by Chloe Cox
I don’t care if it makes me look crazy. I lean into him and try to burrow into his chest. I’m not thinking rationally; I’m just feeling the anxiety ebb away the more I touch him.
“Hey,” Marcus says.
I’m almost afraid to look up at him. But I do. I do.
And he’s smiling.
“You won,” he whispers to me.
“Did I?”
“I think so,” Marcus says. “For now. It means maybe we can come to a deal with Alex, and this will all be over.”
I don’t actually know what he means—a deal? But I nod blankly, not even feeling capable of thinking about it. The specter of Alex Wolfe looms too large in my mind.
Marcus touches my cheek with the back of his hand, his brows drawing together.
“Let’s get you home,” he says.
I couldn’t agree more.
Marcus walks me home, going slow so that I can keep up in my ridiculous heels, holding my hand. The farther we get from the sight of Marcus and Alex Wolfe talking secretively in some corner, the better I start to feel, but I know it’s not gone. I can’t seem to shake it. Marcus can tell, but he’s not prying.
I stumble on a broken slab of sidewalk, lost in all these stupid thoughts, and he catches me.
He says, “How are your feet?”
“Heels suck,” I grumble. I never really figured out to how to walk in them, though I love the way they make my legs look in this slinky black thing that Shantha made me wear.
Marcus laughs, and his arm snakes around my waist. We’re only a few feet from the house.
“You can’t keep carrying me everywhere,” I say, knowing what he’s thinking.
“I can and you know it,” he says, tightening that arm. We’re stopped in the street now, and he’s looking down at me. Gentle, smiling. Worried.
“It’s ridiculous,” I say.
“But you like it.”
I smile. “Yeah.”
I really, really do. He knows it. He knows it gives me a little thrill.
I’m just not sure that’s enough right now.
“Lo,” he says. I’m afraid to look at his eyes. I know he’ll see exactly what it is I’m feeling, and I don’t want him to. I don’t want him to know how conflicted I am. I don’t want him to know that I’m struggling.
And yet part of me rages against that, too, because it’s so unfair. I have every right to struggle! He hasn’t explained anything, and I’m still afraid of losing him.
“Lo, tell me,” he says.
I sigh.
So he lifts me up off the ground, grinning as I gasp a little and grab at his neck while he walks to the front steps. God, this is such a weird physical reaction. The second my feet leave the ground, it’s just…somehow easier.
“That is cheating,” I mutter as he carries me inside.
“I’m a ruthless son of a bitch,” he agrees.
He’s not stopping. He’s just walking us both up the stairs.
I can’t help it. I have a physical reaction to that, too.
Marcus sets me down on my bed—the bed we’ve been sharing, like this is a normal thing, like this is something we do now, and I’ve just accepted that— on this bed, our bed, and then he kneels in front of me and gently takes my heels off.
God, that does feel good. Sometimes it’s worth it to wear heels if you have the right person to help you take them off at the end of the night.
I sigh again, leaning back on my palms, and Marcus runs his hands up the front of my legs, making me give a little groan. He’s still watching me. He still looks worried.
“Lo, tell me why you aren’t happy,” he says softly. “You got what you wanted tonight. What’s wrong?”
“Can’t get anything past you, huh?” I say.
“Nope.”
And I can’t do anything about those searching eyes. I pull myself back up and reach for his face, just wanting to hold it in front of me, while he puts his arms around my waist. I wish everything were simple. I wish I could just take the leap of faith and forgive and forget. I wish I could believe in him the way he believed in me back when everybody thought I had lost my mind, that I was irreparably damaged after my parents died. I hate myself for not having that faith, for not bothering to find a way to understand until five years later. I hate that I spent so much time hating him. I hate that I still have this physical fear that he’ll leave, that I’ll lose him, that this fear has taken root in my very core.
“I saw you talking to your father tonight,” I say.
I call him “your father” for a reason. It has an effect.
He starts, “Lo, I was—”
“Wait, please,” I say. “Just let me get it out.”
Marcus falls silent, and now I can barely stand to look at him. He looks at me with so much love, and I don’t know if I know what to do with it right now. I want to be able to accept it unconditionally. I want to feel as fearless as I did five years ago. I want to be brave. It feels like I’m on the edge of this cliff, trying to convince myself that jumping is an excellent idea, that jumping off of a damn cliff with Marcus Roma will heal what happened five years ago and makes us whole.
“I saw you talking to Alex,” I say, trying not to choke up, “and it was like…right before you left—do you remember? You were spending so much time with him, and that was great, I was happy for you. But there was something you weren’t telling me, I could tell, and it felt like…I just know you started talking to Alex Wolfe, and then you left to go work for him, and you didn’t want me anymore.”
I take a deep breath. I still can’t look at him.
“And I’m not…I’m not trying to bring it up again,” I say. “I do want you to tell me why, Marcus, but only when you’re ready. I want to understand. I need to understand. But I want it to be because you’re ready to tell me. I want it to be because you feel like you can tell me.”
Shit, I feel like I’m about to cry. The words “I want to be good enough” almost pass my lips, but I cut them off, strangle them in my throat, because I know that’s not fair. It’s not fair to make it about me. He has to tell me because he wants to, not because I blackmail him into it.
And I have to forgive him because it feels right, not because I feel compelled to by how much I need him.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” I say.
“Damn,” he says.
I finally let myself look at him, and he looks heartbroken. It hurts.
“You should be happy right now,” he says. “And instead, what I did, it’s still making you sad. Still.”
“Marcus, that’s not exactly what I meant.”
“I only ever tried to do the right thing, and I destroyed so much,” he says, shaking his head. His hands move around my waist, his eyes look up. “Lo, listen. I promise you—”
“Shut up a second,” I whisper, and I put one finger on his lips.
What he just said, right there? That he only ever tried to do the right thing? That’s the part where I need to have faith. That’s what I’ve been circling around, in my weird, broken, tortured way. And now I’m having one of those moments, where things fall into place, where all my previous thoughts arrange in a pattern that suddenly makes sense.
I think, in a way, I always kind of expected Marcus to be infallible. That if he did something, it was deliberate; it was because he chose exactly that, and not because he’d made an error in judgment or a mistake. But that’s ridiculous. No one can live up to that standard, even if the reason I thought he could was because he always had.
So I have this choice. I don’t know if I’m ready to make it. The fear pounds in my chest like a caged beast, just screaming to get out, to wreak havoc over my heart, to rule the rest of my life.
Screw that.
I lick my lips and say, “Marcus, I’m just scared you’re going to leave again. That’s it. I don’t… I want you to be able to tell me what happened, but the truth is that’s not what drives me. What drives me is that I’m terrified. I can’t s
top myself from loving you, I can’t stop myself from needing you, I can’t stop myself from wanting you. I’m yours, Marcus, even if it’s not good for me. And then I see you talking to Alex, and I think, That’s it, he’s gone. And I can’t take it again. So if that’s what’s happening, I have to find a way to—”
He doesn’t let me finish. Marcus takes my hands in his and says, “I can’t ever leave you again, Harlow. I’d be leaving my heart behind. It would kill me this time.”
Full stop.
His face is steady. Serious. His eyes look straight into mine, and I know. It’s so stupid, but I do, I know. I know he’s telling the truth.
And that’s when I jump off that cliff.
“I believe you,” I say softly. “And I do forgive you, Marcus, even if you don’t want me to. I hope you can forgive me, if I’ve ever failed you.”
This look flashes across his face, like he’s been stricken with something, and then he’s standing over me, lifting me to my feet. He holds me so delicately, so carefully, I feel like he knows how hard that was for me. Like I’ve been broken for so long, and I’ve only just trusted him to catch me as I fall, and he knows it. He knows it.
“Thank you,” he says. “Thank you for letting me love you.”
I smile a little at that and shrug. “I do what I can.”
Marcus grins back, his fingers tracing the edge of jaw, down to my neck.
“Keep doing it,” he says.
His fingertips dance across my collarbone to the spaghetti straps of this slinky little dress and he starts to drag them down over my shoulders. Suddenly he stops, just as he’s holding my dress up by the tips of his fingers.
“I don’t deserve you, Lo,” he says. “But I will.”
Marcus kisses me, his lips warm and soft against mine, and lets my dress fall to the floor. He pulls away gently as he starts to touch me, softly, tenderly, his fingers feather light. He wants to watch me. I want to watch him.
This feels different, all over again.
Every time we’ve been together since he came back there’s been this uncertainty in the background. This pain, this fear haunting me, this thing that would only be temporarily pushed to the corners of my mind by the way Marcus could make me feel when he touched me. But the fear would always come back. I always knew it would come back.
This time it’s gone.
There’s nothing here but us. Nothing between us, nothing hanging over us.
Marcus puts his hands on my naked body and I am truly bared to him. Not in the middle of sex, not in the middle of an orgasm, not because I need to feel something other than what I’ve been feeling. Just because it’s him. He swallows, and for the first time in years I think he looks nervous.
The last time he looked at me like this was the first time we had sex.
“I love you,” he says.
“I know,” I say. I realize I’m smiling, and I can’t stop. I push his suit jacket over his big shoulders and I loosen his tie. I have him out of his clothes in what feels like the longest minute of my life, and when he’s finally naked in front of me, I start to tingle. It starts at my extremities and works it’s way in, and in just a few seconds I’m actually bouncing up and down a little bit, just eager to touch him.
Marcus looks down, and I hear that telltale rumble in his chest.
I have about a second before he has me flat on my back, my legs wrapped around his waist, my arms around his neck. I’m laughing with just sheer joy, feeling free, lighter than I have in years, and by the time he looks up from playing with my breasts, I can see that he’s just as giddy. Just as happy. And that fills me with happiness all over again.
“Jesus, I love you,” he says. Like he’s discovering a new species, or a new element. “So much.”
“I know,” I say again, and kiss his nose.
“No,” he says, quietly. “But you will.”
And it’s changed again; it’s shifted. Like it did years ago. He parts my thighs and enters me slowly, achingly slowly, watching my eyes every second. And this time I don’t need to shy away from this tenderness, I don’t need to be overwhelmed with sexual release to let it wash over me. I can just let him in. And when I do, it’s like that first time again. All the things I’ve felt about Marcus, all the pain, all the loss, all the love, all of it comes to the surface, all of it comes together in one beautiful whole, and I realize that he’s changed me again. I hadn’t known how to forgive before. I’d never forgiven myself, or the world, or anyone for the pain that I’d felt or the people that I’d lost. But now, maybe I can.
He’s helped me grow again. We’ve helped each other. We belong to each other even more.
“You belong to me,” I tell him.
Then he shows me that I belong to him.
chapter 19
MARCUS
I wake up with Harlow next to me, the morning sun shining in on her beautiful face, and all I can think is that one man doesn’t deserve to be this lucky.
I watch her sleep, her face so peaceful and pretty, and I can’t believe how dumb I was. I’ve been having that thought in general about the past five years, but today it’s specific, too. I should have figured that talking to Alex Wolfe would make her afraid that I might leave her again.
All I wanted to do when I saw him there was head off a disaster. I saw Alex walk in the door like he was coming to war, like he was there just to screw it up and intimidate people, and I knew that now was the time. Harlow and Shantha didn’t know they were poking a hornets’ nest when they decided to go up against Alex and actually be successful at it, but it was pretty much the only thing I was thinking about at that fundraiser. Just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Feeling like a scumbag for not telling Lo all about it, too.
But I couldn’t tell her. That’s one of those threads where if I’d let her get at it and she had started to pull, the whole thing would start to unravel. She’d find out everything too soon, and she’d flip, and then she’d be a real threat to Alex Wolfe and he’d go after her. That’s the thing I’ve been trying to prevent.
So I didn’t tell her.
Again.
And she forgave me anyway.
I can’t convey how much that blows my mind. Not knowing why I left, not knowing what choice I made, not knowing why I still refuse to tell her, not knowing about what Alex Wolfe is capable of—and still, she just decided to believe me. Decided to put her faith in me. Again.
I don’t deserve her. I don’t think there’s a man on this Earth that deserves her, though I understand I might be biased in that assessment, but I know for damn sure that I don’t deserve her.
So I’ll work on it.
I’m still watching her sleep. I smile, thinking about how if she woke up to this, she’d laugh and call me creepy, but she’d still know that I’ll always watch over her. And it’s right then that I realize what my mistake has been all these years.
I hid things from Harlow in order to protect her. In order to give her the life she wanted. But that meant I made choices that I thought were best for her without even thinking about the fact that they weren’t my goddamn choices. Or at least not only mine.
I don’t know if it’s because I got used to doing things for her, to looking out for her, when things got really bad after her parents passed. Or maybe that’s just the best excuse that I can come up with. But I’m a grown man now, and I’m done making childish mistakes.
This is when I resolve to tell her everything.
And I’m perfectly happy just lying there, watching her sleep like a total sap, waiting for to her wake so I can tell her all this stuff, when my phone buzzes.
It takes me a second to figure out where it’s coming from, but eventually I find my pants on the floor. I take just a moment to look back at Harlow, lying naked and gorgeous in the growing light, and smile just once more at my life.
And then I check my phone.
Brison.
I knew it. Alex wants a deal. I’m skeptical that he’l
l play fair, and just leave Harlow’s neighborhood alone, but you never know. Redemption comes at the unlikeliest times. I should know.
“Brison,” I say into my phone. I keep my voice down, even though there’s no point. Lo sleeps like the dead, and needs her eight hours to feel human. Still, I don’t want to disturb the scene. She looks so happy.
“We want to talk,” Brison says.
“Good. When?”
“Now,” Brison says. “Outside.”
I frown. Pretty much the only thing that could get me to leave this bedroom right now is the prospect of coming back with something that will make Harlow happy, but that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it.
I hang up the phone and pull on the suit pants I had on the night before, throw on the jacket. I look ridiculous, but who cares? I’m about to get my girl everything she wants.
I’m actually smiling as I head down the stairs.
Brison’s there, in a town car, across the street. Idling like he’s some New Jersey mob guy, this serious expression on his face just barely visible through the tinted windows. I smile to myself because I think he must know they’re beat.
I jog across the street, still happy, and rap on the window just to wake Brison up before I open the door and slip inside. Brison gives me a once over, taking in my shirtless suit style, and shakes his head.
“This is not Miami,” he says.
I laugh. “Fuck off.”
Brison pulls back into the street in silence.
“Where’s Alex?” I ask him.
Brison shakes his head, and for the first time I notice he has that little muscle in his jaw that stands out when he gets pissed, just like I do. I can’t resist goading him. I’m still pissed off that he came to the bar to talk to Harlow. That is a line that never should have been crossed.
“Still doing his errands, huh?” I say.
Brison’s hands tighten on the wheel. I notice he’s headed for the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, and I frown. That’s farther than I thought we’d go, and I hadn’t planned to be away from Harlow that long.
“I’m taking you where I’m supposed to take you,” Brison says through clenched teeth.
