Chapter 15
Knox
Present Day—Richland
I WAS STOPPED at a light halfway home after my shift when my phone buzzed in the cup holder. I’d barely glanced at the screen, but did a double take and reached for the phone as fast as I could when I saw the last word in the text.
(509) 555-8643: I need to see the stars.
There were only two people who knew about stars and who could have Richland area codes: Harlow and Natalie. It was a statement that would fit the latter so much, but I doubted little Natalie had somehow conned a way into finding out my number, or could text at three years old. But I didn’t understand why Harlow would be texting me from a phone that wasn’t the one I’d bought her.
Tapping on the number, I hit CALL and waited while it rang and rang until it picked up and Harlow’s voice mail filled my ear.
“Shit,” I murmured, and ended the call.
I drummed my free hand on the steering wheel quickly as I thought about what this could mean, and what I should do. And when the light turned green, I flipped an illegal U, earning me a couple of horns, and sped off toward Harlow’s house.
Since she’d texted me, only to let an immediate call go unanswered, I was worried that her husband still had her phone. I was afraid he’d finally found the phone I’d given her—the only way he could know about the stars—but then it still didn’t make sense why he’d used her other phone to text me. Regardless, I was afraid to respond to her text or call her again, and I was afraid of what he could be doing to her.
I parked a couple of houses away and tried to walk up casually, but practically stalked up to the front door. The only comfort I took was that only her car was in the driveway. With a heavy exhale, I braced for anything and knocked on the door. Less than a minute later, the door was flung open, and Harlow’s eyes widened in surprise and relief.
“You’re here!”
“Where is he?” I demanded in a low tone, but the vibration in my body from nervous energy started lessening when tears started falling down her face. “Low,” I whispered, and reached out to touch her, but stopped and looked around.
“Come in, hurry,” she said, and stepped back. Once I was inside, she shut and locked the door and flung herself into my arms.
I pulled back enough that I could tilt her head up using my thumb under her jaw. “Babe, I need you to tell me where he is.”
Her eyes were still wet with tears, but they weren’t falling anymore. “He’s at work,” she said in a confused tone.
“Who texted me?”
“I . . . did.” She whispered the last word. She said my name, but I couldn’t respond to her. I couldn’t speak. I was shaking so hard I was afraid I was going to break her, and I knew I needed to let go of her before I hurt her—hurt her more than he already had.
“What . . . the fuck . . . is that?” I asked in a dark tone, my eyes stayed locked on her slim throat.
I didn’t have to be watching her face to know when she realized what I was seeing. Her body beneath my arm locked up and she muttered, “Oh God.”
“I will kill him. I’m going to kill him, I swear to God I will.”
“No, I-I-I . . .” she stuttered, then flew away from me. I only let her go because I was terrified of hurting her more.
Harlow took off across the entryway and living room, and down a hall with me not far behind her. I followed her into her bedroom and slowed to a walk when I got in there. I hated seeing the bed where he’d touched her, I hated being in their space. I wanted to take away every memory of him and replace it with memories of us. I looked up when Harlow came out of a closet with a light scarf in her hands—the same scarf she’d been wearing on Tuesday—and the sight made me growl.
I closed the distance between us and grabbed the filmy material to stop her as she began putting it on. “I’ve already seen it.”
“Please, let me put it on! You didn’t respond to me, I didn’t know you were going to show up. By the time you knocked on the door, I wasn’t thinking, I just rushed to answer it.”
My head jerked back. “Respond to you? Harlow, I called you as soon as you texted me; you didn’t answer. And why didn’t you use the phone I bought you?”
“I couldn’t!” she yelled. “He still has both of my phones, my car keys; he even took the house phones. He has everything! I texted you from my iPad. I’m still terrified that Collin will see it on my phone, but I needed to see you—please give it back!” she begged as she reached for the scarf.
“Why? So you can try to pretend he didn’t do this to you?” I seethed. “So you can hide that part of you away from me? You aren’t supposed to hide yourself from me, Harlow!”
“Well, what do you expect me to do when you’re looking at me like I’m broken?” she cried.
“I expect you to let me fix it!”
She flung an arm out in exasperation. “I’ve told you, you can’t. I can’t let you do anything!”
“You also can’t stop me from trying,” I said roughly. The words were a promise, not defiance, because I would fix this.
Taking the last step toward her, I grabbed her face in my hands as gently as possible and covered her mouth with mine. Her hands came up to cling to my shoulders, and soon she was giving me as much of her as I was giving. But it wasn’t enough, it never had been enough with Harlow, and I knew it never would be.
As gently as I could, I lifted her into my arms, and my face pinched in agony. She was so light—too light. I felt her spine in a way that wasn’t natural, and it killed me.
“Guest room,” she said between kisses. “All the way down the hall.”
I walked us out of their room and down the hall without ever breaking from our kiss again, and easily found the untouched guest room, which looked like it belonged in a magazine—as the rest of their house did. I gently laid Harlow on the bed and followed her down, but kept myself hovering over her. Not because I was worried about where this would lead or that we would go too fast . . . but because I was scared of crushing her.
As if she read my thoughts, she fisted my shirt like she had in the store and pulled my body closer to hers. “You aren’t going to hurt me,” she whispered against my lips.
I settled my hips against hers, only to lift back off to help her when she started tugging at my shirt. Instead of putting any weight back on her, I rested on my knees and planted my hands against the bed on either side of her head.
Slowly moving from her mouth, I trailed my lips along her jaw and down her throat in slow kisses. As much as I wanted to do the opposite, I forced my eyes to stay open and locked on her bruised throat as I did. I needed this; I needed to see what he’d done to her while I was trying to take it away.
I moved down her chest, and my fingers went to the buttons on her shirt—my mouth followed my hands down as the shirt opened a little wider. When the last button was undone, Harlow whimpered when I placed an openmouthed kiss just above her shorts, followed by a soft bite.
Sitting up on my knees, I pulled her up with me and shoved the shirt away from her chest and down her shoulders, but left it around her arms so they were locked behind her back as I bent to suck on her nipple through her bra.
“Knox,” she whispered, and her legs shifted between mine.
She struggled to move her arms, and I finally released them as I moved to give the same attention to her other breast. Her hands went to my head and pulled at my hair to bring my face up to hers. She crushed our mouths together and leaned back until we were lying down again.
When my hands went behind her back to unfasten her bra, hers went to the button on her shorts, and I pulled back in time to watch her push them and her underwear off her hips. I got off the bed and slowly finished pulling them off for her, and tossed them onto the floor with everything else. Letting my eyes find hers, I started there and worked my way down her body as I rid myself of the rest of my clothes. When I finished and looked back into her eyes, I saw the worry there mixed with the need and passi
on.
“Cracked,” I said, changing her earlier word. Her eyebrows pinched when she understood what I was saying, like she was in pain, but smoothed out when I continued: “But still my Harlow, and still so beautiful.” And she was. She was bruised everywhere and she was too thin, but you couldn’t take Harlow’s beauty from her.
When I climbed on top of her again, I spent minutes kissing every single bruise on the front and sides of her body. My throat tightened, but I swallowed past the invisible lump there. I couldn’t let this break me.
“What are you doing?” she asked in a gentle tone when she realized that everything had slowed down.
With my lips on her ribs and eyes on hers, I whispered, “Fixing it.”
She didn’t speak for the next couple of minutes as I focused on her torso and arms. After I was sure I’d gotten them all—and had silently vowed to get her back later—I kissed her throat and then her lips; then I noticed the wetness gathered in her eyes.
“Still cracked?” she asked, her voice broke on the last word.
I held my hand against her cheek and took comfort in the fact that she pressed her face closer to it. “You tell me.”
Her blue eyes focused on me, and her lips spread into a shaky smile. “Not even a little bit.”
One of her legs curled around my back, causing me to settle against her heat. A needy groan rose up my throat, but as much as I wanted to take what was right there, I never had taken anything from Harlow that I knew I couldn’t have—and I wouldn’t start now.
“Even though you didn’t make it easy sometimes, I have waited for you for seven years, Harlow Evans.” I used her maiden name on purpose, and she didn’t try to correct me or seem to mind—judging by the way she lifted an eyebrow in amusement. “If you ask me to, I will leave this bed and gladly wait until I can have you . . . but, God, please tell me I can finally make you mine.”
A smile so much like the one I’d fallen in love with lit up her face, and her fingers threaded through my hair. “You’ve wasted so much time waiting for me,” she murmured, and a look of awe spread across her face.
“I’d gladly do it all over again if it meant ending up right here with you.”
Her hand curled around the back of my head and pulled me down until we were a breath apart. “I have always been yours, Knox. I love you.”
My lips spread into a slow smile. “To the stars?”
Harlow’s head tilted back when I pushed into her, and she exhaled a breathy “Always.”
I’d worried that I wouldn’t remember to be gentle with her—when her body so obviously screamed that she needed gentle—but even though all coherent thoughts fled my mind the second I was finally inside her, I shouldn’t have been nervous.
This was my Harlow. My soul knew her and knew what she needed.
Each movement was slow and sure, and I knew that this moment had been worth the wait. She had been worth the wait. What I hadn’t expected was the way she pieced me back together with every pass of her lips against my skin. I’d thought of her as the broken one, but I’d forgotten how much losing Harlow had broken me.
Her nails trailed across my shoulders and down my back, each pass rougher than the previous—a silent plea to go harder. A plea I eagerly met as she tightened around me and her blue eyes fluttered shut.
“Oh—Knox, please,” Harlow whispered, and her head fell back onto the bed as her labored breaths turned into soft moans.
I ground my teeth as I tried to hold off until she came, and pushed harder inside her—drawing out the most intoxicating sounds from her. I felt each hushed word and moan like a shock to my chest. These words, this overwhelming, addicting feeling of having her underneath me, was finally happening after years of dreaming about it—and I knew I would never forget a second of it.
Harlow’s nails dug into my shoulders and her breaths stopped for a few seconds before her body began trembling beneath mine—and the force of her orgasm pushed me into my own. I gripped at the sheets to hold my shaking body above hers, and captured her mouth with mine, swallowing my name on her lips.
She was mine. I was going to take her from this place, and never look back.
“I NEED TO tell you about this week,” she said sometime later. I’d lain down beside her to pull her close, and had been trying to figure out a way to bring up wanting her to leave this house again. The words sounded like they took all her strength, but she continued: “I don’t want to do this, especially not now, after . . . but Collin’s been so unpredictable this week that I feel like I don’t have a choice. I’d planned on telling you as soon as you came over, and now I don’t know how much time we’ll have.”
My eyes narrowed at her last worried words, but I didn’t comment on it. As much as I wanted to put this off because this seemed like the worst time to finally do this, I wouldn’t. I lazily traced shapes onto Harlow’s bare stomach to keep myself calm, and said, “Right; you never told me what happened on Monday.”
Her face pinched in worry and pain, and my body tensed in preparation for whatever she was about to tell me. “I thought I was pregnant,” she said after a few silent moments.
I nodded slowly. “You bought yourself a week.”
She shook her head. “On Friday he made me take a test. It was positive.”
My face and arm fell, but I didn’t try to move away from her. I just didn’t know how to keep it up anymore. I hadn’t missed the word thought, but it was hard to think about her having a positive pregnancy test at all with another man when I’d just finished making her mine.
“I didn’t know how to tell you. I’ve always been careful so I wouldn’t get pregnant with him. On Monday I was waiting at the doctor’s office when you and I talked on the phone. I wanted to tell you in person after, but then Collin showed up at the appointment.”
Harlow’s body started shaking. It took all my strength to move my arm to pull her close again, but I didn’t comment on the near-violent trembling.
“He’s never missed work, or left early, a day that we’ve been married. But he went, and that’s when we found out that there was no baby. There hadn’t been a baby. Collin was . . . Collin was . . .” She trailed off, and her head shook slowly as one hand came up to rest on her throat. Her eyes weren’t focused, and I knew she wasn’t seeing me, or the room we were in. She choked out a sob and turned onto her side to press her forehead into my chest.
I ran my hand over her back and tried not to think of the way her shoulder blades and spine felt against my palm, or the way her hip felt digging into my stomach.
“He’s changed,” she murmured. “He’s changed, and it’s terrifying.”
“Wasn’t he terrifying before?”
I hardly breathed for minutes as Harlow whispered about things Collin had done to her; she described them in a way that suggested she’d done something wrong—dirty even. I’d seen every bruise by that point, but I hadn’t imagined anything half as bad as what she’d described. “Oh my God,” I finally said. “I’m taking you from here. I need to—”
“No, that was before,” she said, and lifted her head to look into my eyes. Her eyes were round with understanding and worry. “He—he’s not doing that now. Some ways it’s better, I guess. But it really is so much worse.”
My mouth opened, but no sound came out. All I could think was, How can anything be worse? Then I looked down to her throat, and I thought I might understand.
It wasn’t until she told me about the shower on Monday, and what had happened with the eggs that morning, that I realized I didn’t.
“Now you know,” she said with fresh tears in her eyes. “Now you know everything. I swore I would never tell anyone what was happening, or what had happened, but I know with this change, each day my monster comes out is only going to get worse and worse until there isn’t another day for me.”
A sob hitched in my throat, but I choked it back down. I knew that if she was saying those words, then she meant them. Harlow wouldn’t say them for sympathy
or dramatic effect. Not after she’d endured years of what she’d just explained to me, and had tried before to tell me she was fine and could handle it.
“Why?” I finally asked. “Why did you choose him? There had to have been some sign that he was this guy.”
“None. I look back and still don’t see it. But, Knox, I’d thought I’d lost you before my eighteenth birthday ever came.” My brow furrowed, but she continued before I could ask. “I know what was going on back then because my dad told me, but when I left Seattle and you pulled away from me, I was so sure that you were pulling away for good—that you were done waiting for me. My heart broke every day until Collin had healed it enough that it finally stopped.”
It felt like I was back at that day. It felt like my heart was being ripped out all over again. “You thought I was pulling away from you?” I asked, horror coating my words. “Harlow, no, I was pushing you to go have a life, and giving you time to know exactly what you wanted because your dad made me promise I would!”
“I know,” she said. Tears fell from her eyes, and she brought a hand up to cover my cheek. “I was so confused when you called me on my birthday. Confused in my feelings and why you were calling at all. I was sure you only called for the same reason you sporadically called in the months before—out of obligation. But even though I thought you were done with me, I still was so worried that I’d made a mistake in choosing him. I’m so sorry,” she choked out. “Not waiting for you was the biggest mistake of my life, Knox Alexander.”
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.