Did some small part of me hope that she’d show up to the ten-year celebration of Helen’s life?
Yes.
Like a Goddamn idiot, I still hoped. I knew when I told Bane to tell Silas about it, there was a chance it could happen.
But now—her actually being here, suddenly throwing herself in my arms right when I thought she was about to pull another runner on me—I can barely believe this isn’t one of the many tormenting dreams that’ve kept me up at night the past decade.
And she just said she loves you.
She has a child with another man. A man I suspect has always been my greatest enemy.
I knew she had a kid with him. I’ve looked her up online. Of course I have. I would have chased her to the ends of the earth. I tried everything to find her right after she disappeared on me.
Her mother at the trailer park stonewalled me. The GPS on her phone led me to find it cracked on the side of the road, as if she’d tossed it exactly so I’d never find her.
I tried to take it as a sign she meant what she said in the note she left. When she finally popped up on social media a few years later with her tattoo shop, and mention of a kid and a partner named Z, I tried to harden myself with the knowledge that our brief time together meant more to me than it ever had to her. I tried to be happy for her. If you love someone, you let them go, all that.
But now I kiss her hungrily back, hands cinching around her waist and pulling her into me, knowing now it was all a fucking lie.
Just that bastard intentionally keeping her away from me. No doubt he tossed her phone himself.
She groans into the kiss, her lips working just as furiously against mine.
She never wanted to leave me. She would have stayed. I know she would have.She always wanted me back.
Holy fuck, it changes everything.
It’s going to get messy, if her son’s father hates me… But I don’t fucking care.
I kiss her harder, a desperate need rising inside me that feels wild and unrestrained in a way that would feel dangerous except for how her whole body loosens so she’s flush against me. Her lips feel fuller but so familiar at the same time.
In some dark part of my mind, I swore if she actually showed up at the memorial, I wouldn’t let her go without a fight.
And I didn’t even know the half of it.
Her leg lifts to wrap around my hip and my hand drops to massage her ass. Fuck, the feel of her in my arms. The way she kisses me just as furiously back—like she’s been equally desperate for me these last ten years.
I want to lose my mind with her, and give into the desperation of our bodies. For the first time in years, I’m not fighting for control of my thoughts. It feels so natural to just exist. Because touching Harper is as natural as breathing.
When her hands reach for the hem of my shirt, though, all systems freeze.
God knows it’s not that I’m not primed. I’m hard, all but bursting.
And the thing is, if it were any other woman, I’d let them continue without thinking about it.
All I have these days are one-night stands.
But that’s the thing. This isHarper.
Every time I look up at the night sky and see the stars, I want to map the constellations with her. When I’m alone on the vast emptiness of a mattress, I imagine her curled into my side.
Other women have touched me in the last decade, but all I can ever think is that theyaren’t her.Not Harper. Not the one I want.
But finally itisHarper.
The only woman I’ve ever wanted ishere, back in my arms, saying the words I’ve been dying my whole life to hear.
I can feel in her desperation that she wants this fast and dirty. And it feels just like it did back in high school, like I’m in some sort of time warp déjà vu.