Harper reminded me what love is—and what it’s not.
No matter how many things I tried, no matter what I did to try to forget Dolly, to make Harper into someone I could love instead, it was never enough. Even when I fucked her without a condom to try to force intimacy, even though I cared about her in whatever fucked up way I’m able, she could never be Dolly.
The most she could be was Crystal for a few minutes while I came inside her. And even that wore off when I got to know her better than I ever knew Crystal. Crystal was a fantasy, a regret. Harper is real.
Real enough to teach me what it takes to win in this game. What love can overcome. What it’s worth.
Not because she loved me, but because she loved Royal. And hell, even that asshole taught me a thing or two. She told me on the way to California all he did to get her back. I still think she’s fucking crazy to forgive him, but I can’t help having a grudging respect for him now that I know the lengths he went to for her.
I should have done the same for Dolly all along. I shouldn’t have believed her, shouldn’t have believed that bullshit about loving someone enough to let them go.
Fuck that.
Royal didn’t let Harper go, and she never let him go. They fought for each other.
I’m going to fight for Dolly just as hard and even harder. I’m going to fight everyone including her, until she admits I am it for her. I’m endgame. I don’t care if the beast is supposed to hide away in his castle waiting for his beauty to come stumbling in. This is not that story, and this beast is done sitting around waiting. This beast is coming for his beauty.
Now that I know what it takes, I realize the mistake I’ve made. It’s not too late, even ifYour Celebrity Eyesand the other bullshit tabloid content says she’s been seen out with whatever famous person. She’s not married.
But she will be. Once I get her, I’m not letting go.
I replay the conversation I had with Devlin before they left, when we talked about him disappearing. We left the girls and took the boys on a little trip to the beach.
“You knew I was alive all that time?” he asked as we walked along the shoreline.
“Not at first,” I admitted. “You said goodbye to us, though. I thought you had something planned. And Crystal sent that letter, which came out pretty soon after you left. When they found your car…” I switched the baby to my other arm. “At first I thought maybe suicide.”
“You should’ve known better than that,” he said, setting Knight down. It was funny, the way they named their kids like the Dolces, but also that he named his first son after our school mascot. I wondered whose idea that had been.
“It didn’t seem right,” I said. “But you’d lost your mind over Crystal. I wasn’t sure what you’d do. But then when we found out you’d taken money out of your trust…”
“How’d you keep the Dolces from coming after us?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Just paid off anyone who was making a stink about you being alive.”
“You weren’t pissed?” he asked, squinting into the sun reflecting off the water to keep his son in his sights.
“Sometimes,” I admitted. “But never pissed enough to put you in danger by contacting you. Those bastards are completely insane. You never know what they’re tracking, when they’re listening.”
It was hard to explain to someone who wasn’t there. I must’ve sounded like the crazy one to him. But he hadn’t experienced it, and I wasn’t sorry about that.
“I would have been pissed,” he said, watching Knight standing at the water’s edge, looking out for a wave. “If you were the reason they were coming after our family, I would have been pissed at you.”
“There were easier people to blame,” I said. “I was glad at least one Darling got out unscathed.”
“I wouldn’t have just left you to fight them alone if not for the baby,” he said. “But all I’d have gotten if I stayed was killed. That wouldn’t have helped anyone.”
“No,” I agreed. “You got out when you could. You had another family to think about—your own family.”
“Yeah,” he said, watching as Knight ran from a wave in that waddling way toddlers do, with his short little legs pumping as he crossed the sand.
I imagined what it would be like to have a kid relying on me, a helpless baby to protect as well as the woman I loved. I’d imagined myself in his shoes a thousand times—out of Faulkner, starting a new life where no one knew me, with Crystal Dolce on her knees for me every night. But now, it wasn’t Crystal in my mind, her body laid out before me like a buffet, her glorious tits mine for the taking.
It was Dolly.
If I’d gotten her pregnant, our families would have lost their minds. And I’d have done the same as Devlin in a heartbeat. I couldn’t be mad about it now.
“Do you think it would have been different?” I asked. “If you hadn’t gotten her pregnant?”