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“I don’t. It’s clear you were protecting me.”
“Say it again. Promise me you will not leave after I tell you, but more so, tell me you’ll confirm the information, and take a step back, a week, days, to think before you act.”
His eyes meet mine. “I promise.”
“And I’m not saying this to protect your father. If this is true, he is worse than I ever dreamt he could be. He’s a monster. I’m saying this to protect you because you don’t deserve to end up behind bars because of him.”
He rolls with me, pulling me on top, telling me he’s in control. I lean over him, and I draw in a breath, praying telling him is not a mistake, but I have to. He has a right to know. He has to know with my mother running her mouth. “It was—about six months after my miscarriage and my mother called me. She was in a panic. She’d found something that freaked her out. I met her at their house, and she said she’d seen notes in your father’s files. She was looking for some property lease and—”
“What did she find?”
“Just keep in mind that she told me she was wrong. She read the document wrong.”
“Harper, you’re killing me here.”
“The document was about a cancer trial that your mother was trying to get into.”
He doesn’t blink. “Why would my father have that document?”
“Then you know about the program?” I ask.
“Yes. I know about the program. It was her best hope. It was what we were hoping for, but she killed herself before she got in.”
Dread fills me for all I must tell him. “Yes, well when I heard your father had documents related to the trial, I thought that meant that your mother mattered to him as well. That she was more to him than we realized.”
“But?”
“My mother found proof of a payment to someone who worked at the facility. She thought he paid extra to get her into the program.But then she found a note from the man the check was written to that read:As requested, decline issued.”
He goes stiff, his jaw so hard I think it might shatter. “Are you saying that my father paid off someone at the treatment facility to ensure my mother didn’t make it into that trial?”
“Yes. Later my mother said she misunderstood the note. That she found another and it explained that money wasn’t a factor in acceptance into the study. It was first come, first serve. But today. Today she made it seem like—”
“He paid to keep her out of the trial,” he repeats. “And she knew she’d been rejected the day she killed herself.”
“Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, I think so. Eric—”
He shoves his fingers through his hair, his head dipping low, his emotions cutting, jagging, and tunneling through the room. He’s trembling and I’m not even sure it’s from the numbers in his head. It’s pure, white-hot fury.
Chapter ninety-five
Harper
Eric squeezes his eyes shut, but he doesn’t immediately move. He’s on top of me, his big body steel that seems to hum with his emotions. My hands close around his arms. “I hate them, too. I hate them and—”
He shifts then, his body suddenly lifting from mine, and I am ice, brittle to the bone with his withdrawal, terrified I’ve made the wrong decision by telling him about his mother. It’s truly terrible timing, but when would be the right time for something like this? The minute he’s standing, I’m sitting, holding myself up on my hands. Watching as he turns away, his shoulders bunching, his hands going to his waist, and I watch his body shift with the inhalation of a breath he holds, tension radiating off of him. Aware that the savant in him reacts to emotions, I’m afraid that anything I say or do might trigger a reaction he won’t have otherwise.
Slowly, I scoot to the edge of the bed where I can be ready to do whatever he needs me to do. Ready to stop him from leaving any way I can manage. It won’t be easy, but I have to win. There’s no other option. He steps forward and I stand up. He takes two steps and I take one, only to have him stop dead in his tracks. I stop just as abruptly, holding my breath, not sure what to expect. A full attack, as he described after his mother passed? Anger? Pain? A charge toward the door to leave? I just don’t know. I have no idea what to expect.
Will he hate me for not telling him sooner?
Will he hate me for staying with the Kingstons after I found out? For justifying what I learned as my mother talked craziness?
Will he hate me?
That’s the bottom line.
Have I lost him? God, I can’t lose him. I love him. I love him so much that it hurts to think about never touchinghim or kissing him again. It hurts to think about losing the chance to find out all we can be. I don’t even know how he likes to spend the upcoming holidays he once spent with his mother, now that he’s here in this life he created for himself. And as silly as it might seem, right now, that cuts terribly. I want to know everything about this man. I want to scream this at him. I want to kiss him. I want to rip the rest of his clothes off and make him stay in bed with me until the rest of the world forces us to leave. And yet, I do none of these things because they don’t feel right.
