To the Stars

  “What are you taking?” Collin shouted.

  Hard sobs left me and I shook my head against the tile as I lay there, no longer able to curl in on myself. Blood smeared from the tile onto my cheek from where I’d hit my head, and each sob that shook my body felt like someone was stabbing my stomach with a white-hot poker. I couldn’t take in anything more than shallow breaths, and breathing out felt impossible.

  “I will find it,” he assured me in a dark tone. “When I do, you will be begging me for this.”

  He kicked my stomach once more, and when I started to roll over to protect my stomach, his foot smashed down onto my back and pinned me to the floor. My tears and spit mixed with the blood on the floor, but I couldn’t move my head no matter how hard I tried. The pain was unbearable, and the way he had me pinned was making it impossible to breathe. It was all I could do to keep from passing out—I’d found out in the beginning that passing out wasn’t an option. He’d only start up again once I was conscious.

  “Don’t move until I’m back. If I find birth control, Harlow, I’ll be sure to tell your mother that you are the reason she’s about to die.”

  My face twisted in pain and fear as silent, agonizing sobs continued to torment me. I knew he wouldn’t find anything, but that never made the time while he searched for something any easier. Every time I wondered if I was making the right choice. He threatened my family—but I was saving a child. I just had to keep reminding myself that in the two and a half years of going through this every other week, those threats had been just that. Threats.

  Because once he came back from not finding anything, everything would change. It always did.

  I don’t know how long I’d been left there, but by the time I heard his bare feet on the tile as he entered the bathroom, my sobs and tears had stopped, and I was just lying there helplessly.

  Collin rolled me over and hushed me when a cry bubbled up my throat. His dark blue eyes roamed over my face sadly for a few seconds before he said, “There was nothing, like you said.” Brushing my hair back from where it clung to my face, he gently trailed his fingers along my cheek and down my neck. Just as the tips of his fingers touched my collarbone, they were digging in behind it, and he was whispering, “Don’t show your pain, baby.”

  More tears welled up in my eyes before leaking out, and I smashed my mouth into a tight line to keep any noise from escaping.

  “Don’t show your pain,” he repeated, but I couldn’t stop crying. “Why aren’t you getting pregnant?”

  I shook my head back and forth, and he nodded a few times before breathing out heavily.

  “What good are you if you can’t do this for us? Don’t you want a family? Don’t you want to make me happy, Harlow?” he asked, his voice deceptively calm and soothing. When I didn’t respond, he dug his fingers in harder. “Answer me.”

  “I do,” I cried out before clenching my shaking jaw shut again.

  He seemed to accept my answer, and the pressure left before he was wrapping his arms under my body and pulling me up to cradle me against his chest.

  Another cry of pain filled the bathroom, and he kissed my forehead. “Don’t show your pain,” he said without moving his lips away.

  Collin walked me into the large shower, sat me down on the built-in bench, and pulled the shirt off my body. He turned on the water as he walked away, and I watched vacantly as he cleaned the blood off the tile. Once he was done, he stripped down and stepped back in the shower. Sitting on the bench next to me, he pulled me into his arms and looked at the back of my head for a few minutes.

  “Very small cut, I had trouble finding it. You’ll be okay.”

  I nodded and bit back a groan when he stood us up. He washed my body and the blood out of my hair before toweling me off and dressing me in one of his shirts. Once he had me in bed with a few pillows propping me up, he disappeared into the kitchen for a while, and then came back with breakfast for both of us.

  He slid in between my back and the pillows, and gently pulled me into his arms so he could feed me.

  “Are you hurting?”

  The pain had the edges of my vision darkening, and my body responding too slow, so much that it was taking me forever to eat what he was giving me. “I’m fine,” I whispered when I swallowed a bite.

  “Good girl. How’s breakfast?”

  I couldn’t taste it. “It’s great,” I responded in a monotone voice. “Thank you, Collin.”

  He kissed my shoulder and fed me another bite. “Anything for my girl.”

  A lone tear slipped down my cheek as I tried to be thankful that I’d made it through, and started the countdown over again.

  Fourteen more days.

  Chapter 5

  Harlow

  Present Day—Richland

  AFTER THANKING THE barista for my coffee, I began walking out of the coffee shop, only to stop. I didn’t want to go home yet. I didn’t need to start making Collin’s dinner for four more hours at least, and sitting in that house would only have me anxious and paranoid for that time.

  Turning back around, I walked to one of the large chairs and sat down, ignoring the dull ache in my torso as I did. It’d been three days since the not-so-surprise negative pregnancy test, and while the bruising just got worse, the pain was getting more tolerable all the time.

  Setting my cup on the table in front of me, I pulled my mini iPad from my purse and smiled to myself when I found there was still a charge. I set an alarm on it to know when to leave in case I was able to escape my reality for a little while, grabbed my coffee, and gently sat back in the chair as I tried to get into the book I’d been reading last week on my Kindle app. I had more than enough time to read during the days; that wasn’t the problem. It was whether I could push away my real life enough to let myself enjoy the fairy tale.

  More often than not, I ended up staring blankly at my iPad long after it had shut itself off from lack of use as I thought about whatever was going on with Collin, or my own fairy tale that I’d given up.

  Like now, I realized, when I noticed my screen was black again. I didn’t even know how long I’d been sitting there just staring at it. I took a deep breath in, preparing for a silent sigh out.

  My breath caught in my throat when a body next to me blocked the sun, and a deep, fluid voice asked, “Why would anyone waste their time only loving someone to the moon . . .”

  . . . when they could love them to the stars?

  He didn’t finish, and I didn’t say the words out loud. But everything stopped around me for several heavy seconds. The rise and fall of my chest halted; I no longer heard the background noise, music, and voices in the coffee shop . . . All time seemed to stand still as I sat there trying to assess whether I was dreaming or not.

  “Harlow Evans,” he said softly, and I let out a shuddering breath as everything came filtering back in. “The last person I thought I’d see when I woke up this morning was the girl I’ve been waiting seven years for.”

  My head snapped to the left, and my soul ached when I looked at Knox Alexander for the first time in four and a half years. Time had changed him in amazing ways—and at the same time, nothing about him was different at all. Those dark eyes began to lock on mine, and I quickly looked away from them. I didn’t want to see what they would tell me; I didn’t want to know what they would find.

  I knew I still hadn’t said anything, but at the moment I couldn’t even force my mouth to open, and my vision was blurring as tears filled my eyes. I’d dreamed so many times of seeing Knox again, and every time I was much more composed than I was now. But to have him there—really there—in front of me had the last four and a half years of my life flashing through my mind and wishing I could have done it all differently.

  “Not Harlow Evans . . .” he said quietly, the pain in his voice clear as his long fingers barely trailed over my wedding ring.

  My head bowed and shook back and forth. I willed the tears to stay back but wasn’t able to stop them.

 
“Hey,” he said gently, and suddenly he was crouching down next to me. His fingers went under my chin to tilt my head back. “Why are you crying? What’s going on?”

  “I never thought I would see you again,” I managed to choke out a minute later.

  His full lips tilted up in the faintest of smiles, but his eyes showed he wasn’t finding anything about this amusing. “You thought you’d never see me again? I thought you would go back to Seattle after you graduated from Whitman. And now you are sitting in a coffee shop in Richland, twenty minutes from where I live, and just a few from where I work. It’s safe to say, Low, that I thought I would never see you again.”

  “I’ve been in Richland for years,” I admitted.

  Knox’s eyebrows rose in shock, and a mix of frustration and pain showed on his face for a second before it fell. “Years,” he stated dully. “You’ve been here for years? Why? And why didn’t I know?”

  My jaw trembled as I slowly held up my left hand. Knox didn’t look at it, but his dark eyes hardened. “I never graduated.”

  “Years,” he said again. His voice held no emotion, and though it hadn’t come across as a question, I nodded my head anyway. “Then it’s safe to assume he was . . .” he trailed off.

  I didn’t answer, I couldn’t. Because if I did, I would say things I shouldn’t. That I’d made a mistake, that I’d married a monster, that I dreamed of Knox almost nightly, that I’d dreamed of this right here. He must have seen the answer in my eyes—known Collin was the same guy I’d chosen over Knox—because he smiled sadly at me.

  “I see.” My tears fell harder at his acknowledgment, and Knox cupped my cheek with his hand. “Low . . . why are you crying?”

  As much as I’d longed for this moment, I couldn’t let it continue. As much as I wanted to fall into Knox’s arms and never leave, I needed to get away from him. This was dangerous.

  “I’m sorry, I have to go.” I slipped out of the side of the large chair, and he rocked back from my sudden change in position.

  “Harlow, wait!”

  I’d barely gotten outside when he grabbed my arm; the action caused me to automatically jerk in preparation of what would come—but the shaking never came. Other than the involuntary reaction to being grabbed, my body knew he wouldn’t hurt me; my heart knew the hand holding me.

  When there was nothing but silence behind me, I slowly turned to face him. His wide eyes and slack jaw told me he hadn’t missed how I’d responded to him, but thankfully he didn’t comment on it.

  “Please don’t leave,” he finally whispered. “Not after I’ve finally found you again.”

  “Found me?” I whispered in confusion. As much as those words warmed something inside me, I knew he couldn’t have meant them. Not after what I’d done to him. “I’m married, Knox,” I unnecessarily stated what he obviously knew.

  “I know.” The look on his face was something I wish I could erase. “Just talk to me. Tell me about all the years I missed. Let me feed you,” he said with an uneasy laugh as his eyes quickly darted over my too-thin body.

  “We can’t.”

  “Low,” he pleaded, and my eyes shut so I wouldn’t have to see the look in his dark eyes. The one I knew I would give anything for. “I haven’t seen you or heard from you in years,” he said, his voice soft. “Please.”

  When I opened my eyes, I kept them trained on his chest, refusing to look up at his face. My mind was at war as everything in me screamed different things. Screamed what Collin would do if he found out, screamed to tell Knox everything, but most important, screamed at me to leave.

  Fall 2009—Seattle

  I JUMPED OUT of my car and ran through the parking lot toward the coffee shop as I tried to escape the rain. It was pointless, though; I was still soaked by the time I reached the door. I welcomed the heat and amazing smells that hit me as soon as I was inside, and tried to brush back my wild hair sticking to my face as I walked toward the front registers.

  “Low?”

  I paused midstep and brushed furiously at the wet strands of hair still stubbornly clinging to my cheeks before turning to find the man that voice belonged to. I’d know that voice anywhere. That voice that moved through my body like a welcome shiver.

  Knox.

  A wide smile spread across my face when I saw him standing up from one of the chairs in the corner of the shop. He quickly stepped around the other chairs filled with people he’d been sitting with and walked up to grab me in a hug that seemed to last forever—and not nearly long enough. It had been almost three weeks since I’d seen him, and while I noticed the feeling of rightness that only came with being near Knox, and how it felt like I was finally whole again, I loved that it still somehow felt like we’d never been apart.

  He released me enough to cup one of my cheeks in his large hand, and just stared at me for a few seconds before saying anything. “God, look at you.”

  I was positive I looked like a drowned rat. But with the awe in his tone, and the way his dark eyes were moving over my face, I felt like I’d never looked more beautiful.

  “Well, I guess this is one way to get around only seeing each other once or twice a month.”

  Knox smirked. “Less than a year, and then there’s nothing keeping me from you.”

  “We’ll see if you still feel that way when the time comes,” I teased, and pressed my body closer to his.

  He didn’t find it funny. His smirk fell and his dark eyes held mine. “I’m still waiting for you; nothing’s going to change that.”

  “And you’re still wasting your time.”

  His eyes danced at my words. We both knew they held no weight anymore; they hadn’t for a long time. “Never.”

  I smiled and glanced over to where he’d been sitting; my lips fell when I did. I faintly nodded in the direction of the girl glaring at us. “Are you sure about that?”

  Knox’s brow furrowed, and he turned his head enough to look at the group of people he’d been with. He was rolling his eyes when he turned back to me. “Not what you think, at least not for me. She’s from our sister sorority.”

  I tried to move away from him, but he held me close. “You don’t have to lie.”

  “I’m not. You know I would have told you. Are you busy?”

  My head jerked back at the sudden change in conversation. “No . . . I was supposed to go study with a friend, but she got sick and left school early. I was just getting coffee on my way home.”

  “Can you be gone a little longer?” When I just narrowed my eyes in suspicion at him, he dipped his head lower so our faces were only inches apart. “If I’m already seeing you, I’m not willing to give you up yet. Let’s go next door and grab some lunch.”

  “You want to have lunch with me?” I said each word slowly, like I was trying to make sure I’d heard him correctly. It was rare if we did something away from my house, and even then, it was never date-ish. This would feel date-ish.

  He shrugged. “I ran into you here. No harm there, right?”

  I fought back a smile. I wanted to jump into his arms and tell him of course there was no harm in just having lunch, but I could feel the glare from the table he’d been sitting at. I sucked a breath through my teeth and chanced another glance at the girl. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” he said with a soft laugh. “I told you, there’s nothing there for me. And if choosing between people I see all the time, and the girl I love . . . Low, you know I’m going to choose you. Besides, I wasn’t even paying attention to them; I was thinking about you.”

  “Sure you were, charmer,” I said teasingly.

  Knox looked surprised that I didn’t believe him, but the look was quickly replaced by determination as he pulled out his phone. “Let me show you what I was doing just before you walked in.” Angling the phone toward me so I could see what had been pulled up, he brought the phone back to life.

  I tilted my head and waited for him to explain what I was looking at as I glanced over what looked like a confir
mation to an order. My gasp came less than a second before his answer.

  “Setting up a delivery.”

  I had no doubt my smile was embarrassingly big by the time we were facing each other again. “My flowers are coming soon?”

  Knox shrugged. “I don’t know, are they?”

  I rolled my eyes, but my smile hadn’t dimmed. “Okay, I’ll stay if you answer something for me.” One dark eyebrow rose as he waited. “How much do you love me?”

  That perfect, crooked smile flashed at me before he dropped his forehead to mine and whispered, “To the stars, Harlow. Always to the stars.”

  Present Day—Richland

  “OKAY,” I FOUND myself saying. “But it can’t be long.”

  “That’s fine, I’ll take whatever time you can give me.” The hand holding my arm slid to the small of my back, and Knox turned toward the little sandwich place near the coffee shop.

  “I know you got married, but why didn’t you finish school?” Knox asked after we’d gotten our food and were sitting at a table in the corner of the little bakery. “I was under the impression that graduating was important to your parents.”

  I wrapped my arms around my waist and stared at the table for a few minutes as I tried to figure out what I could say. I knew what he was hinting at with those words . . . I knew only because my dad had told me years ago. But to let on that I knew would lead this conversation in a place it couldn’t go. So what could I say about why I didn’t finish school? Collin graduated when I finished my sophomore year and refused to let me continue going to school wasn’t exactly something I could just tell people.

  “Did you have a baby?” Knox asked when I took too long responding.

  “No!” My eyes widened, and I looked up at him in horror before I was able to conceal it. “I just—there wasn’t a point. H-he was two years ahead of me, so when he graduated and had a job lined up back here, there was no reason for him to stay there, or for us to be separated since we were getting married a few months later.”