The air shifts around us and then this swell of heat and intensity blossoms, consuming us. I can’t breathe when he’s this close and yet I can’t imagine ever breathing again if he left.
“I wasn’t okay when you left,” I whisper, not sure why I make the confession. “Not even close to okay. I can’t fall for you, Eric, and have you leave. You have to talk to me. You have to give me a chance to explain what you don’t understand.”
The MacBook beeps with a message and he ignores it, sliding a hand under my hair to settle on my neck. “I’m not leaving, Harper.” My hand lands on his chest, and his heart races under my palm. Or maybe it’s my heart racing, radiating through my palm into his chest. I don’t know where I start and end with this man. There is just what I was before him and what I am with him.
“I told you,” he adds. “We’re together now.”
“You said that before you left.” I pull back and look at him. “You did leave. I’m so very thankful that you came back and not just because of that warehouse. You heard the voicemails. You know what state I was in before the warehouse went dark. I was destroyed when you left and I don’t even know what to do with that. No other human being has ever had that power over me.”
“I was no better.” He shuts his eyes and seems to struggle before he looks at me. “I had things pounding at my mind.”
“Things? Numbers?”
“Yes. Yes, Harper. No one does that to me anymore, and I have to want you really damn badly to let you know you can do that to me. It’s a weakness. I don’t like weaknesses.”
“I’m a weakness?” That cuts and I try to pull away.
He holds onto me. “Caring about someone is a weakness,” he says, echoing my thoughts from moments before. “It opens you up to pain and hurt. We just choose to make it worth the risk. And you are.”
I understand what he’s saying. Losing my dad tore me to pieces. Fear for my mother drives me daily, but there is more to the confessions now between us. “I wish I didn’t know that I could trigger the savant in a bad way. I don’t want to be a trigger like that. I want to be someone who calms you. I want—”
He leans in and kisses me, a deep slide of tongue before he says, “You can be. In time, you can be that for me. With trust, there are many things we can be together, Harper.”
It’s then that I know I have to tell him what I’ve held back. I have to tell him all the shitty ways this family has tried to hurt him, and be done with it. At least then, despite the pain it will cause, it won’t be pain I caused, and I now think that’s a critical part of us moving forward. “Eric—”
The messages on the MacBook explode with back-to-back beeps and he kisses me. “Hold that thought. I need to see what the hell is going on.” He turns away to read the messages and I’m suddenly alarmed. We’re in the air. My mother is on the ground. What if something goes wrong?
“What’s happening?” I ask, scooting closer and trying to see over his shoulder. “Is everyone safe?”
“Yes,” he says, typing a reply before he glances at me. “My father and Isaac showed up at the warehouse and apparently had a blow up in front of the building.”
“Because I’m still alive? Or because your father found out Isaac tried to kill me and went nuts?”
He stops mid-sentence of whatever he’s typing and turns to me. “Maybe the latter. I don’t know.” His expression says nothing more but it’s there, in the air.
“What do you and Blake think?”
“Undecided. On one side, I don’t like the way they tried to get me out of the picture before tonight happened. That seems like they wanted to end you, and they knew I wouldn’t let that happen. On the other side, if you ended up dead, they had to believe that I’d come back for revenge. Then again, I let them get away with hurting my mother.” He cuts his stare.
“You were a teenager.” I grab his arm. “You were a kid and you followed her wishes.”
He looks at me. “What are your wishes, Harper?”
It feels like a test. Like his need to hear that my loyalty is to him, not them. I don’t know how he can question this, but I get it. I’m still the princess until I prove I’m right here with him, all the way until the end. “I don’t want to take any shit from them ever again. Hurt them if they deserve it.”
“They deserved it before I ever met you.”
“Don’t hold back for me. Ever.”
His eyes glint with something I don’t quite understand. “Are you sure about that?” he asks softly.
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“Then now is the time when I ask you a question before I assume the answer. I ask. You answer. Tell me the truth.”
Unease slides through me. I don’t know what this is about. I don’t know at all, but I dive head first into the uncharted waters. “I will. Ask. Whatever it is, I’ll answer honestly.”
“Why did Kingston wire large sums of money into an account in your name that you later closed?”