My eyes narrowed at her last worried words, but I didn’t comment on it. As much as I wanted to put this off because this seemed like the worst time to finally do this, I wouldn’t. I lazily traced shapes onto Harlow’s bare stomach to keep myself calm, and said, “Right; you never told me what happened on Monday.”
Her face pinched in worry and pain, and my body tensed in preparation for whatever she was about to tell me. “I thought I was pregnant,” she said after a few silent moments.
I nodded slowly. “You bought yourself a week.”
She shook her head. “On Friday he made me take a test. It was positive.”
My face and arm fell, but I didn’t try to move away from her. I just didn’t know how to keep it up anymore. I hadn’t missed the word thought, but it was hard to think about her having a positive pregnancy test at all with another man when I’d just finished making her mine.
“I didn’t know how to tell you. I’ve always been careful so I wouldn’t get pregnant with him. On Monday I was waiting at the doctor’s office when you and I talked on the phone. I wanted to tell you in person after, but then Collin showed up at the appointment.”
Harlow’s body started shaking. It took all my strength to move my arm to pull her close again, but I didn’t comment on the near-violent trembling.
“He’s never missed work, or left early, a day that we’ve been married. But he went, and that’s when we found out that there was no baby. There hadn’t been a baby. Collin was . . . Collin was . . .” She trailed off, and her head shook slowly as one hand came up to rest on her throat. Her eyes weren’t focused, and I knew she wasn’t seeing me, or the room we were in. She choked out a sob and turned onto her side to press her forehead into my chest.
I ran my hand over her back and tried not to think of the way her shoulder blades and spine felt against my palm, or the way her hip felt digging into my stomach.
“He’s changed,” she murmured. “He’s changed, and it’s terrifying.”
“Wasn’t he terrifying before?”
I hardly breathed for minutes as Harlow whispered about things Collin had done to her; she described them in a way that suggested she’d done something wrong—dirty even. I’d seen every bruise by that point, but I hadn’t imagined anything half as bad as what she’d described. “Oh my God,” I finally said. “I’m taking you from here. I need to—”
“No, that was before,” she said, and lifted her head to look into my eyes. Her eyes were round with understanding and worry. “He—he’s not doing that now. Some ways it’s better, I guess. But it really is so much worse.”
My mouth opened, but no sound came out. All I could think was, How can anything be worse? Then I looked down to her throat, and I thought I might understand.
It wasn’t until she told me about the shower on Monday, and what had happened with the eggs that morning, that I realized I didn’t.
“Now you know,” she said with fresh tears in her eyes. “Now you know everything. I swore I would never tell anyone what was happening, or what had happened, but I know with this change, each day my monster comes out is only going to get worse and worse until there isn’t another day for me.”
A sob hitched in my throat, but I choked it back down. I knew that if she was saying those words, then she meant them. Harlow wouldn’t say them for sympathy or dramatic effect. Not after she’d endured years of what she’d just explained to me, and had tried before to tell me she was fine and could handle it.
“Why?” I finally asked. “Why did you choose him? There had to have been some sign that he was this guy.”
“None. I look back and still don’t see it. But, Knox, I’d thought I’d lost you before my eighteenth birthday ever came.” My brow furrowed, but she continued before I could ask. “I know what was going on back then because my dad told me, but when I left Seattle and you pulled away from me, I was so sure that you were pulling away for good—that you were done waiting for me. My heart broke every day until Collin had healed it enough that it finally stopped.”
It felt like I was back at that day. It felt like my heart was being ripped out all over again. “You thought I was pulling away from you?” I asked, horror coating my words. “Harlow, no, I was pushing you to go have a life, and giving you time to know exactly what you wanted because your dad made me promise I would!”
“I know,” she said. Tears fell from her eyes, and she brought a hand up to cover my cheek. “I was so confused when you called me on my birthday. Confused in my feelings and why you were calling at all. I was sure you only called for the same reason you sporadically called in the months before—out of obligation. But even though I thought you were done with me, I still was so worried that I’d made a mistake in choosing him. I’m so sorry,” she choked out. “Not waiting for you was the biggest mistake of my life, Knox Alexander.”