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“Harlow?”
Still nothing.
Dread knotting my gut, I run upstairs and barge into the bedroom she used to sleep in alone. When I fling open the closet door, it’s completely empty. No sexy red dress. No hanging row of short-shorts and sexy tanks. No pile of shoes at the bottom screaming in loud colors and gleaming with bling.
Oh, fuck me.
When I dash to my room, the few garments she’d moved into my personal space are all gone, too. Her toiletries are missing from the bathroom. Her scent still lingers…but the woman herself is utterly gone.
This cannot be the end of us.
With shaking hands, I pluck my phone from my pocket and call her. Her voice mail greeting plays right away, telling me to leave a message. I squeeze the device as shock rolls over me. She won’t even talk to me, hear my side of…whatever’s gone wrong? No, she’s simply picked up and left. I’m still not sure why. Yes, Cliff was a prick and painted our marriage as a business transaction, but doesn’t she see that he just wanted to get the deal done and was willing to say pretty much anything to both make it happen and be the bigwig?
Maybe not.
“Baby, where are you? What’s going on? You’re upset and I want to talk this out. I want to fix it. I want—”
“You can’t,” Harlow says suddenly, stepping from the shadows to lean against the doorframe.
She’s changed out of her killer red dress and now wears a T-shirt that saysBe Brave. Be Bold. Be You.A Harlow with a message on her chest is a Harlow with something on her mind.
I pocket my phone and approach her. “What do you mean, I can’t? Are you saying I can’t fix it? Baby, Cliff is an asshole and—”
“I know. But I understand everything now.” She sighs and sways into the room.
“What does that mean? You don’t understand anything if you think I used you to make this deal happen. Newsflash: it was already on the table before you walked into my life.
“But you needed me to improve your image after Mercedes Fleet started alleging you’re the hottest lay outside of porn and that you two are having a love child.”
That might be true but… “I didn’t use you.”
“Maybe not. Probably not.” She presses her lips together in regret. “But the whole drive here and the time I spent packing up, I couldn’t stop wondering if I was just a smokescreen to you. A way to get ahead in business. I tried to talk myself out of it. You’re not my father and all that. But what I ultimately realized is that I’m not ready to trust anyone that completely, least of all myself. So…Maxon came by and took all my things. Griff is on his way to pick me up. I’ll return the money you paid me for speech services, and you don’t owe me anything more when we divorce. Don’t worry. I won’t rock your boat and start proceedings until our anniversary. You’ll be great in the broadcasting booth, I’m sure. I believe in you.”
I’m crushed and so fucking confused. “No. No, baby… I believe inyou.” I grab her shoulders. “Don’t leave. I love you. I—”
“And I can’t guarantee I’ll ever be whole for you, so it’s better if I let you go now. Before I hurt you any more.”
“What does that mean? You are whole. You’re everything I need. We’ve been doing great until tonight and I don’t understand.”
Harlow sits on the side of the bed and closes her eyes. “I owe you an explanation. I didn’t tell you everything about my miscarriage.” She lets out a rough breath. “When I went away to college, my dad got me a part-time job with a man named Jeremy Ronald. He had a small company with a unique computer technology my father wanted to launch big and exploit. I didn’t know when I walked in the door that talks had been stalled for months. Or that I was butter meant to grease the wheels so they’d start to turn again. My father just told me to work for the man and ‘be nice.’”
“He pimped you out?” I know that’s what she means and I’m instantly horrified. She was barely more than a child.
“See, you understood that much quicker than I did. I started that job with all intentions of being the best assistant he could imagine and giving him my all. I just didn’t know he didn’t mean behind a computer, but on my back.” She frowns, not quite looking at me. “I was young, and he was handsome, charismatic. When he made a pass at me, I was dumb enough to be flattered. He wasn’t married, and so what if he was older than me?”
“How old?” I snap. It’s all I can do to hold on to my temper. Because I know where this story is going and I want to kill this man I’ve never met.
“Thirty. I was eighteen. He seemed so worldly and funny…” An acidic, self-deprecating twist of her lips wrings out my heart. “And I couldn’t believe that a man like that thought I was beautiful and interesting. The love of his life, he said. Yeah, I was that stupid.”
“Never stupid. You were naive, baby. Trusting.”
She finally looks at me, and I see something so vulnerable on her face it hurts me. For the first time, I see the most fragile parts of Harlow. And I see how close she is to breaking apart.
“I was a virgin,” she whispers.
Oh, fuck. “Baby, I’m so sorry. You deserved better than to have your father sell out your innocence for a business deal.”
“It’s actually worse than that. Before I left for college, he insisted I go on the pill.” She swallows. “I took them faithfully and I was so shocked when, a few months into my affair with Jeremy, I realized I was pregnant. I told my mother first. She didn’t say a word, just handed the phone to my father, who congratulated me. I still didn’t get it, even then. Not for years, in fact. But I’ll get back to that.
