“Sixteen. Six months after I moved in with the Kingstons.”
“What did your father do about it?”
“Nothing.”
I blanch. I couldn’t have heard him right. “What?”
“He was out of the country and it didn’t matter. He wanted me to goad Isaac. He wanted me to push his buttons.”
“How did you push his buttons that day?”
“A girl and a test that went my way, not his. Basically, by breathing in his space.”
“What did you do about the attack?”
“Nothing. I did nothing.”
“Why?”
“Because my mother told me that control meant never letting anyone else force me to do anything. And so I never have.” He sets his bowl down. “And I’m not going to start now. Why am I telling you all of this? I don’t just want you to know me, Harper. I want you to understand me.”
“You didn’t call your father after the attack in the alleyway because you won’t let him control what comes next.”
“Exactly—like father, like son, referring to Isaac and my father. When you don’t let them goad you, they become driven to get to you, and usually in a careless way.”
“So the plan to come here and give them space still might work?”
“I doubt that,” he says, “but that’s why I need you to understand that I choose my actions based on who I’m dealing with.”
His anger when I asked about his father earlier, comes back to me. “I didn’t mean to question your character.”
“I didn’t think you did, but I need you to know that I don’t choose my actions rashly or emotionally, or I’d have already done so a long time ago. That’s what I’m telling you. Whatever I do next is necessary. It’s about you and me surviving. Not them. They don’t get to survive. Not this time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Eric
Harper and I sit there on the oversized chair in my bedroom, bowls of mac n cheese in our hands, with my declaration about doing whatever it takes to ensure we survive what has become a Kingston war, in the air. I wait, expecting her to push back. She sets her bowl down and I do the same and then she grabs my arm and stares at the scar on my arm.
Her gaze lifts to mine. “Anyone who can do this to another human being can kill.”
“Yes. They can.”
She runs her thumb over a portion of the scar. “They want to end us. You’re right. We have to end them.”
I arch a brow. “We?”
“Yes. We. I don’t want you to kill your father, but I meant what I said when we were with Blake. I’m ready to fight.”
But she won’t have to fight. I’m going to do it for her. I motion to her food. “Eat, princess. Because this tough talk you’re doing tonight is making me want you naked and in my bed.” I lift my fork. “I like this side of you.”
She gives me a small smile and we both take a bite, both turning to the window again to eat in silence. A comfortable silence that I don’t remember sharing with anyone but Grayson and my mother. There are no numbers in my head. Right now, there isn’t a Kingston in my head. There’s just this moment. This woman.
“I was never against fighting back,” she says as we both set our bowls aside. “I came to you,” she adds, “because I wanted to fight back. I just—I didn’t realize how bad things were or how bad they were going to get. I should have gotten my mother out of there a long time ago.”
Which brings us to a topic I’d planned to talk to her about. “You can’t make your mother’s decisions for her. You have to get to a place where you know that no matter what you do, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. We can give her an exit strategy, Harper, but she’s a grown woman. If she ignores us—”
“I know,” she says. “I know. I could tell her they tried to kill me, but I don’t think she’ll believe me.”
“Based on what I saw when she came to your house, no. I don’t believe she will.”
“She’ll think you planted ideas in my head.”
That she sees this, despite how much she loves her mother, says a lot of about her and us. “We’ll come up with a way to get through to her.”
“I hope we can. We’re not close anymore. I told myself we were, but the truth is, the longer she’s been with your father, the more superficial our relationship has become. Honestly, I resent her and how she’s forgotten my father’s legacy. Maybe she resents me for pointing that out and I do. Often.”
“Did she know about the miscarriage?”
“I didn’t tell her, but I regretted that. I feel like maybe Isaac told her. Maybe she knows, and feels hurt that I didn’t tell her. Maybe that’s why she’s so damn angry all the time.”
“Who does Isaac think the father was?”
“Isaac doesn’t have any idea. I don’t tell Isaac anything. I damn sure didn’t tell him that.”
“Were you seeing anyone at the time?”
Her eyes glint hard. “I can’t believe you just asked me that.” She stands up and I’m right there with her. She tries to walk away. I grab her arm and pull her around to face me but she’s already attacking. “I told you I hadn’t slept with anyone but you. It was your baby. And for your information, my love life and sex life, have been nothing to brag about which I blame you for. You ruined everyone for me and now you’re being a bastard.”
“Easy, sweetheart. I wasn’t suggesting you were sleeping with anyone but me when you got pregnant. A date is not a fuck. I was suggesting that Isaac might have made an assumption.”
“And this has what to do with my mother?”
“I’m just trying to figure out if anyone could have put two and two together. To link us. If anyone could, it would be her. She’s the one close to you. Obviously, decisions were made to use me to get to you and you to get to me.”
Her voices lifts. “You think my mother was involved? I thought you said—”
“I’m not suggesting she knows what she’s involved with, but people use people as sources of information every single day without them knowing it.”
“I didn’t tell anyone about us—not even Gigi when she asked me to visit you, so it would have had to be someone who saw us together.”
“And they could have. Hell, the cottage could have had cameras. We now know that family loves to film everyone and everything.”
“I can’t believe my mother would know about us that night and not talk to me about it. Honestly, now that I think about it again, I really don’t think she’d know about the miscarriage and not talk to me. And I’d like to say that’s because she would be worried about me, but the truth is that she’s worried about protecting her life with your father.”
I see where she’s going. She’s worried about that ultimate betrayal with her mother. Worried that her mother is one of them, not just blindly in love with my father, and I get that. This family has done nothing but beat me alive. My hands come down on her shoulders. “I know where your head is. Blake and I both told you, she’s not involved. Don’t go there.”
“She’s not involved,” Harper repeats and breathes out. “God. For a moment there I started convincing myself that she was.”
“She’s not.”
“Do the numbers in your head tell you that?”
“Yes, sweetheart. They do. She’s not involved.” I stroke her hair. “Let’s go to bed and get some rest.” I take her hand and lead her toward the bed, and once we’re there, I pull the blanket back.
“Shouldn’t we be planning what comes next? We’re not doing anything else tonight?”
“Just this,” I say, untying her robe, caressing it from her shoulders before I peel away my pants and pull her into the bed with me.
She’s on her elbow in a heartbeat, facing me, nowhere near winding down. “You’re not going to do anything about your father tonight?” she presses.
“No. I’m not.”
“Should we use the call he made to me in some wa
y? Maybe I should pretend you’re asleep and call him?”
“I told you. We’re letting him simmer. And that means we let him wonder if you’ll betray me.”
She rolls into me, pushing me to my back, her hands on my chest as her stare meets mine. “I will never betray you,” she says, suddenly intense. “I need you to know that. Never.”
There’s a jolt of numbers in my head, emotions pounding at me. “I know that.” And I mean it. I just pray like hell when this is over, she doesn’t feel that I’ve betrayed her, and I know, I know, that I’m going to have to make some confessions of my own.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Eric
Harper in my bed.
I focus on just that for the moment. I pull her to me and turn her, her back to my front and wrap myself around her. “I don’t know how this ends well,” she whispers.
“It already did,” I assure her, holding her tighter. “You’re here.”
Her hand comes down on mine. “I just want to make sure—”
“Don’t say anything else,” I warn. “For right now, just be here. Don’t let that family in right now. Sleep like they don’t exist.”
She snuggles in closer to me and whispers, “I wish they didn’t exist.”
I used to, I think, fighting a fade into the past that I know leads to the day my mother killed herself to make me a part of that family. That family is why I met Harper, and I, of all people, know that there is an equation to life and how we all come together and break apart. My mother was dying. That wasn’t going to be stopped. I know this now. I’ve read her records. I’ve read her words to me over and over, ten million fucking times, and I don’t believe the path I took after she left would have changed. She’d set that in motion. She simply sped it up when she killed herself.
The Kingston family was my destiny.
But the problem for them right now is that I’m theirs, too, and the minute they tried to kill Harper, they woke a sleeping beast who will sleep no more. I shut my eyes, but I don’t sleep. I think about Harper’s assumption that I can’t see what my father is planning because I don’t want to see it.
When I finally fall asleep, I haven’t proven her hypothesis wrong. When I wake up, nothing has changed, but the dim light of a new day has now become bright sunshine that I hope translates to just that: hope. I slip out of bed and shower, dress in jeans and a Kingston Motors T-shirt I kept just to piss myself off here and there when I need motivation to make more money for Bennett Enterprises. I put it on now to think like my father, to sink back into that life. Now it’s time for coffee and an empty space that I fill with equations that equal solutions, but I can’t leave the bedroom without staring down at Harper, who’s snuggling under the blankets.
My woman.
She’s mine now, and that means she’s mine to protect. That means I’m going downstairs, and I’m thinking us the hell out of this.
Ten minutes later, I have my MacBook open on the island, three Rubik’s cubes, and a package of peanut M & M’s on the counter while coffee brews. It might not be the breakfast of champions, but it’s my thinking process. What I eat. What I drink. What I use to focus.
My lips curve with the understanding I’d come to yesterday.
Focus. That’s what my father was trying to do.
Break my focus.
I pick up a cube and start replaying every deal I’ve ever watched him manipulate. That leads me to analyze all the ways he manipulated me when no else in my life had been able to. And he did. Somehow, at some point, I went from the boy who hated his father to the boy who wanted to live up to his expectations and even please him. It’s the one thing Isaac and I had in common. We both wanted to please our father. We competed for his approval. I always saw that need as something that defined Isaac, but objectively it defined me as well. If I hypothesize that it still does, where does that leave me? No. Wrong question. If I hypothesize that it still does, and my father knows this, how would that knowledge create each action he’s taken thus far?
***
Harper
I wake to the warm wicked wonderful scent of Eric and roll over to discover he’s gone. I sit up and look around the room to find I’m right. He’s gone. I twist around to find the time on the clock on the nightstand and find that it’s only ten in the morning. Worried about where Eric is, and what he’s doing—about what the Kingston family might push him to do, I throw away the blankets and remind myself that they deserve what they get. And Eric isn’t thinking emotionally. He’s a man of logic and planning, even with his father.
I pull on my robe and hurry out of the bedroom and to the railing overlooking the lower level of the apartment. I find Eric sitting at the island with a Rubik’s cube in his hand and a coffee cup by his side. He’s thinking and for a long time, I’m not even sure how long, I just stand there and watch him turn that cube, pop M & M’s, and drink coffee. Over and over he turns the cube. Solves the puzzle. Stops. Eats. Drinks. Repeats. It’s an incredible sight that entrances me, not because of how gorgeously male he is while doing it, but because this is a genius at work, and his mind is a gift I don’t think he sees as a gift at all.
Eager to join him, but not to disturb his thinking, I return to the bedroom and my God, I stood there an hour and he didn’t even know I was there. I grab my bags, head to the shower, and it’s not long before I’m dressed in black pants and a black sweater, with my hair flat ironed, and my make-up lightly done. I spray on a jasmine perfume from FRESH I find in one of the bags Mia brought and grab my phone to find a message from my mother. I punch the message and listen: Your stepfather needs to speak to you. Please call him. I don’t understand this new you, but it seems to be the you that stepbrother of yours has created. Please call Jeff and let me know you did.
My jaw tenses. My stepfather is an asshole, using my mother to get to me. He knows how badly she wants to please him. He knows how badly I want to protect her. It even feels like a threat. Like he’ll pull her into this, like she’ll no longer be protected. I don’t like it. I have to talk to him. It buys us time to figure out what’s going on. It buys Eric time to make a move. It buys my mother time to live in the safe oblivion I know will end soon.
I grab my purse, and a black Chanel trench coat, and head down stairs. Eric is now sitting on the couch and he doesn’t even seem to know when I enter the room. I set my coat and purse on a chair and stand in front of him. “I wondered when you were going to stop watching me and actually join me.”
“You knew I was watching you?”
“Of course, I knew.”
“But you let me?”
“You want to know who I am, and me and my Rubik’s cubes are one and the same, princess.”
He no longer says princess like it’s an insult. He says it like he’s savoring it and me, that and the warmth in his eyes pretty much melt me and my plans, at least momentarily. He holds out his arm and runs a finger down the only vertical line of numbers on his forearm. “What is this?” he challenges.
I don’t know why I think I know the answer, but I do. “How you solve the cubes.”
Approval lights his eyes. “Yes. How I solve the cubes, only I no longer see those numbers when I solve it anymore. It’s natural, like how trying to please my father became.”
“About that. About him. He called my mother. She demanded that I call him. I’m going to see him. I’m going to just talk to him and find out what he wants. Buy some time. And I know you’ll say no, but I’m going.” I start to walk away.
He catches my arm and stands up, towering over me. “You aren’t going to see my father.”
“I am. You can’t stop me and—”
“I can stop you,” he says softly, but his voice is firm. Absolute. “You will not go see my father. End of discussion.”
“And if I push back?”
He sits down and takes me with him, handing me a cup of coffee. “I’ll fight you and win.”
“Calling my moth
er’s a threat. I have to push back. I have to win.”
“You win with me.”
“I have to go see him.”
“No. You will not. I will win this battle with you,” he repeats.
I look into his eyes, and I know he means his words. He means to win, but I’m not my mother and he’s not his father. “You win only if you give me a reason and a plan that works better than mine, and quickly. The clock is ticking. Threats are in the air.”
“All right,” he says simply.
“All right? Then what are we going to do?”
He motions to the chess board in front of him. “Play chess.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’d rather show you than tell you.”
“Eric—”
He leans in and kisses me. “Am I going to have to fuck you into submission?”
“I’m not my mother. I don’t submit.” It’s out before I can stop it and he pulls back, and what I find in his eyes is not what I expect.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Harper
What I see in Eric’s face in response to my declaration that I’m not like my mother, that I don’t submit, isn’t dominance, isn’t demand, it’s satisfaction. It’s tenderness. “Good,” he says. “I don’t want you to be your mother. And I’m damn sure not my father.” He strokes my hair. “But submission is pleasure, sweetheart. The kind of game we play with no clothes on and I promise you, I’ll play for pleasure.”
“Eric,” I whisper at the rawness of this promise, the realness of his man. The rightness of this man.
“I wish I could show you, but right now,” he winks, “we’re going to play chess.”
I laugh. “Naked chess?”
“I like that idea, but no. If we do that, I’ll forget why we’re playing.”
“Why are we playing?”
“I’ll show you.” He kisses me and then releases me.
My gaze lands on his shirt. “Why are you wearing a Kingston shirt?”
“You told me I didn’t want to see my father with open eyes. Paraphrasing, of course, but that’s the gist of what you said. This morning, I took your words to heart and forced myself to climb out of my head where he loves to play, and get into his head.”
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