Messy
Page 21
“No plans for an afterparty?” asks a willowy black woman. She has a notebook and a lanyard around her neck that says Press, but I get the idea that she’s not asking for pure journalistic curiosity.
“Did you get an invitation?” Alec parries with such a charming grin that she laughs instead of taking offense. He’s a professional. “We’ll all be out to give comments in a few moments. If you’ll pardon me, we have old business to take care of.”
The reporters’ attention swings to me en masse. Pens scribble frantically as they realize who I am. I twiddle my fingers in a wave, suppressing the urge to flip them off instead.
The black woman’s eyes narrow in a canny look. “Is this about that acoustic song? Your solo?”
Alec dismisses her efficiently. “Question and answer period coming later.”
He pulls us across the hallway and into a dark room. He doesn’t reach for the lights. Instead he lets go of me and leans against the door. He’s... not happy to see me. Not the way I hoped. Still, it’s all I can do to resist touching him. The language of bodies is one for which we never needed translation. I wish I could press myself against him, feel his breathing and let it calm my own.
I wrap my arms around my body instead. It would be easy to fold to the floor, but I think that would be another method of hiding. Of running. I grasp hold of easier thoughts. Ones I know how to articulate. “Thank you for doing Dad’s song.”
“That was you. In the wings.”
“I didn’t mean to distract you. I wanted to stay. It’s a beautiful song and the way you sing it...” My sinuses prickle, a sign that tears are on the way. It’s unsurprising, but I try to blink them gone. I want him to hear me, not my tears. “When did Dad give it to you?”
“A few weeks ago,” Alec says simply.
“Do you think he wrote it for me? Cherie isn’t an unusual nickname but he used to call me that. A long, long time ago.”
“I’m certain it’s about you.”
I lose my battle with the tears. One slips down my cheek. I swipe it away with a palm. It’s going to take me a long time to process that song. How exquisite it was, the depth of emotions wrapped up in simple words. Maybe one day my grief won’t loom quite so large and I’ll be able to feel the anger that lurks in my depths, the part of me that’s furious. He wrote a song that beautiful but never said such things to my face. He didn’t dare be that vulnerable. Most of all, he tried to teach me not to be vulnerable either.
Alec looks at me with compassion, but he doesn’t reach for me.
“Is that all you wanted?” His voice is smooth, his accent cultured. Despite this air of remove, it feels like he’s giving me an in. A starting point. He’s always been handing me a lifeline.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and it comes out in a whisper. “I mean, I wanted to say I’m sorry. I... don’t know if I’ve ruined us. Maybe I have and this won’t work. But I have to be able to tell you that I’m sorry.”
“Great. You’re sorry. If that’s it, we can go now.” His voice is cold and he steps away from the door, not toward me but to the side. I can’t read his expression. From the tone of his voice, I don’t want to.
“Would we leave as friends?” I bite my lip, unsure why I’ve asked. “Would you call sometimes? Send cards? Letters?”
I want to believe that his mouth twists in a wry smile. All I know is that his feet shift. He’s given me leaves I can’t read. “You wouldn’t send any in return,” he says.
“But I’d hoard everything you sent me.” The words trip out like butterflies. Or maybe moths, dark and unpleasant. “I probably wouldn’t ever manage to send anything back, you’re right. You know me. But do you also realize that I’d fall asleep with your words in my hand? Knowing it was paper you’d held.” I pull a faded, folded scrap of paper from my pocket. The lyrics I rescued. “I kept this even while I was telling myself that nothing we did mattered.”
“But it doesn’t really matter though, Harlow,” he says. Quietly. Sadly. “None of that has consequence if you leave me adrift until tides pull me down. You’re giving me nothing to hold onto. Love isn’t one way.”
“I know. If it’s only one way, it twists. Becomes desperation and sick adoration.” I look down at my feet, to the comfortable Converse I thought would carry me all the way home. Now I’m swimming in his ocean. “I’ve lived one-way love my whole life. That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. I’m terrified of the way you take me over.”
“That’s bullshit.” He slaps at the light switch. The cold fluorescents snap on overhead and I’m left blinking. His eyebrows are drawn together in a tight knot, his expression an unspoken growl. The hollows at the base of his throat are deep. “I’ve never met anyone with a firmer sense of themselves, Harlow Tate. Your father screwed you over in a thousand ways, but that’s one he never managed. You know exactly who you are.”
“But what if I don’t trust myself? You’re probably right, I do know who I am—someone who only does the right thing when I’m going to get something out of it. I doted on Dad for my own aims. I want to be different.” My hands fall to my sides. Fists. I’m making fists. How strange.
He doesn’t seem to sense the danger. Three strides bring him right to me. He holds my face between both hands, then tilts my head up. I’m forced to look at him. “Don’t you dare try to be anyone else. You’re the one I love. You. Every angry, out of control, softhearted bit of you.”
“If you see me, you won’t love me.” Still, he’s holding me in and keeping me together. “If you really love me, you’re going to fall out of love and I’m going to be ruined because I love you more than I can stand. How is that okay? How is that normal?”
“It’s not normal.” His eyes burn. The fingers tremble against my face. “Many people won’t get love like we have. That means we shouldn’t throw it away.”
“It’s probably not healthy. Like, I should get a therapist for codependency kind of not healthy. But I don’t want to go anywhere else. I don’t want to be apart from you.”
I’m babbling. I can’t stop. My hands are tangled in the open placket of his shirt. I’m wrinkling him. I’m ravaging him.
Maybe that’s the point. I’m consumed and it’s the safest I’ve ever been, because I get to devour him in return. He knows the chaotic truth of me and he hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s come for me again and again.
“You’ve put yourself on the line even when I retreat,” I tell him. His stage sweat is cooling but there’s a visible, pounding pulse in his neck. I stare at it. “Dad threw you away and he threw me away and I tried to do the same to you. How can you trust me?”
He turns his hand over, so that it’s his knuckles trailing over my jaw instead of his fingertips. Goosebumps shatter my skin. “You’re not your father. You’re Harlow. You’re the woman I love.”
“Is this real?” I can’t help but ask. I touch my shaking fingers to his mouth. To his sharp jaw. To his neck, where that thick artery throbs. Fast. His heart is beating as fast as mine. “Are we real?”
“We’re as real as you let us be,” he says, and it’s a vow. He slides a hand around to the back of my head, sending tingles down my nape. He presses his forehead to mine. “I love you.”
I swallow. I inch closer to a cliff where my toes dangle over the edge and I look into the abyss of vulnerability that’s had me so terrified.
“I love you, too. I choose us.”
He draws in a long, slow breath that shakes through both of us. “Will you keep choosing us? When it gets hard? I won’t be able to bear it if you run again, Harlow.”
I don’t know how I got so lucky with this man. No magic act got me Alec, a man so prepared to hold his heart out for me. “I will always be yours. My messy heart is yours. You won’t ever be able to get rid of me. Our life is going to be the best kind of disaster.”
His smile spreads slowly, cheeky bastard that he is. “I can’t bloody wait.”
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Kat
ie Porter is the team of Lorelie Brown and Carrie Lofty, who’ve been friends and critique partners for a really long time. Both are multi-published in romance, but for this instance Lorelie wrote the book and Carrie edited it.
To learn more about the authors who make up Katie, visit www.katieporterbooks.com, follow us on Twitter at @carrielofty and @LorelieBrown, like https://www.facebook.com/MsKatiePorter/, or find us on Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5780368.Katie_Porter.
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