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I make it to the truck before giving in to the string of expletives clawing at my throat.
This thing between us is too new to compete with the approval of the douchebag who’s been neglecting her, her whole life. We’ve barely begun and I’m going to lose her.
I drive to the gas station and fill up the truck. Clean the windows and check the tires, telling myself not to be a dick by trying to talk her out of going back. Not to remind her of all the shabby shit her father has put her through, when for what sounds like the first time in her life, he’s giving her the credit she deserves.
Only an asshole would try to take that away from her, and that’s not who I want to be to her. Harlow needs a fucking good guy, even if that means I need to drive her back to Chicago and say goodbye in front of the PHR corporate headquarters, knowing there’s a damn good chance there won’t be a place for me in her life after that.
The life she’d been so desperate to escape for a week. Ten days.
Fuck.
I spend the drive to the coffee shop telling myself it’s not over. That come Monday, she’ll want to continue from where we’re leaving off. That I’ll pick her up from work and she’ll throw her arms around my neck, telling me she missed me even though it’s only been a couple days. That it doesn’t matter that her petty, piece-of-shit father won’t approve of me based on my career choice alone. That even though Harlow has spent her entire life killing herself to impress this guy, she’ll still choose to give us a chance. Because she feels it too. Because this thing between us is different… it’s real.
And then I spend the ride back to the hotel telling myself to get my shit together and act like a fucking man because chances are good none of that is going to happen. Harlow is getting a shot at the one thing she’s always wanted, and I’m not going to get in her way.
No matter how hard it will be.
I get up to the room and, bracing with a supportive face that’s backed with a steely will usually reserved for goingafterwhat I want rather than letting it go, let myself in. Stop short, not understanding what I’m seeing.
“Where’s the coffee?” Harlow asks from within the still tangled sheets of our bed. Her hair is still a sexy sleep-mussed mess. She’s still swimming in my T-shirt, our clothes from the night before still scattered around the room.
There aren’t any bags. Just the woman I could feel slipping through my fingers, looking like she isn’t going anywhere.
I rub my hand over the spot in my chest that’s hammering harder than it did before my first NHL game.
“In the truck. With breakfast.” Water. Soda. Some snacks and, in case she wanted to try and sleep on the way back, one of those neck pillow things that people love but would straight-up strangle me. “You’re not packed.”
I don’t want to jump to conclusions. Hell, she might only want to sleep another hour or so. She might—
Jesus,pleasebe what it looks like.
* * *
Harlow
“I’m not leaving,”I say quietly, somehow more nervous than I was on the phone with my father. Wade doesn’t move and the anxiety that’s been building since he left ramps higher. What if he doesn’t want—
But then, he’s on me in a blink, pulling me hard against him, crushing me with his kiss. Telling me everything I need to know without words.
I cling to him, emotion choking me.
“Thought I was losing you,” he growls against my mouth, arms banded around my back, holding me so my bare feet dangle above the floor.
“No.”
Not when it feels like, for the first time in my life, I’m not missing what matters. I’m notalone.
“I was going to take you.” He lays me back on the bed, following me down. “Let you go if that’s what you needed.” He whips the shirt off my body and does the same with his clothes. Groans when we’re skin to skin. Then pulls back to meet my eyes. “Fuck, Harlow, it was going to kill me.”
I shake my head, run my fingers over his scruff. “I told him I couldn’t leave and I’d be there Monday.” And then the truth I need him to know. “I couldn’t leave you.”
“Just for this week?”
“What if it’s more than this week?” I ask softly.
His eyes close and then he kisses me again, so long and deep, when he stops, we’re tangled together. “So you’re mine, really mine?”
Mine.
