“BECAUSE YOU LEFT ME,” she exploded, pain bleeding from every word, hitting me like shrapnel, ripping into me and tearing me open.
“B.” I reached for her. Burying my hand in her hair, unwilling to let her pull away from me. “I didn’t leave you. I fucked up, yeah … but the second I heard what happened, I came for you. I fucking ran. I almost got thrown in jail. I kicked up such a storm down at the local PD.”
“Y-you did?” She sniffled, and I brushed her tear-stained cheeks with the pad of my thumb. “You came for me?”
“Of course I did. It’s you, B. It’s you.” I gripped her tighter. “When I found out your mom had… I was so fucking scared for you. Mrs. Feeley told me she’d watched the cops take you away. Jessa called them but they wouldn’t talk to us, so I went straight down there. Refused to leave until someone spoke to me. I was a fucking mess, and when they said they couldn’t tell me anything, I lost it.”
“I-I don’t understand…” Her expression gutted me.
How had we ended up here?
Full of hate and bitterness. Half-truths and lies.
“After I drove you home that night, I met the guys. I was angry at myself for touching you, for letting myself cross that line… We got fucked up, woke up in Paul Odell’s garage the next day. My phone battery was dead. I didn’t get your messages until later.”
Until it was too fucking late.
“But you didn’t reply.” She shook her head, dumbfounded. “You didn’t—”
“I did. I called. I texted you, B. All day I tried to reach you. Look.” I gently grabbed her hand and pushed the cell phone back into it.
“It’s all right there.”
Her bottom lip wobbled as she read the messages, silent tears rolling down her cheeks. “I… I don’t understand. Nix…” Green eyes slid to mine, so full of regret and heartache it fucking slayed me. “You didn’t…”
“I came for you, B. I will always fucking come for you. Don’t you get it? You’re mine, Wren. You’ve always been mine.” I pulled her back into my arms, holding on tight.
There were so many things we needed to talk about, to figure out. But it could wait. Right now, I needed to hold her. I needed to know she was okay.
“All this time, I thought… I thought you’d left me.”
“Never,” I rasped, hugging her tighter. Closer.
This. This is what I’d been missing the last nine months.
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.”
“But she said you never returned her calls or messages.”
“He must have deleted the messages and flashed her phone or something. I don’t know how he did it but what I do know is that B needed me. She fucking needed me, and he kept her from me. And she… she hurt herself because she thought I’d abandoned her.”
Fuck, those words hurt. Cut so fucking deep the air sucked clean from my lungs. How was I ever going to move past the fact she’d tried to hurt herself… because she thought I’d left her.
“How bad was it?” I pushed the words past the giant lump in my throat as I ran my thumb over the jagged scar on Harleigh’s wrist. A soft murmur left her lips and I soaked up the sight of her sleeping. Peaceful.
Alive.
I didn’t want to know. The thought of Harleigh ever hurting herself because of me was too much to bear, but I needed to know.
The blood drained from Celeste’s cheeks. “It was bad; really bad.”
“Fuck,” I hissed, running my eyes over Harleigh’s sleeping form. She looked so small and fragile. So peaceful.
I would never forgive her father for his scheming that led us to this point. That led Harleigh to believing I’d abandoned her during the darkest day of her life.
“She still loves you, you know?” My eyes snapped to Celeste’s and she gave me a sad smile. “When she told me about you, about what happened, I said it didn’t make any sense… But she’s broken, Nix. She’s so broken that she couldn’t see past all the lies and half-truths. I’m sorry. If what you say is true, then I’m sorry. For all of it.”
“It isn’t your fault.”
“I know. But she’s my sister. I care about her. And I hate the idea that our father was somehow involved….” Anger flared in her eyes again.
Good, get angry, girl. Because I’m fucking furious.