I shook my head, unable to grasp how badly everything had gotten fucked-up back then. I’d blamed Harlow . . . I’d blamed her dad . . . and now I knew I had to blame myself. I’d unintentionally broken her heart and sent her into Collin’s arms while I wrecked myself just trying to give her a few months of freedom. “How long did it take you to realize that?”
Her face twisted with grief. “What difference will it make?” The words were so soft, even with her pressed this close to me I could barely hear them.
“I want to know,” I assured her.
“It will only hurt you mo—”
“Harlow.”
She sighed, and her eyes drifted to the side, like she was remembering things from those years apart. “I always wondered. I dream of you most nights, and it started right after that phone call on my eighteenth birthday. I’d wake up in the middle of the night from the dreams crying, and would cry until I fell asleep again. But I kept telling myself that I was in love with Collin— well, I was in love with Collin. I think I told myself I wasn’t in love with you anymore because I knew you weren’t in love with me.” Her head shook once. “The day he asked me to marry him was when I first thought I’d made the wrong choice.
“When he asked, I had this flashback to the night you told me you were going to marry me—that night we planned our whole future—and all I could see was you when I told him ‘yes.’ Collin started changing that night. Just subtle things, but I think I just loved him enough that I kept excusing what he did, or making myself believe that it hadn’t really happened. Then somehow time kept passing. Right before the wedding, every time I woke from a dream of you, I had this deep sense of longing and loss. That’s when I knew that I’d chosen the wrong man. But it didn’t matter; it was too late for us. Too much time had passed, and I was getting married to a man I loved, even if I could never love him the way I loved you. I just kept telling myself that even if I had chosen you, so much had changed and there had been so much heartbreak in those months after I’d left that we never would’ve been able to go back to how we had been.”
“It never would’ve been too late for us,” I insisted.
Harlow looked at me sadly, and the hand on my cheek curled. “I know that now.”
Harlow
Fall 2012—Richland
“OH, HARLOW.”
I turned and caught sight of my dad in the doorway my mom and sisters had just walked out of.
“You look . . .” He trailed off and shook his head once. His chin quivered, and my eyes widened.
“No, no! Please don’t cry, Daddy! If you cry I’m going to ruin my makeup because you know I won’t be able to hold it in. Please don’t cry.”
“I’m not,” he said gruffly, and cleared his throat. After taking a second to look around the room to gather himself, he faced me again with a proud smile. “You look beautiful.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I whispered, and ran my shaking hands over my wedding dress.
“It’s about that time; are you ready?”
I let out a slow breath and smiled up at him. Even after swallowing past the tightness in my throat, I still couldn’t voice a word, so I nodded instead and grabbed my bouquet.
“Now, if you’re not, we can still call this whole thing off and I won’t think less of you. But I asked Hayley the same question before she got married, and I will ask Hadley, too. Are you sure you’re making the right choice?”
I felt his question like a punch to my stomach. It had to be a normal question, right? Yet it felt like it meant so much more, because I wasn’t sure. I was sure I loved Collin, but I knew I could never love him as much as I was capable of loving someone. Because I had loved someone with all that I am. I still loved that person with everything in me, and while I knew firsthand that you could love two men at the same time, you couldn’t love them equally. One might have your heart, but the other would have your soul—Knox Alexander would always have my soul.
So was I making the right choice? Maybe today, but I would always live with the knowledge that two years ago, I didn’t.
Before I could respond, my dad laughed lightly, like he’d amused himself. “What am I saying? Of course you’re sure you’re making the right choice; otherwise it would’ve been a different man waiting in the church for you.”
My brow pinched in confusion. “What? Dad, what are you talking about?”
He waved off my question. “Nothing, nothing. Are you ready?”
“No, tell me. What were you talking about?” I asked, and smiled reassuringly, hoping it would encourage him to tell me.
Dad debated with himself for a second, then finally said, “Well, a couple years ago, we all thought you would’ve married that Alexander boy.”
Knox, I thought . . . or maybe screamed. I just knew my knees were barely holding me anymore.
“When he came to me before you left for school asking if he could marry you, I didn’t know what to say. I mean you weren’t even eighteen yet, but I also didn’t think I could keep the two of you apart.”