“Can we talk in the living room?” Graham asked, but I didn’t bother responding in any way. He took my silence and stillness as my answer, and sighed. “We do care,” he said, still speaking soft enough that he wouldn’t wake Harlow. “But it’s hard when we’re worried about what the consequences could be, when we’ve always worried about that.”
“Try to see it from our perspective,” Deacon cut in. “We were in college, and you only cared about a girl who was too young for you—who was considered illegal. And, I mean, for shit’s sake—” He cut off when Graham gave him a look for talking too loud. When he started again, his voice was so soft I could barely hear him. “You told us everything. We were already sort of worried, but when you first told Harlow you would wait for her, and she told you that you would be wasting your time, that was it for us. We knew she was playing you. And then every time the two of you talked, she told you the same thing. We didn’t know why you were the only one who didn’t see that you were.”
“It was—that’s not what she meant.” I groaned and rubbed at my jaw. I scrambled for a way to explain it, but didn’t know how to. “It was . . . our thing, I guess.”
“That’s a weird fucking thing,” Deacon mumbled, then waved off my warning glare. “Were we dicks during those first few years? Yeah, we took it too far. We’ll admit that now. But then she turned eighteen, and she did exactly what we’d always worried she would, and did we rub it in your face?”
I didn’t answer.
“And now this. You haven’t seen her in years, but it’s like no time has passed for you. You’re ready to take up where you left off. Once again, we’re worried. Even more so, because not only is she married, but we had to watch the kind of person you turned into for those first couple of years after what she did to you the first time.”
Graham was nodding, and before I could ask what Deacon meant, Graham explained, “You never showed us that you were upset, but you were suddenly . . .” He trailed off and searched for the right word. “Uncontrollable. In everything. It wasn’t until Grey’s fiancé died three years ago that you finally snapped out of it and calmed down. Well, calmed down into the Knox we’d always known growing up.”
“I-I didn’t know,” I whispered, but swallowed roughly, because now that I was thinking about it, I did. They drank and hooked up with girls, but I pushed for the nights to go longer, and the girls to multiply.
“It’s okay,” Deacon said when he noticed what I’d just realized. “Like I said, we know we took things too far back then. We know we made it hard for you two then, but can you understand our side at all?”
I didn’t have to think about that answer. “Yes and no. I understand why you were scared for me, but I will never understand why you did what you did—and what you’ve been doing before tonight.”
Graham raised an eyebrow. “Again, you couldn’t see it from our side. All we knew was that she never once tried to find you or even contact you for years, and all of a sudden in the last two and a half weeks, she had you caught up in all this bullshit, and threatening to walk away from your best friends. There are red flags when a girl does that; there are major red flags when she’s married and using you.” He was quick to continue: “We get it; she wasn’t. We know now that she wasn’t lying, and that all this shit is real. That doesn’t mean it was easy to believe then.” His head dropped so he could look at the floor, and he shook it once. “Speaking of, what are you going to do about the husband? You really think he’ll come after Harlow?”
“I know he will, but I don’t know what we’re going to do about him yet. I don’t know how many officers he has on the take, but I know from what Harlow told me this afternoon that it stretches farther than Benton County, or even the state of Washington.”
“Shit,” they said at the same time.
Even though the only light in the room was coming in from the hallway, I could tell Graham’s eyes were fixated behind me. After a moment he said, “You can tell that it’s not just today, or even just this week, or this month. It’s like you said: she looks sick. Even if she didn’t show up covered in blood tonight, it would’ve been obvious.”
“She looks haunted,” Deacon finished for him. “Knox, man, we know what she means to you. During all this time, that has never been something we’ve questioned. But, if you ever get past all this with her husband, what are you going to do? With what she’s been through, she might not be the girl you fell in love with.”
I twisted to look at her, and something in my chest tightened painfully. My eyes never left her face as I admitted, “She’s not. The Harlow I knew was full of life, and never stopped laughing or smiling. But she had to build hundreds of walls to protect herself from him because he’s been trying to break her for years.” Cracked, my earlier assessment floated through my mind, and my lips twitched. “She’s there, though. Somewhere. I’ll find her, no matter how long it takes.”