waiting for people who never came, believing love was something that happened to other people. That I had something wrong with me if my own parents didn’t, couldn’t, love me.

The panic crashed in all around me and by eleven; I was standing alone, my phone in my hand, with my thoughts spiralling.

Hurt her before she hurts you.

Show her that you are in control of this arrangement.

This isn’t real. She’ll leave me, choose someone else… no one stays for me… no one chooses me.

The voice sounded a lot like survival, a lot like reason… a lot like every lesson I'd ever learned.

My breathing was laboured, and my pulse was erratic as my thumb hovered over an old contact.

Hurt her before she hurts you.

I could do this. I could show her… with someone familiar, safe, someone who didn't matter.

Midnight approached, and with it, the end of our arrangement.

My heart pounded, and before I could stop myself…

Before I could think...

Before I could remember the cake and the birthday and the way Harper smiled when she looked at me, I typed out a message and hit send.

I immediately hated myself, but not enough to take it back.

So when Caleb called for me, with a worried look on his face. I finished another glass of scotch and walked away from Caleb, our friends, and the reasoning I didn’t want to hear.

13

HARPER

You'd think over time, every anniversary, birthday, and moment forever frozen in time would get easier. That dragging myself away from my father after celebrating and grieving all wrapped in one would be easier. It had been a long time since we lost them, so long that my memory had started to fail me, their smiles, laughs, the sound of their voices. As much as I disliked feeling like every time I went back it was for grief wrapped in celebration. It also felt like it was all I had left to remember them. It was part of the reason I felt like I needed to step away from my father and try to make a name for myself outside of the weight of his name. He had protected me, concealed me with a ferocity that made some people forget that he ever had a family, that he still had a daughter. So allowing me to go by my middle name, my mother's maiden name, Lane, wasn’t a stretch to protect the only family he had left.

He had asked me all about the man I had been pictured with over the past month, and I managed to dodge or redirect the questions. But my father’s parting words followed me on my flight back to Chicago, “My angel, you said you wanted to be on your own to figure out who you are outside of our family. But I feel you are the farthest from yourself. Some day you are going to have to decide to let your guard down and let the world see who you are as the real you. Because all of you is beautiful, my sweet girl, not just this facade or PR package you present, but all of you. Someday you will be ready to stand at my side, someday we both will be ready…” He trailed off, and I heard the pain in his voice, the past rearing its ugly head. Then he kissed my forehead and hugged me, adding, “Promise that when the time comes… you’ll give someone the gift of knowing you. Not just this pretty package.” He gestured to my tailored clothes and perfectly styled hair. My armour. I brushed it off and promised I would be home for the holidays.

I felt raw and on edge during the flight that I almost went home and curled into my bed, but the look in Elliot’s eyes the day I left his penthouse, like the little boy was staring at me, pleading with me… and then my father's words. So I went to Elliot; I decided maybe he was more than I assumed, just like Caleb had alluded to. Maybe the chemistry, the comfort and familiarity I found in him and that I had tried so hard to ignore… Maybe that was love. Maybe I stumbled across what my parents always wanted for their children, what my father walked away from his family's legacy to have with my mother.

So I swallowed my fear and anxiety. I pushed away the voice in my head telling me this was a mistake and I would end up being hurt, and as my driver brought me to Elliot’s and a new day started. A day outside of our arrangement, I felt a smile play across my lips and I let the butterflies do their thing.

I thanked my driver and stepped out into the cold Chicago night. I let my eyes trail over the cityscape and then up the line of windows in the building before me, all the way to the top.

Blowing out a breath, I grabbed my bags with shaky hands and stepped in. The night guard smiled at me with a nod as I walked past the front desk, turned and passed the general elevators. My head was down when I heard the ping from Elliots’s private elevator, causing my head to snap up; those butterflies swarming aggressively at the thought that he couldn't wait for me to come up and meet him, that he came down to me. For me.

But that thought, those butterflies, were squashed when it wasn’t Elliot who got off the elevator. The elevator that only went to his penthouse.