by Bella Andre
They landed. He thanked his crew. He didn't dare touch Harper, not even to help her down the stairs.
Benny had the car waiting on the tarmac. And Jeremy ran over the moment he saw Harper, throwing himself into her arms.
The lump in Will's throat grew larger, the tightness in his chest clenching harder. Harper and Jeremy were a family that he wasn't a part of. That he would never be a part of.
"I'm sorry, Harper. Don't be mad, okay? I won't do it again." Jeremy stepped back, his lips pressed together in a sad pout. "Mrs. Taylor said I scared everyone."
"You did." Will noticed how gentle Harper kept her voice, even though it was clear she was still right there on the verge of shattering. "You know you shouldn't go anywhere without your phone. We've talked a lot about that."
His head drooped on his neck, and he wagged it back and forth. "I know."
"And what do you say to Will?"
Turning, his shoulders slumped, he was like a puppy who'd been picked on by his littermates. "I'm sorry, Will. Do you still love me?"
His father had burned all the tears out of him years ago, but Jeremy's words brought him closer to crying than he'd come since his mother died. "Yeah, buddy, you know I do." His voice sounded odd, the words choked. "Let's get you home. Your sister's had a long night."
"Sure, Will." Jeremy skipped back to the car, where Benny was stowing their two bags in the trunk. "Have you ever been to the Exploratorium?"
"Once, years ago."
"It's so cool, isn't it?"
Will opened the car door for Harper, then let Jeremy climb into the back with her to give them time together, while Will took the front seat next to Benny. Jeremy chattered about his adventure for the entire drive down the Peninsula. He'd said he was sorry, and now he could be excited over everything he'd seen and done. It amazed Will that he could so easily forget how lost he'd been, how frightened.
It was what Will would always love about him--his boundless enthusiasm, and the way he never held onto anger or sadness. But just because he loved him, didn't mean he was any better for Jeremy than he was for Harper.
When they arrived at her house, Harper let herself out of the car. Reaching into her purse, she handed her keys to Jeremy. "Why don't you run and unlock the door for us?"
"Sure, Harper."
Benny retrieved her case from the trunk and pulled up the roller handle for her, before getting back into the car to give them privacy.
"Thanks, Benny." She took it with a slight smile that died when she turned to Will. "I think Jeremy should stay home from work for a few days while I reevaluate the situation."
He felt the nails of his coffin driving into him, even though he'd already known that he had to let her go. Let them both go. But Harper was doing it for him. Because they both knew what the result of her reevaluation would be.
"Right, I understand," he said, even though he didn't understand a damn thing--especially not how he could have lost something so precious. So amazing.
Jeremy waved at him from the front door. "'Bye, Will. 'Bye, Benny."
As Harper rolled her case away, Will climbed into the car and watched her through the window, her back straight, head high.
"Where to, sir?" Benny turned the mirror slightly to look at him.
But there was nowhere to go. Because everything Will had ever truly wanted, he'd just had to leave behind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
"We have to talk, Jeremy."
Harper sat him down in the living room almost as soon as Will left them.
Left them.
She closed her eyes for one brief second, the impact of it hitting her as though her heart were being crushed inside her chest. There'd been something so final in their parting.
But she couldn't think about that now. Couldn't think about Will, couldn't want him, couldn't need him anymore. She had to think about Jeremy. He was her number one priority.
"You're going to yell now, aren't you?" Her brother slumped down into the sofa they hardly ever sat on in a room they rarely used.
It seemed like a metaphor for all the parts of her life she'd closed off when her parents died. And, like a metaphor, it was also the room Will had carried her to that morning he'd surprised her with a sexy visit. God, she really needed to stop thinking about him. Especially now that he was gone...and it felt like her heart had broken into a million, billion little pieces.
Turning back to Jeremy, she said, "Is that how you see me? Always yelling?"
"No." His brow knitted as he thought. "You don't yell." Then he shrugged. "You just tell me what to do all the time."
She did. She took him to school, to work, nudged him to do his homework, to clean his room, to go to bed because it was late and he'd be tired in the morning. But when he was with Will, they'd had fun. They'd raced around Laguna Seca a few days ago and ridden the Giant Dipper at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk a couple of weeks ago on one of Will's fun Sunday excursions after the Saturday work on the car. Whereas she'd never even taken Jeremy to the Exploratorium.
She could suddenly see that Jeremy had been starving for some fun. Harper wondered how much more guilt--and how much more sorrow--she could handle before her heart collapsed beneath the weight of it.
"I'm not going to yell at you today, but we have to talk about your phone."
"I know. I was just so excited. And Ronnie--he works in the supply room--drew me a map of how to get there. And it was so cool and there was so much stuff to do that I forgot the time. Until they were closing, and they said I had to leave." He had done all that himself--found the museum, paid to get in, wandered the exhibits.
"I'm glad you had fun," she said, and she truly was. Still, she needed him to know how serious the situation had been. "Your phone is your lifeline. You could have called Will, and he would have told Benny where you were."
"I'll take it next time. I promise." He nodded expansively.
Next time? "You can't go wandering off by yourself like that. You got lost. You need to wait for me to come with you on your next adventure."
He frowned. "I should have had Ronnie draw me a map of how to get back, too." Then he brightened. "I showed Benny the map, and he said I would have been fine if I'd just turned right instead of left when I came out of the museum. That's what I did wrong. I can do it, Harper. Next time, I won't turn left."
He'd followed the original map. Jeremy had figured out the streets and he'd walked there. He'd made only one small mistake that had thrown him off. A simple mistake that plenty of people could have made in a part of the city that was new to them.
It was astonishing...and also horrible to realize that she, the sister who loved him and would do anything for him, was the one who didn't think him capable.
Will did. Ronnie did. Benny did. She was the only one who doubted him.
More tears welled up and spilled over before she had a chance to stop them.
"I'm sorry, Harper. Please don't cry." Jeremy's eyes grew wet, too, in empathy. That was the kind of boy he was. No, he was a young man, not a boy. But she'd never treated him that way.
Harper swiped at her tears. "I'm just glad you're home and you're okay. But we need to go over a couple of rules. What's the first rule?"
When she stopped crying, he did, too. "I have to take my phone everywhere." His voice echoed in the nearly empty living room.
They would have to start hanging out in this room again. Her mom would want that.
"And the second rule," Harper enumerated, "is that you don't leave work or school unless you talk to me first."
He was practically bouncing on the sofa. That was her brother, overexcited, racing toward the next fun and interesting activity, forgetting the fright as if it had never happened. "Or Will? Can I call Will?"
Will. She'd told him she needed to reevaluate whether Jeremy should work for him. Until this moment, she'd been positive she'd never let her brother go back there. Now, she wasn't sure what to tell Jeremy.
"For right now, let's just keep
it that you call me, okay?"
"Okay, but Will always tries to help me. Always wants me to learn stuff. Always wants me to have fun."
She swore her heart swelled a thousand times bigger as she looked at him a long moment--really looked. Her brother had the exuberance of a child, but the look of a young man. He smiled wide, he loved big. He could forget the bad and move on to the good. She was supposedly his teacher, the person he learned from. But she'd never stopped to think that Jeremy had things to teach her, too.
Like how to stop living in the past. How to trust. And, most important, how to love without holding anything back out of fear.
"Were you scared last night?" She'd never even thought to ask. She'd just assumed. Because she'd been terrified, and because Jeremy didn't like the dark sometimes.
"I was scared." He nodded hard. "But then I found a cop. And he was really nice."
He'd been scared. But she didn't think he'd been terrified. He'd gotten through just fine. Yes, things could have gone horribly wrong. He could have met bad people. But he'd actually done quite well.
Will had always believed that Jeremy could do more than anyone expected. He'd never seen Jeremy as handicapped. Until that moment in his London flat, Will had never used the word disabled. And she'd seen then how it hurt him to say it.
Whereas she'd constantly set limitations, never let Jeremy expand, never made him test his capabilities. She'd confined her brother. And she hadn't trusted him to learn from both his mistakes and his triumphs. She'd been afraid that Jeremy wouldn't need her one day. So she'd forced him to need her.
It was Will's faith in Jeremy's abilities that had made him stronger.
And Will's love.
Will had showered her with that love, too. Every time she'd doubted his promises, he'd made them anyway. He kept on believing in her. He'd bared his soul to her, revealed all his dark secrets, trusted her to keep them and accept him. And when she'd shut him down from the moment Benny called to say Jeremy was missing, he'd still taken care of her. Taken care of it all.
Everything was suddenly so clear. Clearer than it had ever been before.
She'd been wrong, and she needed to make some changes.
Starting now.
She put her hand over Jeremy's. "Here's what we're going to do. First, we're going out to breakfast. Waffles--what do you think?"
"Yay, waffles." Jeremy punched the air. "Can I have whipped cream and stuff?"
"All the stuff you want." She smiled at him, feeling her heart fill. "And after that, I have an errand to run. It might take a few hours. Can you stay home and hold down the fort?"
His eyes went wide with wonder, a look he'd probably displayed with every new and exciting exhibit he found in the Exploratorium. "All by myself?"
"All by yourself."
She had to start trusting Jeremy.
She had to stop being afraid.
And she had to tell Will everything that was in her heart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Completely hollowed out inside, Will stared at the frame in his barn. After nearly three thousand rivets, it was starting to resemble a car rather than a birdcage. Over the past weeks, they'd worked on Saturdays and saved Sundays for fun.
And his nights had been entirely Harper's.
But he didn't have the heart to finish the car without them. Not when it had lost its meaning.
Not when everything had lost its meaning.
Everywhere he looked, in everything he touched, he saw Harper and Jeremy. He couldn't be here without wanting Harper. Without loving both of them.
"Mrs. Taylor said you were working up here."
Jesus...even Harper's voice seemed trapped in the barn, sweet, seductive, taunting him. He dropped his head into his hands.
"Will."
Wait.
Wait.
That voice--the beautifully husky voice he knew would always haunt his dreams, especially the way she'd said I love you to him just one perfect time--wasn't in his head. Was it?
He lowered his hands and turned, half afraid he'd gone round the bend.
But she was there--thank God--backlit by sunlight. The sun shone through the fine fabric of her dress. He recognized it as the outfit she'd worn the first night he'd seduced her. Or she'd seduced him. He wasn't sure of anything anymore.
Only that he'd never stop loving her.
His heart was an unsteady thump in his chest. "How's Jeremy?"
"He's fine."
"You took him to school?"
She shook her head, moving closer, narrowing the distance between them so that he could clearly see her beautiful face, her blue eyes, her red lips.
"He's at home." There was a softness to her tone, laced with meaning.
"By himself?" She must be a figment of his imagination. He couldn't imagine Harper daring to leave her brother home alone after what had happened.
She shocked him again by nodding. "All by himself."
Her lips turned up a little bit at the corners as she said it, but it wasn't a full smile. So he didn't dare hope, didn't dare reach out for her.
But another step brought her closer still, until she had to tilt up her face to look into his eyes. "I have a story to tell you, one I've told you parts of. But I need to tell you everything this time."
The need to touch her was an ache inside him, but he'd never forget the way she'd recoiled from his touch on the plane. He tried to ease the desperate ache by digging his fingers into his palms. "Okay."
"I was seventeen when Jeremy was hit by the car. I was old enough to understand exactly who hit him, old enough to understand about the bills and why my parents accepted the money. I was also old enough to understand that I needed to help take care of my brother. And when my parents died when I was twenty-two, I wasn't just helping anymore. I was in charge."
His gut roiled for that seventeen-year-old girl who'd had to grow up the instant some joy-riding punk lost control of his car, and then for the twenty-two-year-old who'd been all alone, with no one to help.
"I watched out for him. I made sure no one hurt him. I told myself that if I didn't let anyone get too close, they couldn't hurt him. But the truth is that my brother is happy and loving and resilient." Emotion brimmed in her eyes. "The real reason I didn't want to let anyone close was to make sure no one got close enough to hurt me."
He moved then, three steps, close enough to touch, to hold. And it was the greatest moment of his life when she didn't shrink from his touch, didn't push his hands away as he gently cupped her shoulders.
But she didn't let him interrupt. "You were the first person, the only person, to show me that I was holding him back. And when he started to fly free, I was so scared that he might not always need me. Because then what was I supposed to do with my own life?"
"Harper, I never meant to make you doubt yourself. You've only ever been good to him."
She shook her head. "I have been good to him, but I've messed up, too. I know it's not going to be easy to start letting him go, but he's not a little boy anymore. And I want to show him that I trust him." She inhaled a shaky breath as her eyes held his. "And I want to show you that I trust you, too. Because I do, Will. I swear I do. He's blossomed in these last couple of months with you. Your love has made him stronger. So much stronger."
He wanted so badly to take everything she was giving him, to believe that it was real. Just as much as he'd wanted to believe it when she'd whispered I love you to him in the dark. But he couldn't deny the truth of who he was.
"I screwed up so badly. I should have known I would. I should never have gotten in your way, should never have forced myself into your life, and into Jeremy's."
"Listen to me." She held his face in her hands. "My brother has learned how to do more for himself in the last few weeks than in the six years since my parents died. I did the best I could, but Jeremy needed you to see him as limitless. He got all the way to the museum on his own by following a handwritten map. And he had a great time. He never could
have done that without you. Without everything you taught him."
"Harper, it was all you. I was the one who didn't prepare my employees properly. And he got lost."
"Yes, he got lost. And I'm not going to lie and pretend I wasn't terrified when we both know I was. But that's also because I didn't have faith that he'd know what to do. He did, though, Will. He found a cop. He got help. He helped himself. You gave him the strength to do that by believing in him.
"I love you, Will Franconi. I love you for seeing my brother's worth when even I don't always. I love you for loving me, too. And I love you for all you've done for your friends, for Susan and Bob...and for yourself. You were once a little boy who didn't have anyone to take care of him, and now you're a man who always takes care of everyone around you. You make us all better people just by being in our lives."
She kissed him then. And he felt loved right down to his bones. This beautiful, intelligent, wonderful woman believed in him.
Could he dare--finally--to believe in himself?
"I never thought I could change my story," she said, her voice thick with emotion, "so when you came into our lives I thought all I would get to have with you were a few stolen moments of wildness. But now I see that you, Jeremy, and I have already rewritten our stories. And we've done it together. You're a good man, Will. The best I've ever known."
"Harper--"
She put two fingers to his lips. "Tell me one thing. On the plane, before we found Jeremy, you wanted to fire them all, didn't you? Benny, Ronnie, even your PI friend. You wanted to knock them all down."
How could she know? But he already knew how. Because she knew everything right through to the heart of him. She always had, even before he'd confessed his past sins.
When he nodded, she smiled, and everything inside him stilled a moment as he basked in the headiness of that smile on her lips. It warmed every part of him, heart to soul.
"But you didn't fire them," she said softly.
"No." He breathed deeply, drawing in the beauty of her essence, wondering how he could have lived so long without her. And praying that he'd never have to live without her again.
"You probably sent them a memo with a new plan on how to help Jeremy without limiting him."
"I haven't sent it yet." But he'd worked out the details. Despite the crushing certainty ripping him into bite-size pieces that he would never see Harper--or Jeremy--again. "But I will. I'll make sure he's safe, Harper."
