by Chloe Cox
So, no worse than things were when I got up this morning.
I’m expecting the clouds to part and the sun to shine, but obviously it’s still raining. That’s ok, too. I let it wash over me, imagining the relief I’ve convinced myself I’m supposed to feel, trying to let it flow through me all over again before I walk home in the rain, umbrella-less.
I close my eyes, turn my face up to the sky.
When I open them again, I see Marcus.
Standing tall, breathing hard, his black hair wet with rain. Hat gone. Coat open, white dress shirt soaked through, his pecs and abs contracting with every strained breath. Pale gray green eyes on fire.
“Harlow,” he chokes out.
He’s still holding my umbrella.
He ran. He chased me across the bridge. He beat a bus, across the bridge.
To catch me.
He’s panting still, out of breath, and now it’s like he’s stolen mine, too. He takes another step toward me and this time I can’t look away. His eyes have me. It’s the same, the same as it always was, only different, now, too: more. There’s all those years, all those shared memories flying between us, swirling around in an invisible field that I know we both feel, all those things that we know about each other that no one else will ever really, truly know, no matter how much we might want to tell them, because they weren’t there. It was just us. Just Marcus and me.
And those eyes, seeing through me.
And now there’s what’s different about it, too. What’s changed. How I can’t ignore the man he’s become. Jesus God, no one could ignore that. Can he see through that, too? Can he see me watch his body move, watch how he brushes that black hair out of his eyes, how the rain is caught on those long eyelashes? How when he licks his lips, moving toward me, I’m transfixed?
The thing between us is alive, I swear to God. All that history, all those memories, and now this, this unique awareness of the physical man in front of me, and the way my traitorous body responds: it’s a living thing, whipping between us, drawing us closer, something blind and stupid, fierce and feral. It’s choking me, making it hard to see straight, to remember all the reasons I have to be afraid for my heart. All I can see is that strong jaw, those huge shoulders, that tie dancing in the wind, water dripping down his face while he looks at me with those beautiful, sad eyes…
No single human being has ever hurt me the way Marcus Roma has, and now he’s back. And I don’t want him to leave. And that will be my downfall.
If I let it.
“What are you doing?” I whisper. It’s all I can think to say. I don’t understand any of this. Why is here? What does he want from me?
“You ran,” he says. Like that’s an explanation.
“I can’t,” I say. I don’t know what to call what’s happening, or what might happen, but with every step he takes toward me, I know.
“I can’t,” I say again.
Marcus’s face screws up like he’s in actual pain. “Please, Harlow,” he says. “Just talk to me.”
He puts his hand out. Such a simple thing, and yet it means everything. I stare at it for I don’t know how long, not trusting myself to look him in the eyes again. The worst part of this is that I want to take it so badly. I want…whatever I can get.
And that is pathetic.
If it weren’t for Dill, I’d throw myself at his mercy all over again. My heart is pounding, my blood rushing in my ears, my body and soul screaming for some kind of release from the last five years of torture. From five years of not knowing why. From five years of thinking he just didn’t care enough, of thinking that I was just that easy to throw away. Five years of suffering.
And I’d do it all over again, if it weren’t for my responsibilities.
“I don’t talk to ghosts,” I say, and walk away.
I walk away, but I don’t escape. Not even a little bit. I feel his eyes on me the whole time. I feel him, with me. And all the way home, the only thing I can think is: What does Marcus Roma want from me?
After all this time, what does he want?
chapter 2
MARCUS
The first time I ever saw Harlow Chase, she got me with those eyes. Not even the eyes, but the way she was looking at me with them. Like she saw right through my bullshit.
Harlow was different. I was hooked from the moment I saw her. And I was done for the moment she saw me.
Both times.
Let me back up. Now, today, it’s about seven years, give or take, from that first time that I saw Harlow Chase. I feel old, even though I’m only twenty-four. I’ve seen a lot in the five years since I left Brooklyn to go work for Alex.
I don’t call him Mr. Wolfe anymore. I don’t call him Godfather.
I don’t call him anything unless I have to.
But he still calls me. And it was one of those phone calls that put me here, on the Lower East Side, watching Harlow Chase in the rain. I’ve been following her all day. She has no idea. I picked her up back in the old neighborhood, seeing she still lives in her parents’ old house, finally getting that inheritance she had coming. That was how it was supposed to happen and I made damn sure that it did, because there was no way in hell I was going to let her go it entirely alone, even if I couldn’t be there. But I wasn’t there when she got the keys. Or when she moved in.
There were a lot of things I wasn’t there for. I’m not there now, as far as Harlow’s concerned. And I know I don’t deserve to be.
Some decisions haunt you, even if it was the only decision you could make at the time.
I followed her all the way to Manhattan, crisscrossing all over the island below Fourteenth Street, hitting up every damn bar, even the sketchy ones I hated to watch her walk into. She was putting resumes out, or whatever it is bartenders do. Worried her place back in Brooklyn will close.
She’s right to be worried.
Because I’m supposed to be here as Alex’s fixer.That’s what I do, I fix problems. Find a solution, even if it’s not always pretty, or legal.
Only this time the problem is Harlow Chase and her refusal to sell that house she inherited so that Alex and his partners can move ahead with another development of luxury condos. Alex knows all about my history with Harlow. Hell, Alex Wolfe is part of that history. So I know he thinks that this is a test, in more ways than one. Alex has been grooming me as an heir to his business, right up there with his proper kids, and now he thinks he’s testing my loyalty.
Alex Wolfe, or Harlow Chase. My future, or my past.
Alex thinks he know which one is which. He has no idea. And I have to keep it that way if I’m going to protect Harlow from Alex Wolfe.
All of that’s in the background the whole time I’m watching her, the tension ratcheting up with every passing second. But the longer I stay on her tail, the more single-minded I become. She’s always had that effect on me, she’s always made the world simple. I see her and nothing else.
Five years without her made me dead inside, and now it’s like feeling is slowly coming back. Every second I watch her, it hurts more.
I wonder how she spends her time now when she’s not working. If she still trains at the gym. What she does for fun.
Who she does for fun.
That thought makes me growl, balls my fists up good, like some dipshit just threatened me. It’s stupid and I know it. And I have no right to it. Of course she’s been with other men. She’s a grown woman living her life, and I’m not in it.
And I can tell myself that all damn day, and it doesn’t do jack shit to change the way it makes me crazy.
I have checked up on her over the years—I’m not a complete asshole. Used to pay a guy, a private investigator, to check in every now and again, make sure she was doing ok. She always was. Creepy? Maybe. But I don’t apologize for what I am anymore.
What I did do, though, was make sure those reports didn’t tell me about any other guys, because of what I know I would do. I’m a man, after all. If she was dating, engaged, married
, could I stay away like I had to, for Harlow’s sake?
Hell no.
So I tried to be good. But a report on a desk from some jerk in a bad suit who watches people all day long isn’t the same thing as seeing it for yourself. It isn’t the details. It isn’t watching her face as she walks from bar to bar in this weather, seeing faint circles under her eyes from lack of sleep, her lips almost starting to turn blue the way they always did when she got cold. It isn’t seeing the way she still hunts for happy moments in the middle of a shitty day like this, dancing with a little girl in a rain puddle, trying to cheer herself up, and in the process cheering up everyone around her.
I see that, and it all starts to come back. She’s never really been out of my mind, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t spend most of it thinking about her, but nothing compares to seeing her in real life. I see the way Harlow laughs, sticking her tongue out, catching raindrops, and there’s a twinge in my gut, like my body remembers already, screaming at my mind to let it go, let it all come rushing back. But I can’t. I fucking can’t. Harlow was always the strong one. I’m the guy who’d cave under the weight of remembering all that happiness that I used to have and do something stupid, something that would screw everything up, just because I can’t stand being without her one more minute.
And I’m the guy who’s still dumb enough to get closer, because I can’t fucking help it.
I’m not thinking about my job as I walk towards her. I’m not thinking about my plan. I’m not thinking about anything but Harlow as I stoop to get her umbrella.
And then she meets my eyes, and I’m done.
Here’s what I see, all at once: I see her pain, I see her anger, and I meet it with my own. I know there’s no way she can hate me as much as I hate myself. I see the nakedness of it, the fearlessness of it, the way she was always unafraid to feel the worst things life had to offer.
And for one split second, I see that she misses me. And that’s it. That’s what undoes everything. That one sliver of a second chance, shining softly in front of me, and everything inside me reaches for it.
And then she runs.
Harlow Chase runs.
I’m so surprised by it that I don’t even move immediately; I just stand there, stupid. And by the time it clicks, she’s jumping on that bus and the doors are closing, and I’m just thinking: No. This is Harlow. And Harlow doesn’t run away from anything.
I don’t even chase after her because I want something from her. I chase after her because I want to give her the chance to do it differently. Slap me in the face, kick me in the balls, tell me the hard truth—any of that would be better than this, this thing that scares me more than anything, this thing that makes me think she has no more fight in her.
It’s all wrong.
I’ve done more bad things than I like to think about, working for Alex, and the very worst thing I ever did was leave Harlow the way I did. But for some reason none of it clicks fully into place until I see the consequences of all those things right in front of me. Until I see Harlow running away, as if she weren’t the strongest woman in the world, as if she had anything to fear. And right then it sets a fire inside me: I have to make it right. I have to do it now. No more fucking waiting, no more planning. I have to make her whole.
I have to make us both whole.
And now I’m running. I’m pounding on the door of that goddamn bus, thinking about that look, that moment where she forgot to hate me the way I deserve to be hated and was just happy to see me. Thinking about what she used to look like when I made her happy. When I made her come.
Five years away from Harlow and working for Alex Wolfe has turned me into a ruthless son of a bitch. I will do anything to get what I want. And this ruthless son of a bitch wants Harlow Chase.
Fuck this bus. Fuck this bridge. Fuck me, too, because I’m still running, sprinting past the joggers in their reflective jerseys plodding through the rain, dodging a dude on a bike, and now it’s just me and the open walkway on the bridge, no other people. Just me and the bus I’m going to catch.
Legs pumping. Lungs burning. Hands shaking, I’m working so hard, pushing through, further into the pain, as far as I can go, because as that bus gets farther and farther away I know: this is how I should feel. The pain feels good, it feels right, like I should feel this every goddamn moment of every goddamn day, a reminder of the pain I’ve caused her.
I run harder.
I think about the first time that I saw Harlow, and I run harder.
***
All the other days that I spent at Pop’s Gym, they blur together, the way that kind of thing does. One workout isn’t so different from another; one day of training ’til you throw up is basically the same as any other.
Except for the day she showed up.
All the girls in my high school, the pretty ones, the ones who looked old enough to do the things the fighters at my gym wanted to do with them, they’d all show up after school and hang out right outside with those jeans on while we sweated in the sun. You’d get heat stroke and a boner.
I was used to it. Kind of a perk of the boxing thing. I’d had most of those girls already, would have them again when I wanted, wasn’t interested in much more. I was always honest about it. But the older guys at Pop’s Gym? They’d been around. And I’d see those girls trying to look older than they were, but still thinking about writing a dude’s name on their school notebook with hearts around it and shit, and it was just like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Like throwing Bambi in with some wolves.
So I’d warn ‘em once, then stay the hell away. Not my business. Generally I just put my head down and hit the bag harder, knowing I had to push myself, had to get great. I had an exhibition match coming up against Manny Dolan, this guy who was about to go pro. And I wanted it. I wanted it so bad, I’d bite my cheek while I worked until I tasted blood. I was sure my dad would have to come to this one; the whole damn gym was talking about it. And I wasn’t going to lose.
So the fact that I looked up and paid attention to anybody else at all was practically a miracle. I was training day and night, sweat stinging my eyes, gut churning, thinking about nothing else but winning that fight in front of my father, not giving a crap about all the flirtatious bullshit going on around me, all that jailbait trouble. And then the bell went off, I looked up, and there she was.
Blonde girl, skinny, kinda young. Like an awkward colt, not fully grown, but not a girl, either. Definitely not a girl. Grown enough to get the attention of the fighters, young enough for it to piss me off. She didn’t stand like a girl, though, unsure of herself or how to hold her body. She stood like she owned the ground she was standing on. Sun glaring off that pale skin, eyes narrowed, hair shining. And she wasn’t there looking for a man’s attention, either. She was watching us work like she was trying to figure out how it was done.
I don’t know. I’ve thought about it many times since then. Why I went over there on that day. What it was about her. I think I just had to know more.
And then I got up close, and she hit me with those eyes.
I don’t know how to describe it. It wasn’t all sexual, even then. I’ll admit that was part of it. But there was something so nakedly unashamed about how she looked at me, those baby blues taking everything in, and not reacting like anyone else did. Not reacting to who she thought I was, like those other girls at school, talking to me like they were desperate to get with me, or the guys in the gym, giving me shit until I proved myself. Or my father, pretending not to see me at all.
It made me want to know her. And it made me want to protect her.
Then I got an even better look at how beautiful she was, and how young, and I thought about all the other fighters in the gym looking at her, making cracks, and I got mad.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her. I didn’t even introduce myself, just got right into it. She looked up at me like I was nuts.
The bell rang. I was missing a round on the bag. I never
missed rounds.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” she said.
“These aren’t nice guys,” I said to her.
“So? I’m not here for them.”
She was tough. I liked it.
“You sure?” I asked. “Your friends are.”
She kind of screwed up her lip, looked over at Rosa and a girl called Katya, the girls who ran their crew over at Lafayette High. Now that I was looking a little bit closer I could see she was with them, but maybe not one of them. I don’t know—female drama was always complicated.
“Well, I was curious,” the girl said. “I think boxing’s cool. I’m not looking for a date or anything.”
“They don’t know that,” I told her, looking back at the guys working the bags.
She bristled, maybe because she knew I was right.
“I’ve got a swift kick to the ‘nads for them if they need convincing,” she said.
I laughed. “I’m Marcus.”
“Harlow,” she said, and she smiled at me for the first time, and I swear to God the whole world got brighter. My lips smiled back all on their own, creaking on the way, because I didn’t do a whole lot of that back then.
“Why are you really here?” I asked her. “You want to fight?”
She was quiet a moment. Then she shrugged and said, “Yes.”
Man, I was almost kidding. I don’t even know why I said it. Pops was old school, not the kind of guy to let a female fighter in his gym. I’d never thought about it much before, but thinking about it now, I didn’t like it. I wanted this girl at the gym.
She was looking at me, too, like she didn’t know if she could ask.
“You want me to talk to Pops for you?” I said.
“You would do that?”
She smiled shyly at me, and I tried to ignore how it made me feel—good, like I had done something worthwhile. Man, all I’d done was ask a question. I shook my head, tore off the velcro strap of my gloves with my teeth, let my hands air out.