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Waiting feels right. Giving him space to decide what comes next feels right.
Several beats pass and we just stand there, neither of us speaking, but I can feel his awareness of me just behind him. Just as I’m intensely aware of him, so very aware of him. I’ve been aware of him on some deep, soul-searching level since the day I met him. I’m a part of this man. He’s a part of me and he has to know that. He has to see that. I sway toward him and my fingers ball by my sides. I flash back to the day my mother told me what she’d found years ago now. I think of the moment I picked up the phone to try to track down Eric and then set the phone back down. And I did so for one reason: I didn’t have the facts. Technically, I didn’t this time either, but he had the right to know.
I need to say or do something.
Finally, when I think my knees might buckle from the intensity of the waves of adrenaline surging through me, Eric holds out a hand, a silent invitation to join him. My heart squeezes with this sign of unity. He’s not pushing me away. He’s not withdrawing. I step forward and press my hand in his and the minute my palm touches his palm, his fingers close around mine. I’d feel relief if it wasn’t for the way his body hums. He’s on edge. He’s barely holding it together, and yet, he’s holding my hand.
He walks me toward him until I’m by his side, and I think—I really do think—he’s telling me something. He’s telling me that he’s not doing this without me. Seconds tick by when we would be shoulder to shoulder before he looks at me. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“Downstairs.”
“Why downstairs?” I ask, nervous about how near the door we’ll be there.
“The view. The cubes. The space I need to be in right now with you.”
“With me?”
“Yes, Harper. With you.”
“I’d like that.”
“Good,” he says simply, and he starts walking.
Together, we walk down the stairs and we say nothing. Together, we walk into the living room where we sit down again, where we’d been when this all started, where our food still sits. I close the lids and take it all to the kitchen where I store it. When I come back, Eric is standing at the window with a Rubik’s cube in his hand. I don’t close the space between us. I just know on some level that he needs me to be here, but that he needs space. Instead, I sit on the couch, pick up one of the cubes and hold it in my hand, watching him. Time passes by, told in the darkening of the sky, the disappearance of stars, the shift of the city lights beyond the window where he stands, the window that frames this room on top of the world where we hide. Where he thinks. Where the man, who is like no one I have ever known, thinks through what comes next. Right now, the storm is at bay. Right now, every bullet I feared might fly remains locked and loaded in a weapon that is this man. Right now, he’s more savant than man, and it’s the man that will hold that weapon.
I don’t know how much time passes, but suddenly he goes from standing there to pressing his hands on the glass, his chin on his chest, and I have this sense he’s emerged from a tunnel. He’s here. He’s present. He’s made decisions and those decisions are where trouble could emerge. This is where the man takes control. This is where this woman,his woman, needs to be ready to take control.
I set down the cube and stand up, hurrying across the room. Once I’m behind Eric, I wait, giving him time to face me, but I have this sense of him waiting on me, on him willing me to come to him. I slide between him and the bar running in front of the window, in almost the exact spot where he’d demanded I tell him everything. I don’t touch him. He doesn’t touch me. We just stand there, staring at each other, so close we could touch. So close that we are fire and there is no ice to be found. That’s how we operate. That’s how we ignite when we’re near one another.
He reaches up and caresses my cheek, goosebumps lifting on my skin with that touch, tingling sensations sliding all through my body. “Princess,” he says softly, and that word is both silk and blade to me. It cuts in so many ways.
I want to tell him to stop calling me that damn name again, as I have before. I want to tell him to never call me that again. Hishands are suddenly on my upper arms, his eyes holding mine. “That name is on my body forever. Your name. To me, it means Harper. It means my heart.”
His heart. He’s my heart and I’m bleeding for him right now. “I didn’t tell you. I wanted to but—”
“I wouldn’t have wanted to tell you either.”
“Would you have?”
“I’d like to say yes. I’d like to say that you deserved to know, but I would have battled with that decision.”
He’s okay. I can tell he’s okay. My hand settles on his chest and his heartbeat is steady. “How are you okay right now?”
“I already knew they’d done something to trigger her decision.”
“You thought Gigi had.” My fingers curl on his chest. “Your father—”
“Is born of the same cloth. I knew that.”
“Everyone wants to believe they have a parent that cares about them.”
“I had that. I still do. My mother will always be with me. She’s always dictated many of my decisions. She’s always been my moral compass, not Grayson. She just spoke through him.” There is more to that statement. Something he hasn’t said. Something he doesn’t want to say.
“Eric—”
“They have to pay.” His voice is hard. His emotions are checked. This is about control and he has it. “You have to know that,” he adds, and then repeats. “They have to pay, Harper.”
