by Jamie Magee
“It’s more complicated than that. They don’t know about the break. We never came out and said that, but as soon as we do they’ll figure out that we haven’t been around each other. They will see why we hid that split. Collin is taking a hit with this. It’s a bold move.”
Just hearing his name on her lips boiled his skin, as if this deal was about Collin, him hurting. “Lying to your family and friends is a bold move.”
“It’s not like that. He’s protected me. This way, the fact that he did will be kept secret. He gets Quinn, I get to come back here.”
“You get to come back here?”
Harley felt her stomach flip. That world she came from would never make sense to him, and she knew that. She wanted out of it, was days away from being out, but she had to leave this way. Had to protect those that had protected her.
“You don’t think your dad is going to find this odd? That it happened months after you came back to this farm? The man may be old, but he’s not a fool.”
“I didn’t say he was. This separation story is more for our moms.”
“And where does your mother think you have been?”
“She didn’t ask….”
“So I’m some secret?”
“No. Yes. It’s not like that. We’re going to go to this party, say what we have to before the party, then I’m coming here. Everyone wins that way.”
“No one wins when you lie.” How was that concept lost on her?
Harley sucked in a deep breath, cast her stare to the side, then met his all at once with a firm defiance. “Wyatt, I’m trying to protect my family name. Trying to get Collin out of this without looking like an ass and protect his family name. I swear, it makes sense. When you factor everything in, it makes sense.”
He jerked his glance away. His jaw was clenched, and anger was saturating his visage.
Harley took a breath, then said, “I don’t get why you’re waiting until right now to be mad about Collin. Why it didn’t matter until now.”
“You told me it was your father’s birthday party, that your mother invited Collin. You didn’t say you were going with Collin to do any of this. I thought you were planning to tell your father about us; you wanted to do that alone.”
Shame saturated her. That was what she should have been doing, needed to do. She was going to tell her father that she was moving in with Wyatt, that she loved him, but the plan was never to let him know she had lied to him this whole time, let everyone believe she and Collin were serious.
“I’m not going with him; I’m going to break up with him.”
“You’re going to go and fake break up with your fake boyfriend.”
“Yeah.”
Wyatt threw his hands in the air as he moved closer to her. “How does this feel right to you, Harley? You’re all about how much you love your father, how much you want to honor and respect him, but you’re lying to the man’s face.”
“I’m ending the lie.”
“Are you? Then why am I not going with you to this party?”
“Wyatt.”
“Don’t ‘Wyatt’ me. I know why. I know I shouldn’t be surprised about this - how fucked up is that? That I’ve played this game with you for so long that I know it. I know it would cause some scandal, some stress, some something that you don’t want to deal with.”
“I’m not hiding you. I’m enduring this so I can come to you, then go to them with you.”
“In a few years, right? Because we have to play our parts, right? We don’t want anyone to know your mother is a conniving bitch that drove you to alter you entire life. We don’t want anyone to know how twisted all this is. This move, causing this one, then this one.”
“What do you want me to do, Wyatt? Not go?”
He stepped forward. “I want you to have every moment you want with him while you still have it.” She rocked back as the thought of her father ever dying was crippling, and rightly so. “You want him to believe that you have honored him, respected him. Fine. But Harley, listen to me. When he’s gone, you’ll live with this, years down the road, this guilt will eat you. If you think his love has conditions you have an issue. The man deserves honesty from you. Life is too short for bullshit, Harley. How many years did we already waste on this hell?”
“To many. I’m going to tell him that I love you. That I always have.”
“But you’re not going to tell him this deal with you and monkey suit was joke.”
“Don’t you dare talk about him like that. He was there for me, when I had no one else.”
“He was there because you let him be. One call Harley, one call to me would have ended this all. Instead, you lied to the man that thinks you are the best thing that has ever happened to him—you put both of us in misery. And according you, you jacked up Collin’s plans with whatever girl is all game to play this crap out with all of you.”
She pulled her shoulders back, glared. “I was seventeen, Wyatt. I was scared. I was protecting you. We’ve had this argument. I know I’m wrong. I’ll fix it, as soon as Collin is clear I’m going to fix it.”
“No you wont. Don’t lie to me or yourself.”
She started to argue but he held his hand up. “If you planned to stop the bullshit you would not be adding more to the pile. More to apologize for. If you planned to make it right - me and you would have been on a plane months ago.”
“It had to happen on this stage, the timing was not in my control.”
He cussed as he turned away from her then faced her gain. “You are hurting people you love to satisfy those that could not careless about you. Maybe you have more of your mother in you than you thought.”
She stepped back as if he slapped her. “You can call me anything you want, but don’t you dare compare me to that woman.”
“Then stop acting like her. You’re grown woman. Stop acting like property.”
The fact that he was right made her feel even more sick, more scared of this weekend. Wyatt may have thought her father was stand up man, and he was, but Harley didn’t have the same relationship with hers as Wyatt did with Beckett. The thought of letting him down, seeing disappointment in his eyes was painful enough to know that guilt she would feel down the road when he was gone was worth it.
Wyatt took a deep calm breath. It didn’t settle his anger but it took some tension away. He didn’t want her to leave there scared, make it to where it would be even easier for her mother to get her mind. He wanted her to be invincible, the way she always was in his arms, in his world.
“Harley, if you want to be in my world, then you’re going to be in an honest one. I could not stomach the idea of denying you, even hiding you.”
She started to cry. That killed him. Ripped him apart. He pulled her to his chest, rocked her back and forth. “I’m not hiding; I’m protecting,” she said through her tears.
His hands eased down hair, his lips brushed across her forehead, he leaned her back, cupping her face in his hands as his thumbs rushed across her cheeks.
“I know you are, baby. I know you think you are. I just don’t want you to say or do anything you’re going to regret one day. We only have so many chances to tell the truth before there are no more. You’re safe here. You’re strong. Plotting your plan from here seems simple. Easy. But it’s going to feel different there. In that world. It will drown you. All the things that seem ridiculous here will mean something there; they will make you think that it does. For all you know, some other plan will come up, some other story that has to be told.” He dipped his head so his eyes met hers. “If you promise me that you will think and act for yourself, if you will say and do what you can live with for the rest of your life…then I’m good. I can wait right here for you.”
“You’re not mad?”
“I’m furious, that’s my right, Harley.”
Her eyes searched his looking for a solution failing to see it through her emotions, as she stood at this crossroads in her life, between two worlds.
He felt her
weaken in his arms, even tremble. “I respond to you, Harley, in every way. I feel you inside of me. I know this is killing you and that is why it’s pissing me off. This is one party, one charade. It’s nothing compared to what I’ve overcome. I think its stupid and I had a right to tell you. Simple as that.”
“We. We overcame it.”
“We did…” His thumb brushed away another tear, then he pulled her to his lips, gave her the deepest kiss he could. His mind kept flashing back to the last time she’d left this farm, the kiss he had given her then. He told himself it wasn’t the same. She was coming back. No matter what they said or did, she was a grown woman and she was coming back.
He put his arm around her and guided her to the open door of the town car, eased her in. He leaned in, met Collin’s eyes. “Don’t let that woman hurt my Harley.”
Collin looked him dead in the eye. “We are going to make it right.”
“With a lie. All caught up on the plan now,” Wyatt said just before he leaned down and kissed Harley’s lips once more, wiping another tear away as he leaned away, then closed the door.
Collin reached for Harley’s hand. She let him hold it, but she stared out her window, never said a word on the entire flight. She kept hearing everything Wyatt had said, lingering words that Camille had said to her, even ones that her father had said in the past.
That sick feeling never left.
Chapter Nineteen
“What the hell are you doing?” Camille said to her son when she found him leaning against the fence, staring down at the long driveway.
“Getting ready to help Dad in the hay fields.”
“That’s going to be hard to do when you’re on a flight.”
He jerked his head to the side.
“Harley and her friends might be fine with lying to her father, but I didn’t raise a liar.”
He wasn’t all that sure what his mother knew about this deal, but assumed that she knew more than she had led on, like always. At the very least she knew that Harley was going to this party with Collin the boy that all the articles had said she was with.
“It’s not like that,” Wyatt said, finding himself repeating the same words Harley had said. “I haven’t said a word to the man in years; not my lie.”
“And you’re likely to never say another one to him if you don’t man up. You moved his daughter into your house; you’re building a life with her. Don’t you think you need to look the man in the eye?”
“She’s coming back, Mom.”
“No doubt.”
Wyatt was confused, didn’t get what his mother was trying to say, why Memphis and Easton had just turned into his drive.
“Son, I have talked to Garrison every day. At least an hour every morning.”
“About?”
“Life, in most cases. He’s not well, and he knows it. I don’t give a damn about any rumors, any high society, and I’m not sending you there to destroy some house of cards Harley has built in her defense. I’m sending you there because I raised you to be a man. You love this dying man’s only daughter. You’d do anything to protect her. I know that. I’m sure Garrison knows that, too, but a man like him—he needs to hear it. Wants to.”
Wyatt’s stare fluttered over his mother, wondering what those conversations with Garrison and her held, if Garrison ever believed Harley was with Collin. If he didn’t, and Harley kept this game up, she was hurting him instead of protecting him, making it worse. That made him regret not fighting harder for her to see his point.
“You want me to fly up there and tell him I love his daughter?”
“I do.”
“You just said that you know I would always protect Harley. She’s doing all this for that Collin boy, too, his reputation.”
“I told you this wasn’t about Collin or anyone else. This is about you manning up and telling Garrison that you love his daughter. I don’t care if you go to some party or not. I just want you to have a conversation with the man before he meets the good Lord. You’re not destroying any story. Garrison knows where she’s been.”
Wyatt nodded to Easton’s truck. “What’s with the cavalry? If Garrison knows I’m coming, why do I need back up?”
“I didn’t say he knew you were coming. You need to call him and ask for a conference - once you’re there, of course. And Memphis and Easton, they managed to keep you out of jail last time; figured it wouldn’t hurt to have them there this go ‘round...they agreed.
Wyatt went to argue his same point once more, but Camille stepped away from the gate. “Your bag is inside my front door. I made sure your dress suits were clean, packed a few other things, too.” And with that, she walked away.
Wyatt leaned back from that fence. His mother looked over her shoulder, then pointed to her front porch, her way of telling her son to move or she was going to move him herself.
Wyatt caught his fathers stare coming from just inside the barn, all Beckett did was stand up straighter pull his shoulders back, raised his chin, gestures he always gave Wyatt as he was entering a ring on a wild ride, it meant ‘man up, son.’
A million thoughts raced through his mind. Chasing her seemed dangerous, but at the same time he saw his mother’s point. He had built a life with Harley; twenty years from now, he’d be furious if the man his daughter was with hid like a coward from him.
Wyatt walked to the door and got his bag, checked it over to see that his best suits were in there, the ones that he only wore on the occasions he could not get out of, the kind of suit that Collin guy wore like a pro. It should make him feel like a scam artist dressing like this, but it didn’t; it would have if he had gone out and bought clothes for this deal, but this was his stuff. He knew how to walk this line. His mother had instilled southern mannerisms in all her kids, at the same time she taught them not to fear dirt.
Easton and Memphis never bothered to get out of the truck. Wyatt opened the back door and threw his bag in.
“Both of you are missing work to keep me out of jail?”
The both laughed aloud.
“Not holding your hand, brother. Just support. You’re the man with the words,” Memphis said.
No, I’m not, Wyatt thought to himself. He wasn’t afraid of much, but oddly the idea of talking to Garrison Tatum, telling him that he loved Harley, was causing adrenaline to course through his veins.
Wyatt waited until they arrived in New York, reached the hotel that was not far from Harley’s family home before he called Garrison, all the while wondering if she should at least wait until after this party to say anything, if that would appease everyone.
Harley could play her role, Wyatt could clear his conscience and honor both sets of parents, but nagging thoughts told him his mother would never exaggerate how sick Garrison was. For all he knew, the man would either live minutes, days or years. It would never set right with Wyatt if he lost his chance to tell him how he felt about Harley, lost the chance to promise the man that he’d always keep her safe, that Harley would have the life she always wanted at the Dorans’.
When whoever answered the number his mother had given him and asked for Wyatt to leave his name, his glance met Easton’s, then Memphis’, thinking if he gave them their names, there was no chance for Claire Tatum to recognize it, but the second thought told him that would make him a liar, something he had basically preached to Harley was the worst infraction within a family. He gave his name and hung up the phone and leaned forward.
“You got this,” Easton said.
Wyatt shook his head. “You don’t get it. Harley thinks things through, sometimes too much. She has done whatever this is for a reason. I have no problem telling Garrison I love her, but at the same time I think I should tell her I’m here, what I want to do. Let her play this part first.”
Memphis met Easton’s gaze, then Wyatt’s. “Look,” Memphis said in the calm, level voice he was known to have. “I was eighteen when I lost my dad. It killed me. I really don’t think it would matter how old he or I was when it
happened; it would have hurt the same. Harley is grieving early, preparing early. She wants him to die thinking she’s safe, or will be. All your mother was saying to you is that if you love her, then tell the man. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“He could tell me that I’m not good enough for her.”
“Would that stop you from loving her? Being with her?” Memphis asked.
Wyatt shook his head.
“Then it doesn’t matter. You’re saying your piece to a dying man.”
“By all accounts, he’s a stubborn son of a bitch, stubborn enough to tell his doctors to go to hell and live another ten, fifteen years.”
“Maybe so, but there is no promise in that—” Easton started to say but was cut off.
Wyatt’s phone was ringing. It was the same man that had answered the phone before, asking Wyatt to come to dinner that evening, telling him a car would be there to pick him up within the hour.
All at once, the gravity of this situation seemed to feel all too real to Wyatt.
By the end of the next hour, Wyatt was dressed in one of his nicest suits and was in the back of a Lincoln Town Car that was pulling into a massive driveway that was hidden by a wrought iron gate.
Wyatt had always tried to imagine the wealth that Harley came from, the idea of it. He was sure he had a handle on the magnitude of it - but pulling up to that house, he knew he wasn’t even close. The house reminded him of a palace.
He didn’t feel like a man; he felt like a boy as he was led inside. He wasn’t sure what he would do if he passed Claire Tatum, if she was at this dinner. Memphis and Easton had coached him over and over on how to keep his cool, how to count to three in his mind before he answered any harsh words she said.
“Mr. Doran, it is a pleasure to finally meet you,” the man that greeted him said. “Donald Matthew.”
Wyatt told himself not to smirk, not to ask the man if he meant to make him half-mad every time he called this house; the words stayed in, but the smirk didn’t.
“This way.”
Donald led him through a vast entryway where people were rushing from one side to another, clearly getting ready for whatever party this was. He guided Wyatt down long, wide hallways with elegant paintings and works of art that made this place look more like a museum than a home.