He swallows hard and cuts his gaze before he releases me and moves away. I rotate to find him stalking toward the window where he stops, pressing his hands to his hips. A moment later, he’s leaning forward, his fists pressed to the glass of the window.
Oh God.
He’s dead.
His father is dead.
I swallow hard now and I wait for anger or disdain or darkness to follow, but it doesn’t. He told me he would only do what he was forced to do and I believed him. I have to believe him now. Some part of me knows that he needs me to trust him that much. I need the same from him.
I step to his side. He pulls me in front of him, presses me against the glass. “What do you want to say to me?”
“I’m with you. No matter what you say to me, I’m with you.”
“No matter what I confess to you right now?”
“No matter what you confess to me right now or ever. Real and unconditional. That’s what I want in my life. That’s what I want to be for you.”
“Harper—”
I wrap my arms around him and press myself close. “No matter what you tell me, I’m here with you. But I need you to trust me the way I’m trusting you. You left because you believed Isaac’s lies.”
“I came back. We’ve talked about this.”
“But you left, Eric, and just now at the door, you thought I knew what I don’t know yet, and you thought I was leaving you. That’s not trust in me and us, but I get it. No one in your life has earned that trust.” Not even his mother, I think. She left him, even if it was to save him.
He cups my head. “I thought you were running.” There’s a hint of accusation in his tone that he can’t seem to bite back. He thought I was done. He thought we were done.
“To you. The only place I’m running to is you.”
“God, woman,” he murmurs, and then his mouth is covering mine, his tongue licking into my mouth, and he doesn’t taste tender. Not one little bit. He tastes like raw pain and desperation. He tastes like lust and danger, heartache and need. I sink deeper into the kiss, and this time, I’m the one tangling my fingers into his hair.
He reaches for my hand, covering it with his, tearing his mouth from mine. “You’re sure you’re with me all the way, Harper? Because it’s all or nothing for us. We’ve proven that. We are that.”
“All,” I whisper. “I choose all.”
“Even if I killed my father?”
I pull back and search his face, sorting through the shadows in his eyes. “You didn’t.”
He narrows his gaze on me, a flicker of surprise in the depths of his stare. “How can you be sure?”
“I’d know. I’d see it in your eyes. I’d taste it on your kiss. Is he dead?”
“He wasn’t when I left him. He’s in the hospital and we have to go there.”
“What happened?”
“I took him coffee. Playing nice when I knew he wouldn’t expect that from me. We were in the living area of his suite, he took a sip, and that was it. He started choking.”
“Did he have a heart attack?”
“If he did, it was drug-induced.”
“How can you be sure?” I press.
“I had plenty of experience with poison in the SEALs. He was poisoned.”
“By who?”