Her.
Us.
She calmed me. Soothed my soul. Even with so much bullshit between us, Harleigh made my world a better place.
And like fuck was I ever going to give that up again.
“How is she?” Celeste slipped into the room sometime later.
“Asleep,” I said, stroking my fingers across her forehead.
After the truth came out, Harleigh had crashed, curling up on my lap and falling asleep. I hadn’t had the heart to wake her.
Besides, I needed to process everything.
Celeste crept closer, perching on the arm of one of the chairs.
“Can I trust you?” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a simple question. Can I trust you?”
“What happened?”
“Your father happened.”
“I… I don’t understand.” She paled.
“Did you know? That he tried to keep us apart?”
Surprise glinted in her eyes quickly followed by a flash of anger. “No, I didn’t,” she said.
“Yeah. Turns out daddy dearest didn’t like Harleigh having any ties to The Row, so he severed them.” I motioned to my cell phone. “Read it.”
She picked it up with shaky fingers and I barked out my PIN number. The second the screen lit up, her eyes ran over the text. “You’re saying my father sent this?”
“Seems the most likely culprit given that when I turned up at your house a month after that message was sent, he threatened to have me thrown in jail if I ever came near her again.”
I could still remember the pure hatred on his face as he confronted me. The disgust in his eyes that his daughter could possibly love a guy like me.
“He wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t he?” I countered.
I knew men like Michael Rowe. Rich men who were used to getting their own way. Men who liked order and control. Men who, if you didn’t fit into their neat little box, would cast you aside without a second thought. Harleigh was his blood. His daughter. His legacy. He could bend her to his will, shape her into one of his puppets. But he couldn’t do it if she had one foot in The Row.
Because The Row was beneath a man like Michael Rowe and he wouldn’t ever want his precious daughter tarnished by someone like me.
“You know, when I went down to the police department, one of the officers told me to leave it alone. Said that I was out of my league and should let it go. I thought he was just pulling rank and being an asshole but maybe he was warning me.”
“You’re deluded.”
I arched a brow. “You sure about that? How well do you know daddy dearest?”
“Stop calling him that.” She chewed on the end of her thumb, contemplating something. “It makes no sense. You tried to reach her that day?”
“Multiple times.”