“I don’t know,” I state firmly, not willing to give him up as easily as his sister did.
But why?
He lied to me too. He’s been lying to me from day one.
Half-truths.
Nibbles of information. Nothing deep and meaningful. Statements so broad that you’re omitting facts, making it only a half-truth.
He never flat out lied to me, he just left out the parts that would have given me a better picture. The full picture. Truths that would have prepared me for this moment to happen. Yet here I sit, staring at two people who are supposed to be dead.
“When you talk to him, tell him his father will freeze his trust if he doesn’t come home,” Mr. Neil says, promptly gathering his family and heading for the door, closing it behind them without another word.
“Oh my God,” I say, letting out the breath I was holding.
“This is bad, Harley. I tried to call Alex, but his phone went straight to voicemail.” Vivian says, taking her seat behind her desk and opening her laptop. “They could sue us if they wanted to, you know that, right?”
“Yes,” I mutter, lowering my head in shame.
“Did you know?”
“About what?”
“That they were alive. Did you know?” she asks again, her voice more demanding than the last time.
“No. He lied to me too,” I confess.
Anger begins to build in my chest as I make my way to my office. At Alex for his lies. For tricking me into falling for him. For being the man I always dreamed about when he had to know this would eventually all come out.
Mostly, I’m mad at myself for not listening to my gut and allowing him in my life. In my heart. The one place I convinced myself I wouldn’t let him, and yet here I am, struggling to breathe because I know I’m going to lose him. Not in a matter of weeks but in a matter of hours. I should be okay with that, but I’m not. Not even close.
25
Alex
* * *
Flowers didn’t seem like enough, so I bought chocolate too. I didn’t know what kind she liked, so I bought two boxes. A mix of everything. Some with nuts and dark chocolate. Others with caramel and milk chocolate.
As far as the flowers went, I bought her the largest bouquet I could find. One that had the biggest variety of flowers. Every color of the rainbow was represented.
Because at the end of the day, I still don’t know that much about Harley.
Her likes and dislikes. If she’s allergic to anything.
The simple stuff.
Yes, we’ve shared a lot about ourselves over the past two months. Even more since the first night she gave a part of herself to me. It’s not enough. I want to know everything about her.
Even more than that, I want to tell her the things I’ve been keeping from her. About my parents. About my sister. The life I was born into. More about the man my father expects me to become and the reasons why I don’t want to be that person anymore.
All of it.
Every little detail.
She deserves to know. She deserves more than the half-truths I’ve been sharing with her because the more I think about it, the more they feel like lies. Every single statement.
Tonight I’m going to come clean with her about all of it. After I tell her about my job offer. After we celebrate because all I can think about right now is having her body pressed against mine. The look on her face as she shatters beneath me.
Now that I’m not leaving, I can’t wait to have more of those moments. More of everything, but in order to take the next step and enter a real relationship with Harley, I need to be honest with her.
Will there be consequences? Maybe.
Will she be angry with me about certain lies? More than likely.
Will she forgive me? I’d like to think so, but that remains to be seen.
I’ll find out in about an hour. When she walks through her front door.
“Are you thinking about Harley again?” I hear Phoenix ask as he pauses the game.
We’ve been sitting in comfortable silence since we finished lunch. His focus has been on slamming buttons on his controller while I’ve been spaced out, thinking about what to say and how I want to say it. How I want to break it to Harley that she doesn’t know that much about me but I’m willing to tell her everything if she’s willing to listen.
“Maybe,” I joke, nudging him with my shoulder.
“I get that you like her, a lot, but you promised you wouldn’t hurt her.”
It’s a gentle reminder of the conversation we had a few weeks ago. One that took me by surprise a few days after Harley and I slept together for the first time. I assumed Phoenix was oblivious to what was going on, but that wasn’t the case.
“I promised, and I try and hold true to my promises. Always.”
Phoenix hesitates for a second before setting the controller down and slouching against the arm of the couch, facing me. “What if she were to tell you something that you didn’t like? Would you still like her?”
“Of course. There’s nothing she could say that would change the way I feel about her.”
Why am I having this conversation with him? This feels dangerously close to the conversation I’m about to have with her.
“Nothing?” he asks, wanting confirmation.
I nod, and although he seems to accept my answer, he doesn’t turn away. “You know, there are things she doesn’t know about me too. Things she might not like. Things that might make her angry with me.”
“Like what?” he challenges.
“A lot of things. The point is,” I redirect, not wanting to share my hidden truths with him and refusing to lie to anyone else I care about, “if you really like someone, you tell them everything, even if you think they won’t want to hear it.”
“And you really like her?”
“I do.”
“Good, because she really likes you, and so do I. Try not to make her mad, okay?”
All I can do is laugh. He’s doing everything a twelve-year-old can do to protect his mother. He’s having a man-to-man talk with me.
Phoenix returns to his video game while I start cooking dinner. Not wanting to ruin the celebration by cooking from scratch, I stopped at the grocery store after the flower shop and picked up a heat-and-eat meal. Tonight we’ll be dining on chicken and broccoli casserole, a nice tossed salad and garlic bread. I’ve paired it with chardonnay for Harley and me and sparkling grape juice for Phoenix.
The table will be set, candles will be lit, and dinner will be on the table when Harley walks through the door. Or that’s how things should have been.
Instead, she’s walking in as I’m putting the casserole in the oven.
“Hey,” I call out when I hear the door open. “You’re home early.”
Silence.
Eerie silence.
When I look up from placing the casserole on the rack, I find Harley standing in the entrance of the kitchen, arms crossed over her chest and a death glare in her eyes. That glare… it’s pointed in my direction.
“We need to talk,” she states firmly, nudging her head toward the door.
The sentence of death. This is bad, but I have no idea what I’ve done or how I’m going to defend myself.
I follow Harley into the hall, where she’s pushing my apartment door open, not even bothering to see if I’m still behind her. I spy Phoenix staring at me with concern as I close the door to my place for privacy.
“Your father gave me a message to give to you,” she starts, finally turning to face me, anger firmly in place.
I’m so caught up in trying to figure out Harley’s body language it takes a second for her words to register.
My father.
The man who is supposed to be dead as far as she knows.
She spoke to him
Which can only mean one thing…
“Harley, I—”
“Save the lies for someone else, Alex.”
“You don’t understand,” I prot
est.
“I think I do. You lied to get Daphne in rehab. That I get. You lied because your parents are horrible people. I saw it firsthand when I met them in Vivian’s office this morning. What I don’t understand is why you lied to me. Why you kept lying to me. Why you didn’t trust me enough to keep your secret.”
“And put you in the middle of this? Threaten the oath you took? Your job could have been on the line if you knew and didn’t say anything.”
Lies. All lies.
The truth is I was scared as fuck for her to find out. Scared that Daphne would get kicked out. Scared I’d be in trouble for kidnapping her and bringing her here. I’d done a hell of a job digging myself a grave, and now Harley was shoveling the dirt on top of me.
“Bullshit! I would have helped you any way I could. Made sure Daphne got the help she needed. You of all people should know that.”
I’d be surprised if Phoenix wasn’t able to hear her loud and clear from where he’s sitting on the couch across the hall she’s screaming so loud.
“I was planning on telling you tonight.”
“Telling me what? That you’ve been lying to me this entire time? That your parents were alive? That you illegally checked your sister into a rehab facility? Which truth were you going to tell me, Alex?” Anger radiates off her skin in waves, smacking me across the face.
“All of it.” Hanging my head in shame, the words barely come out above a whisper.
“Too little, too late, Alex. She’s gone. They took her home.”
Fuck!
“And you need to go home too,” I hear Harley say, her voice as soft as mine. When my head snaps in her direction, and our eyes meet, I know she has more to say. “Your father told me to tell you that if you want your trust, you need to go home.”
That prick.
Threatening my trust fund to get me to come home. Forcing my hand.
If I go, I’m relenting control. If I stay, I’ll lose my trust.
The money isn’t important to me anymore. Sure, I could use it to start my new life. It would be easier if I had money at my disposal, but I’m not above working hard to get where I want to be.
Harley showed me that was possible.
I can persevere. I will. With or without his money.
“I don’t care about my trust,” I start but Harley holds up her hand to keep me from completing my thought.
“Go home, Alex. Figure your shit out. Check on your sister.” Walking past me, she opens the door before she speaks again. “Go back to where you belong.”
Holding her head high, shoulders back, she closes my door behind her without even glancing in my direction. Without as much as a goodbye.
This was not how I planned on tonight going. It was going to be a celebration that I was staying. That I was offered a good job. A happy moment I was going to share with Harley and Phoenix because they were starting to feel more like family than my own ever did on a good day.
I was happy. Excited. The future was bright, a large part of that because I saw Harley next to me every step of this journey. I was finally going to be able to separate myself from my father, from my family name.
To be my own man.
And now, like every other important moment in my life, my father has found a way to ruin this too. Or maybe it was my fault for even thinking I could be anything but my father’s son.
Yes, I’d lied to Harley. About a lot of things. Mostly by omission, but the lie was still there. I had never planned on telling her anything until today. Until I realized the reason I wanted to tell her was because I had fallen in love with her.
Head over heels, madly and truly in love with her.
She put a spell on me.
I’ve never been in love before. Not once. Maybe that’s why this hurts so much. Maybe that’s why the ache in my chest feels like it’s going to kill me.
As I pack up all my belongings.
Book a flight home.
Call my lawyer.
Clean out my fridge.
The pain never dulls. The ache doesn’t go away. Knowing they’re only across the hall. Two of the three people in this world I choose to call family. Knowing she’s still within reach. That there’s no way to make this right. Not right now.
Maybe not ever.
The pain intensifies as I write a letter to Phoenix and another to Harley.
An apology for not staying. An apology for not being honest. For bringing them any pain. And a promise… to return someday. To make this right.
I ask Harley for her forgiveness. Lay out what happened in detail, hoping that she may find it in her heart to look past all my imperfections one day. And that when that day comes, she’ll welcome me back in her life with open arms and an open heart.
Because I fear I may have broken hers.
This is as hard for her as it is for me. It’s not a secret that she cared about me.
Harley wears her emotions on her sleeve. She tries to hide them, but she’s not very good at it. Happy, sad, nervous, it doesn’t matter. You can always tell how she feels. I heard the pain in her voice as she yelled at me though she was trying to mask it. It was a mix of anger and sorrow. I saw her rally her strength as she walked out. There was no doubt in my mind she wanted to look back. Wanted me to beg her not to go.
I couldn’t do that to her.
I need to fix this. To make it right. To be good enough to be with her.
That starts now. I can’t do it from here. I have to go home. My hand has been forced. What my father doesn’t know is that he’s in for the fight of his life, and I don’t plan to back down. Not this time. Never again.
I’m not the same person I was when I left Chicago. I’ll never be that person again. And I have Phoenix and Harley to thank for that. They showed me what it meant to be selfless, to care about someone else more than yourself. More than money.
It’s a hard lesson but one I’m so thankful they taught me because now I know exactly how to handle my father and whatever he throws at me. Once that’s settled, I’m coming back for Harley. For my family.
26
Two Months Later
Harley
* * *
“Hurry up, Phoenix!” I holler into the bedroom. “The cab just pulled up. We have to go.”
“Can’t you go without me?” he asks, dragging his feet across the carpet, shoes in hand, as he walks out of the room.
“We’ve talked about this. I’m not picking out your school clothes. Now, where’s the list of supplies that came in the mail the other day?”
Between clothes and school supplies, I’m going to be broke before the day is over. Why does paper have to cost so much? Pencils? And why does he need six different colored highlighters? Post-it Notes? Whatever happened to the days of showing up at school with a 5-subject notebook and a pencil and that was enough?
My bank account is crying already, and we still have to make a trip to the grocery store tomorrow after I figure out if there’s anything left from my paycheck. The kid is growing non-stop and eating me out of house and home.
“On the counter,” he grumbles, slipping into his sneakers. His face contorts as he pulls the laces.
I know that look.
He needs new shoes as well.
“Tight?” I ask.
“A little but I can manage.”
“No, you need shoes, so we’ll get you shoes.”
I’m not sure how I’m going to afford them, but I will get him shoes.
There’s a knock at the door just as I’m grabbing my purse, mentally calculating how much I can get him today and what is going to have to wait until my next check so we can eat.
“Be right there,” I call out, shooting Phoenix a stern look.
I asked him to put his shoes on an hour ago. It never crossed my mind that he was waiting until the last second because they don’t fit and probably hurt his feet.
Opening the door, I’m surprised to find the hall empty except a folded note with my name on it taped to the door.
Harley Anderson.
Removing it, I find another note beneath it with Phoenix’s name on it. Looking at him in confusion, he reaches past me and snags his note, opening immediately.
“What’s it say?” I ask as his eyes dance across the page.
“It’s not for you,” is his only reply as he turns and heads back into the apartment, closing the bedroom door behind him.
“We need to go shopping,” I say, attempting to open the door, only to find it locked.
“Read your note!” he screams, his voice catching on the last word.
Is he crying? Why would he be crying? Who leaves a note for an almost teenager that makes them cry?
Unfolding the white sheet of printer paper, my breath catches in my throat as I read the first line, my purse slipping from my shoulder and dropping to the floor.
Harley,
I love you, I hope you know that. I’m not sure when it happened, but I realized it the day before I left, and I’ve spent the better part of eight weeks attempting to prove to myself that I’m good enough for you. Good enough to be in your life. In Phoenix’s life. Want to know what I learned?
I may never be good enough.
You deserve so much better than someone like me. I have more baggage than an international flight. More family issues than everyone I’ve ever met combined. More drama. More of a lot of things.
I also have more love for you than I’ve ever felt for anyone before. Love that has kept me going while we were apart as I tried to figure my shit out. As I tried to better myself. To distance myself from the stereotype bestowed upon me.
I’m not the All-American rich boy everyone thinks I am.
I’m just a boy, trying to become the man worthy of a woman like you. Worthy of your grace and patience. Of your drive and perseverance. Of your forgiveness. Of your love.
Most importantly, of your heart.
Because you own mine, Harley I-don’t-know-your-middle-name Anderson.
And if you’re willing to give me another chance, a chance to be honest with you about everything, I’m across the hall.
Half Truths: An Opposites Attract Romance Page 18