Hadley’s eyes widened in disbelief, and my mom’s cries got louder.
“Leaving him meant losing you. I couldn’t risk that. Staying with him, no matter what it meant for me . . .” I said through my tears, and had to stop when it got too hard to speak. “Staying meant you were supposed to be safe.”
“But at what cost?” Dad asked; his tone was hard, but his face was filled with grief. “You haven’t told us most of what happened, and I can’t begin to imagine because I don’t want to. Seeing what happened that led to you being in a hospital tells me more than I need to know; I can see now that those years with him aren’t something that you should’ve gone through—no matter what it meant for us. We could’ve figured something out, Harlow!”
I shook my head, because none of them could understand that it wouldn’t have been that simple, but stilled and reached toward my dad when he stopped fighting it and finally burst into tears. “Dad,” I whispered. “I’m sorry, I know you don’t understand, but I couldn’t tell you. Collin was my burden, and I never would have forgiven myself if I’d let his evil slip into your lives more than it was already able to.”
“Oh, honey,” Mom whispered, but then the room quieted except for their soft sobs. “We’ll make this up to you somehow. We’ll take care of you, I promise. We’ll find a doctor you can talk to in Seattle, and—”
“Mom.” I cut her off quietly. “I love you, but what you’re doing . . . there’s no point for it. You don’t have to make up for anything.”
“That’s not it,” she assured me.
“That’s a lot of it,” I argued gently. “I know you want me close after everything that’s happened, too, but most of this is just guilt that you don’t need to feel. And Seattle? Mom, I don’t want to be there.” My throat tightened again and tears filled my eyes, but I smiled through them. “After years without him, I just found Knox again. I never stopped loving him, and I never stopped regretting the mistake I made in choosing Collin over him. Now that he’s here, I can’t go back to a life where he isn’t.”
My parents shared a look, and Hadley turned to look at the door as if expecting Knox to walk through it again. When she turned back around, she nodded and gave me a reassuring smile—but I’d had no doubts she would take my side. Of course Hadley would side with love.
“Harlow, we’ve respected Knox for a long time, and we’re thankful he was here for you,” Dad finally said. “However, after the events of the last couple days now might not be the best time to make this kind of decision. Starting a relationship with Knox would also probably not be the wisest decision. You need time.”
“I plan on taking things one day at a time, Dad. I won’t rush into anything with him just because he’s back in my life. But staying here with him . . . I know that’s what is right for me. He has always been right for me. I just lost my way for a little while.”
Before anyone could respond, there was a knock on the door, and one of the earlier nurses came in with some papers in her hands.
“Are you ready to go home?” she asked brightly.
“I’m ready to leave,” I responded, and wondered at the word home. At the moment, it felt like I didn’t have one. The house I’d lived in with Collin could never be considered a home.
My eyes flitted up to the person now filling the doorway, and my tensed body eased seeing Knox’s warm smile.
I might not have a home now, but I knew in that smile that someday, with that man, I would.
Knox
Present Day—Richland
“WE’LL CALL A company to come pick it up. All of it can be donated,” Harlow said dismissively a week later.
“Donate—what about—wait, don’t you want to go through any of it?” Mrs. Evans asked, stumbling over her words as she looked around the piles of things in Harlow’s old living room.
Harlow looked at her mom, then the piles with a confused expression. “We’ve spent most of this week going through all of it. Everything else went to the dump; this all gets donated.”
Her mom waved off Harlow’s words. “No, I meant don’t you want to go through any of it to see if you want to keep it.”
Even Harlow’s sisters looked shocked.
Hadley sifted through a pile closest to her. “The jewelry in here alone has to be worth close to a million,” she said in awe. “You can’t tell me you don’t want it.”
“What about the furniture?” Harlow’s dad asked. “It’ll help with that apartment you’re getting.”
“You can’t just give all this away!”
“Mom’s right,” Harlow’s older sister, Hayley, said. “At least sell it if you don’t want to keep it.”
The only people in the house not trying to persuade Harlow to do something with everything she and Collin had bought together, or that he’d forced her to buy, were Graham, Deacon, and me.
I knew she didn’t want to keep anything from their fucked-up life together—who would? And whether Graham and Deacon understood that or not, they just wanted whatever Harlow wanted.
“No,” Harlow said with a shake of her head. “Donate.”