Chapter 8 - Harry #2
Sometimes, usually when I was on edge, I’d keep one hand by my hip and tap my index finger against my thumb. Most people didn’t pick up on it, but no one watched me the way Dom did.
Even though I’d spent days preparing myself for this conversation with him, I still didn’t feel like I was ready.
Four hours of speeches, presentations, and making small talk with the same two hundred people who attended every one of The Foundation events, all of that was easy.
I’d been handling situations like that since I was a child.
But Dom wasn’t a situation. And he broke my expectations all the time, so he couldn't be ‘handled’.
We'd had a rocky start during our first year of uni, but we started spending more time together and slowly formed a close friendship. To the point that I was grateful he decided to move to London after his masters so that we stayed in each other's lives.
I straightened my back, making sure I met him head-on. I might as well get it over with.
“I proposed to Molly,” I said, hiding the tapping of my fingers behind my thigh.
He stilled, his smile slipping, his body instantly tense as his gaze sharpened. The air around us sped from lightness to heavy silence.
Dom drew in a steady breath, like he did every time I brought up something he didn’t like.
He watched me carefully, slowly bringing the bottle back up to his lips. He took a long drink, assessing me, and I gathered myself for what was coming next.
“She said yes,” I continued. “We haven't set a date yet, though we’re going to have an engagement party when Molly gets back from Norway. But we’ll probably aim for something next year in spring, so Mum will have a good nine months to plan.
” I battled the jump of my heart in my throat.
I was past the negative, now to give him the positive.
“And I’d really like you to be there. Beside me.
As my best man.” I met his weighted gaze.
“We’re going slow, like I said, nine months, so you’ll have a while to prepare a speech.
” I laughed to myself, knowing that Mum was going to take control of the whole thing, and it definitely wasn’t enough time for her. “You know what it was like with Cat.”
My sister fought with our mum for half a year after her husband, Max, proposed. Cat eventually gave in and ended up marrying him a year later at St. Paul’s Cathedral with five hundred of their closest friends.
Dom’s eyebrows hitched, licking his lips as he replied before his chest languidly rose and fell. “Really?” he asked, enunciating the word. “Married?”
A brief flash of irritation struck me at his tone of disbelief. I knew it was coming, but I couldn’t stop my reaction.
I stared him down. “Yes, Dom. Really. We’ve been together for three years. It’s a natural step.” Even though Molly and I couldn’t go for a week without arguing.
“A natural… step?” He echoed, tilting his head, his voice leaden. He hit me with his lawyer tone, the one he used when he was annoyed at his clients. Dom only ever spoke to me like this when I was doing something he completely disagreed with.
Such as getting married.
When I said a ‘natural step’, what I really meant was that Dad had been pushing me to propose after the year mark.
He and Mum married in their early twenties, and I was ‘already’ thirty-one.
They had this insane idea that if I didn’t marry soon, I was somehow doomed to a life of loneliness.
As if their poisonous relationship was the standard.
“Well, we want to build a life together, and it feels right to make it more permanent.” I kept my posture firm, even though I wanted to shy away from the darkness creeping into his stare.
Dom blinked slowly before his brow furrowed again. “But you already live together,” he said, as if pointing out the obvious was meant to make a difference.
“And we live together and love each other.” I pressed. “So, why not get married?”
There was another pause as he shifted in his seat, his knee pressing into mine as he leaned closer. Tension rose within me as he watched me.
“Nine months is an interesting amount of time. Are you waiting for something else first?” he asked, his voice so hard that I nearly jumped as I realised what he meant.
“No! Gosh, no, it's not that. We've been so busy that we haven't had sex for months, anyway,” I said with an awkward laugh, trying to brush it off. Even though he already knew that, it still felt embarrassing to say it out loud.
I was making my future sound so simple. But it was much more than that.
He didn’t know what Molly and I had been through together, the things we had seen when we worked at the hospital.
We trained together and were friends for years before we started dating.
We bonded through our shared experience and fell in love with each other’s company.
“You're actually serious?” Dom asked dryly.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I replied, letting my weight sink into my body, keeping calm by grounding myself. When you grew up in a family like mine, you didn’t come away without coping mechanisms.
Dom knew about all our arguments. Each time Molly threatened to leave, where she said she couldn’t be in a relationship where I loved The Foundation more than her, or my family, or whatever other issue was bothering her that week.
He knew about my struggles and how difficult it had grown between Molly and me.
But he also knew how good it was, and what an amazing person she could be.
Dom pursed his lips, adjusting to bring himself closer.
“Harry…” he sighed, running his hand through his hair again, “I’m not in charge of your life. You’re free to make any choice you want, but…” He lifted his head, his gaze crashing into mine.
This was the part I was dreading. There was a reason he was a successful lawyer, and it wasn’t just because of what his mum put him through.
“Do you really want to do this?” he asked, his voice strained.
My hand twitched around my bottle. “I’m the one who asked her to marry me, Dom. I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t sure.”
And I was sure at the time. Even though I had been sure with my last girlfriend, and that had ended spectacularly.
But, when Molly and I lay together on London’s Primrose Hill in the bright summer sun, surrounded by happy couples and smiling families, I thought about all the things we could have if we tried.
Or if I tried. And so, on a whim, I asked her.
“And that’s it?” Dom asked, eyebrows raised. “You don’t have any other aspirations?”
A piece of blue sea glass that hung from a leather cord slipped through the gap in his shirt.
It was a cheap trinket I’d bought him on our first holiday together.
Even if he was wearing expensive designer suits, he always had it on.
Like my grandfather’s cufflinks, it was something he was never without.
It usually filled me with a certain warmth seeing it, but, with him drawing closer, it only made me more tense.
“What do you mean?” I held back my sigh.
“Well,” Dom hummed as he leaned further forwards, dropping his bottle onto the coffee table with a hollow clink as he stretched his other arm along the back of the sofa, widening his chest. “Harry, what do you love about her?”
I shrugged him off, turning my head away from him, realising my mistake instantly.
His hand crept up my shoulder, a finger finding the birthmark just under my collar line that he loved to stroke. Some days I let him play, but it wasn’t the time for it.
I lifted my hand to brush him away, ignoring the way my heart picked up at his touch. It had been fickle since I first met him. Just because his touch brought me a special kind of peace didn’t mean I would let him lavish me, especially now.
Moving away from him, I made sure he didn’t catch me with that serious look in his eye. I hated that more than his cunning smile.
“I can be myself with her,” I replied. “I don’t have to worry about gossip or saying the right thing or any other social etiquette. I don’t have to explain myself. Because she knows me.”
I glared at him pointedly as he let his head fall, briefly dipping his gaze to his knees to blow a strong breath before resting his ear on his shoulder.
He was always more flexible when he’d been drinking.
Or rather, he was much freer with his body, flopping around, and flirting harder.
And not once had I ever thought it was adorable for him to act like that, especially when I knew how ruthless he could be if the situation called for it.
“Okay, fine.” He shrugged as he pitched forwards. “If this is what you really want, I’ll drop it. I promise I won’t mention it again,” he said as he moved closer, his hand finding my shoulder again, his fingers pressing into the soft cotton of my shirt, dangerously near my neck.
I wanted to sigh into him, to let him take care of me like he always did, but I was meant to be taking a stand. I wouldn’t let him massage me until I agreed with whatever he wanted, like usual.
“But I see the way you and Molly are together. I know what you’re like.”
All he was doing was bending towards me, his eyes heavy, his shirt strained against his chest. It meant nothing. It was Dom being Dom, getting close, making contact.
I held myself, watching intently, ignoring the slight tremor in my stomach in favour of the tight line of his lips.
I was used to this behaviour by now. He was like this with everyone. It was all about managing my expectations.
“Harry?” he murmured. I didn’t even realise I’d frozen. I was too absorbed in him. Dom didn’t wait for me to reply to the question I’d nearly forgotten.
He was near enough now that his thumb had returned to my birthmark, and he gently pressed, stroking me, softening me up so he could bring himself closer.
I could have shifted back, but I was already pressed into the corner. There was nowhere else I could go.