“I’m not them, but I need help with them.”
“I won’t help them.”
“Help me.”
“I will. Come here. I’ll give you a job at double the pay you make there and there are no conditions. If we never fuck again, we don’t fuck again. I can place you in any state, or several countries, for that matter. I’ll get you a new start.”
“My mother—”
“Take her with you.”
“She won’t leave him,” I say. “She married my father young. They were in love. Losing him left her devastated. Your father took over her life and her money when she was vulnerable and not in a good way. I can’t leave her. Not in the way you suggest.”
“You said you were going to leave.”
“Before the recalls,” I remind him. “Before she could end up in trouble with the rest of them. I have to go back. Go back with me.”
“If I go back there, I’ll finish them off. I won’t save them. Still want me to go with you?”
“Yes. I do. Because I don’t believe you’re the bastard you want everyone to believe you are or you would have already done it.”
“You’re wrong.” His jaw sets. “And there’s nothing more to say, at least not by me.” In other words, there’s more to say, and I’m the one who has to say it. And there is, but I’m not sure any of it changes anything. It might even make it worse.
He releases me, leaving me cold and aching for his touch. I want this man. Some part of me needs him beyond logic. Maybe it’s the connection to something we both want to be home that never really can be home. Maybe it’s more. I really don’t know or want to understand. It doesn’t matter. He’s no longer touching me and maybe he never will again.
He’s already dressing and somehow that feels like a slap. Me naked on the bed while he dresses certainly feels cold and done. He’s done. He’s made his decision to leave, probably before he ever arrived. He wanted to fuck me. He wanted to own me. It was all part of what he’s just declared. He wants to ruin his father and brother. I’m nothing more than an extension of them. God, I’m a fool but what did I expect? The minute I got naked with him, it must have seemed like I was fucking him to get a favor.
Embarrassed, I scramble off the bed and find my sweats, pulling them on. Once we’re both dressed, he walks to my room service tray and opens it. “Macaroni and cheese,” he says.
“My favorite food,” I reply and I have no idea why this feels almost as intimate of an admission as anything else between us tonight. I regret sharing this part of me with him, but then, why wouldn’t I? I’m just a revenge fuck to him.
He walks to me and I tell myself to back away. I tell myself to end this now, but I can’t stand the idea of never touching him again. I can’t resist the need to feel his hands on my body just one more time. I suck in air, waiting for it, wanting it, and when he slides his hand under my hair to my neck, I feel this man, who would be my enemy by his own definition, everywhere, inside and out.
“Just one of the many things,” he says, “that I would have liked to have known about you, Harper.” He kisses me, a light brush of lips over lips, and then he pulls back. “But that can’t happen. There’s something you haven’t told me. You haven’t been honest with me and that makes you one of them.” He releases me and walks to the door.
I want to scream at him that I’m not one of them, but I don’t, I can’t. Because in ways I don’t want to be, I am. I have to let him walk out the door and he does. He’s gone. I’m alone, but no matter how I connect to his family, I’m still a fish in a sea of Kingston sharks, and I’m going to have to grow my own teeth.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Harper
In life, there are people who really are like two ships passing in the sea never meant to stop or know one another, but what happens when they do?
The idea of leaving New York City and Eric behind is brutal, as if I’m leaving a piece of myself, and that’s just nuts. Last night was sex, nothing more. Six years ago was also sex, nothing more. He came. He made me come. He left. He didn’t look back. And yet here I am, fretting over leaving without seeing him again, to the point that I’m pacing my hotel room and contemplating skipping my flight with a deep need to see Eric again clawing at me.
I tell myself it’s because I need his help, but I know this runs deeper for me. That man affects me and if I wanted closure that allowed me to move on from that party six years ago, and him, I didn’t get it. I just got more of him and more seems to feed my need for even more.
The doorman knocks on my door, which means I’m out of time. It’s officially decision time and for me, that comes back to one key thing: Eric was right. I haven’t told him everything and I can’t. I can’t look him in the eyes and tell him that I have. I can’t lie to him the way everyone else has, but if I tell him everything there is to tell, his words will prove true: he’ll ruin the Kingston family and that means my mother and my father’s legacy along with it. I was playing with fire coming here, thinking I could stay silent. I need to just go home before I do something stupid. I let the doorman in.
An hour and a half later, I’m on a plane, and when I should be trying to decide how to move on without Eric’s touch, I’m thinking about him—every touch, every kiss, every word we’d shared plays in my mind over and over again and my regrets are many. I should have said more. I should have stopped him from walking out that door, but I remind myself I couldn’t. He saw too much and you don’t expect a genius who sees too much to stop seeing too much. You don’t ask a genius to help you see what you can’t and expect him not to see everything.
By the time I’m on the ground, it’s early evening, and when I walk into my downtown home, I strip down to sweats and a T-shirt, order Chinese food, and sit down at my computer. It’s time to focus on what’s before me. My cellphone rings with Gigi’s number and I let it go to voicemail. I need a plan before I talk to her. She’s no spring chicken and the idea of Eric helping us seemed to have calmed her down. I need to give her another rope to hang onto. Heck, I need to give myself another rope to hang onto. I need to hire help and that help has to be someone that can’t be bought off by Isaac, and Isaac has a lot of money. I have limited resources.
My mind reaches and I grab my purse and pull out the business card I’d grabbed from Eric’s desk. His cellphone and his email are on it. I pull up my email and before I can talk myself out of it, I start to type:
Eric—
I grabbed your card from your des