“What the hell is sinister?” Ryske asked. “You never told me sinister.”
“I couldn’t tell you anything because you were too busy charging around like a wild animal,” Bale said. “She’s fine and I’m sure she’ll be fine. If she follows her doctor’s orders.”
There was an undercurrent there that reminded her of the stars on her arm. Bale was her doctor, he was the crew doctor, and they were bound to do what he said.
“I have to be out by Saturday,” she said, touching her stars.
“Baby, I’ll take care of that,” Ryske said.
Flipping around, she touched his jaw. “I’m in this. We’re in this…”
“What about Ophelia?” Lena asked, drawing everyone’s focus.
For a second, Harlow was shocked to discover her sister was aware of anything Pothos related. Then she remembered what they’d been talking about before.
“Yes,” Jean said. “She stayed at our house… She said she was engaged to Mr. Ryske.”
“My friendship with Ophelia was genuine,” Harlow said, refraining from adding the word “once” to the end of her sentence. “She and Ryske have been friends for many years.”
“So, she perpetuated the lie?” Rupert said.
He had a real bug up his ass. “Can I have a minute alone with Rupert, please?” Harlow asked, unable to take her attention from her ex.
Her parents wouldn’t think anything of her wanting to talk to a man she’d been close to for years. Especially if they didn’t know about his connection to their youngest daughter. It seemed they were still ignorant. Despite an initial visible urge to object, Lena stayed quiet and let her mother put an arm around her.
“I’ll see what I can do about finding a hotel for tonight,” Brysen said and headed to the door with his wife and daughter in tow.
Bale stood up after they were gone. “I’ll go see if your labs are back.”
He took one step before she spoke. “Bale,” she said, and flicked her eyes to the side toward the man on her bed.
Ryske wasn’t going to want to leave. The only way she’d get him out the room without a fight, and keep him out, was if someone took responsibility for him.
“Right,” Bale said and came around the bed to punch Ryske’s arm. “You need to call and find out how everyone else is doing.”
“Later,” Ryske grumbled.
Harlow pushed his thigh. “I think that’s a great idea. They might need supplies.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“You have to,” Bale said. “There’s a bunch of paperwork you have to sign.”
“Shouldn’t her parents do that?” Rupert asked.
Ryske gritted his teeth. Harlow thought she might have heard him growl.
“Ryske has medical power of attorney… all power really,” she said to Rupert while stroking Ryske’s leg. “He makes my medical decisions. Authorizes whatever I need.”
“Bet you never had that, did you, Marlowe?” Ryske snarled.
His adrenaline from the fire obviously hadn’t waned just yet. Twisting around, she stroked his stubble. “Just give me one minute, baby… please… Crash.”
“Why?” Ryske grumped, his focus zeroed in on Rupert. “I already know he fucked your little sister and knocked her up. There’s nothing he can hide from me.”
Rupert’s shock was palpable. Bale must have felt it too because he grabbed Ryske’s arm and was more forceful about pulling him off the bed. The doctor hadn’t known who the father of Lena’s baby was, more because she hadn’t gotten around to telling him than because it was a secret from him.
Rupert wouldn’t appreciate his secret being broadcast. He couldn’t possibly understand how informing her crew was a formality for her, not a betrayal. Harlow would trust them with her life. Tonight had proven again how far they would go for each other.
“Come on,” Bale said, yanking Ryske along. “We’ll find some people for you to glare at in the waiting room… come on.”
3
Ryske kept his glare on Rupert until the very last second. He wasn’t the only peeved man around either. As soon as Bale pulled Ryske out of the room and the door swung shut, Rupert marched over to drop down on the edge of her bed.
“How could you tell him that?” he hissed. “We haven’t even told your parents yet.”
“Ryske isn’t going to tell anyone,” she said. “I was in shock after I found out. Ryske supported me. He supports me through everything, Rupert. Don’t ever be surprised if he knows everything I know because I wouldn’t hesitate to tell him anything.”
“What about our deal? About your promise to come back to me, does he know about that?”
“Yes.”
Assuming that his question was supposed to deliver some sort of gut punch, Harlow smiled, which made him flinch. “You told him that?”
“I tell Ryske everything… eventually. I trust him. More than I’ve ever trusted anyone.”
“More than you trusted me?”
“Not at the time,” she said. “At the time we were together, I thought you were the most straight up together guy I’d ever met… I’ll tell you, this thing with Lena has opened my eyes… You’re just as screwed up as the rest of us, Rupert. No matter how much you try to hide it.”
It surprised her that he wasn’t offended. “That may be true. I don’t want you to be hurt, and a man like him…”
“You loved Ryske when you and Daddy brought him back to the house… or was it just his money you loved? Great thing about him? He can be whatever you want him to be. I want him to be himself. But if it means something to you for him to put on fake airs and graces, I’ll ask him to do it. We’ll turn it into a game.”
He sneered. “A sex game.”
Marrying a half-shrug to a half-smile, she sank back into her pillows. “Maybe… He will do pretty much anything for sex, so…”
Shaking his head, Rupert took a moment to compose himself before moistening his lips and rubbing a hand across his chin. “I don’t understand this. I don’t understand how you could let yourself be led by—”
“Ryske doesn’t lead me,” she said, rejecting the laughable notion. “If anything, I lead him… He’d do anything to make me happy. Anything in the world, Rupert.”
“I would’ve done anything to make you happy and it wasn’t enough. Why is he different?”
Harlow shook her head. “You’re comparing apples and oranges,” she said. “You’re two very different men. I can give you an example from ten minutes ago. Ryske sat in this room and told Bale that it didn’t matter whether we had children or not. He said that all he needed to make him happy was me.” Harlow smiled, tracing her fingertips across the bracelet on her wrist. “I believe him, Rupert. All he wants is me. And all I want is him.”
“It was about children? You left me because of children?”
“No,” she said and breathed out. “We’ve talked about this. You and I, we weren’t suited. We didn’t want the same kind of life. What I have with Ryske, it’s dynamic. We adapt. We change. Nothing is set in stone and nothing is a disaster… As long as we’re in each other’s lives, we’re never alone… I felt alone with you. I felt… You had an affinity with my father. Lena was close to my mom… I always felt like I was looking at you all from the outside. I didn’t get it. I never got it… With Ryske, I get it, and he gets me… He accepts me. He accepts my faults. He accepts that I might not always want to be his best friend and that I might not always bend to his will.”
“I accepted you.”
Shaking her head, she couldn’t figure out how to make him understand. “It’s not the same,” Harlow said, and reached for his hand.
The moment they made contact, she felt something odd that made her withdraw.
“What is it?” Rupert asked. “He doesn’t let you touch other men? We were in love before we even knew he existed.”
“Rupert, you can’t make this a competition,” she said. “For one thing, after I made our deal, I was prepared to leave h
im. The delay was never because of him… We didn’t even think about getting back together until I was in jail. By then, I was determined to make sure Ryske was free. I knew he loved me… I also knew it was likely I’d spend the rest of my life in prison. I wouldn’t let him tie himself to me. I couldn’t.”
“It was him…” Rupert exhaled with new clarity. “All those times when we tried to arrange visits and you said we couldn’t come. You were seeing him.”
“Some of the time,” she said. “Sometimes it was our friends.”
If he got on his high horse about that, she’d put him in his place fast. Harlow had refused to let her family visit on just a handful of occasions. Ryske and her crew were the ones who’d gone out of their way to reshuffle schedules to accommodate Rupert and her father.
“I can’t believe you kept this from me.”
“Do you really want to start throwing that around?” she asked and lowered her voice. “Why haven’t you told my parents about Lena? Have you told your mom?”
Rupert’s mom would be over the moon to have a grandchild; she wouldn’t care where it came from. After their break up, Rupert’s mom had made her dislike of Harlow known to anyone who would listen. At the same time, she’d broadcast that the separation was mutual; most people saw through that half-truth.
While Harlow hadn’t up and made a decision to break his heart, she couldn’t deny being the instigator of the separation. If she’d kept her mouth shut, everything would’ve been fine… for Rupert and their families. She’d have been the only one to suffer at being drawn into a life of misery and apathy.
His aversion to the topic was understandable. “Do you think now’s the time to talk about this?”
“I think this is the first time we’ve been alone,” Harlow said. “I think this is the first time my head is on straight. And, I think that as much as I’m a little creeped out by the idea you’ve been with both me and my sister, I have to accept that this is reality. Just like you have to accept that Ryske is now a part of your reality.”
“My reality?” he objected. “I won’t have anything to do with the man. He lied to me.”
“Yeah? Get in line,” she said. “Ryske did lie to you and you lied to me. You would never have told me about you and Lena if she hadn’t gotten pregnant. What if Ryske hadn’t existed? What if I wanted to come back to you? We’d have based our whole relationship on a lie.”
Accepting her statement brought him down from his high horse enough to show some contrition. “I do not have to accept his lie. There’s no love between him and I.”
“Maybe not,” she said and smiled. “But if I do have children, they’ll be his, which means his children and yours will be cousins. You said you were going to marry Lena, and you always spend holidays with us. You and Ryske are going to be brothers-in-law, unofficially if nothing else. You can despise each other as much as you like, and I’ll say the same thing to him. But, honey, you’re family now.”
The door opened again. Another person came bundling in shimmering with tension and fear. “What is—”
“Clyde,” she said, her lips settling into a smile. “Hey, honey. How you doing?”
“How am I doing?” he asked, rushing across the room to pull her into a hug. “What the hell happened? Where’s Ryske?”
As soon as he uttered the name, he leaned back and clamped his lips, side-eying Rupert. Obviously, her friend was worried he’d just revealed a secret. As far as he knew, her family and Rupert were ignorant to her and Ryske’s connection.
Harlow laughed. “It’s okay. We’re out now. How did you hear about the fire?”
“It’s all over the neighborhood.”
“Clyde, honey, you don’t live in the neighborhood.”
“Felipe called me. Gina did too.”
“Oh, Felipe,” she said, thinking she should get in touch to let him know that the crew was okay.
The kid was close to everyone at Floyd’s. He’d be devastated if any of them were hurt. She should call Costello too; she couldn’t ask Ryske to do that.
“What happened?” Clyde asked, sitting on the edge of her bed facing her.
“Arson, Ryske says,” she said. Clyde’s mouth opened in shock. “I know… Dover’s going to be off the reservation for a while.”
“Or forever.”
“Who’s Dover?” Rupert asked.
The man thought he knew her so well. For a time, he’d been the closest person to her. But, the distance that had grown between them was stretching every day.
Harlow began to wonder why so many people were awake at this time of night when the door opened again. The medical guy who first appeared stepped aside to reveal someone else. Harlow bristled at the sight of the last woman she wanted to see.
“Oh, Harlow!”
“Ophelia,” she said, unable to keep the foul taste on her tongue from slipping into her tone. “What do you want?”
Ophelia came gliding across the room, assessing both Clyde and Rupert. “I just heard,” Ophelia said. “Isn’t it awful, Mr. Marlowe?”
Rupert was at a loss for how to respond. He would probably agree that a fire where life was endangered was an awful thing. But, he’d also just learned that this woman had been lying to him for months.
Opening her arms, Ophelia was about to thrust Clyde out of the way when Harlow noticed the sparkle on her hand. Reaching for the precious rock, she pulled Ophelia’s hand down before she could think about hugging her or blocking Clyde.
“We’re going to need that back,” Harlow said, squeezing Ophelia’s hand as she tugged the ring from it.
“Wh… what?”
Once Harlow had the ring, she admired it for a moment and then held it toward Rupert. “You’re going to need the money… I don’t need it anymore.” Ophelia squawked. “Yeah,” Harlow said, scratching her earlobe. “That was a hand-me-down.”
It wasn’t her intention to humiliate Ophelia; that was just a nice side benefit.
“Harlow, I don’t understand why—”
“It doesn’t matter, Ophelia. We’re business partners,” Harlow said and picked up her hand to pat it. “We’re stuck with each other and that’s that.”
Clyde was the only one who seemed to be as amused as her. Rupert was holding the engagement ring, probably still trying to fathom why Ophelia had it. Figuring it out shouldn’t take him too long. Rupert had been told that she and Ryske were together, and that the Ophelia engagement was fake. The engagement ring had been lying around. It was a good prop, hence why it was used.
Ophelia snatched her hand back. “Where’s Ryske?” she asked, her jaw tight.
Dropping her smile, Harlow feigned solemnity. “He’s dead.”
Ophelia’s eyes widened. Clyde’s smile dropped too because he hadn’t actually had an answer when he’d asked about Ryske. Sometimes it took her friend a second or two to catch up. It should’ve been obvious to him that she wouldn’t have been kidding around if her love had actually been murdered… again.
“No,” Ophelia gasped.
The door at the other end of the room opened. Ryske came in with Bale.
“Hallelujah, it’s another miracle,” Harlow said and enjoyed her own joke with a laugh.
“What the fuck is going on?” Ryske asked, storming over to get in front of Ophelia, blocking her from the bed.
“I think Harlow’s high,” Clyde said, his lips contorted in a badly disguised smile.
Ryske was intent on Ophelia. “What the hell do you want, Fi?”
“She miraculously heard about our misfortune,” Harlow said, extending a finger to touch his ass, drawing lines up and over the tight curve, then spreading her fingers to stroke him. “Isn’t that funny? In the middle of the night when most people are asleep, Ophelia heard about a random fire all the way across town.”
She could only see Ryske from behind, but guessed that he was glaring. Her suspicion was confirmed when his head snapped to the side to fixate on Clyde, and she got a good look at his profile.
/> “What’s the sap doing here?”
“Felipe called him,” she said, patting his butt. “The whole neighborhood’s awake. You should let him know we’re okay.”
“I was worried about Harlow,” Clyde said, standing up like he intended to defend his presence. Only he quickly lost his nerve and his smile. Facing up to the threat probably reminded Clyde that Ryske didn’t have a history of being happy to see him. Instead of backing down, he tried to fake confidence. Bad move. “All we knew was there was a fire. She could’ve been killed. You’re supposed to keep her safe!”
Harlow winced. “Oh,” she said, repeating the word over and over when Ryske grew more tense and swept Ophelia aside. “Oh. Oh. Oh…”
Grabbing for Ryske’s arm, she caught his wrist and tried to pull him back. Didn’t take him much effort to yank his hand away to advance on Clyde who was trying to maintain his bravado while retreating at the same time.
“You think I put her in danger on purpose?” Ryske snarled. “You fucking prick. You want your ass handed to you again? Huh? I let you get away with laying lips on my girl once. This is the fucking shit that happens when guys think you’re soft.”
Seizing Clyde’s jacket, Ryske slammed him back against the wall. “I… I….” was all her friend could muster.
“Goddamnit,” Harlow said, trying to untangle her legs from the covers. Extricating them, she pulled the cannula out of her nose and tugged the wires from her chest again. When the machines started to holler, Ryske’s head snapped around to check her, but he didn’t release his grip on Clyde. “Yeah, that’s right, I’m dead.” Throwing her legs from the bed, she ignored her wobble and went storming over to them. “While you’re over here playing macho man, I could be taking my last breath. Well done, Crash.”
“Get back in bed,” he barked at her and returned his attention to Clyde. “We’re gonna take this outside.”
“You’ve been desperate to beat on someone since that Costello mess,” she said, grabbing his arm and pulling on it until she could duck down under his elbow and squeeze herself between him and Clyde. If nothing else, being the meat in their sandwich kept her upright. “Now all you’re doing is rubbing his dick on my ass.”
Go All In (A Go Novel Book 4) Page 3