Chapter 59
Chapter Fifty-Nine
WEST
By ten that morning, a courier dropped off a phone already set up to mirror my old one. My first instinct was to call Blue, make sure she was safe. But before I could even think about dialing, a text came through from Marcus.
Marcus
Marshal has Mr. Caldwell and Lisa enroute to Harmony Haven. He also made sure the guy from last night got home… alone.
I hadn’t asked for that update, but Marcus knew the silence would drive me crazy.
I shot him a quick reply, letting him know I was driving myself to work and told him to head back to Harmony Haven to coordinate with Marshal.
My truck had been sitting at the lake house for days and it needed to be brought back.
Then another thought hit me. As the elevator carried me down to the parking garage, I thumbed out a second message.
West
Blue needs a new car. Just leave the truck for her.
The bubbles danced on the screen, Marcus starting and stopping a text like he didn’t know how to word it, like he so often did when he thought I was off the rails.
He knew I bought that truck to remind me of my dad’s.
But I barely drove it anymore, and honestly, I couldn’t sit inside it without thinking about the last time I held Blue’s hand over the console as we rode up to my parents’ house.
Not to mention, that truck had always felt like the one link I had to a normal, smalltown life, and all it did now was remind me of how badly I’d failed at even trying to be that kind of man.
I didn’t belong in a pickup truck. I belonged in the back seat of a shiny SUV, someone else behind the wheel, my phone in my hand, my pulse wired to my business.
By the time I climbed into my Audi, Marcus had abandoned the reply entirely, opting for a thumbs-up emoji that looked just as foreign coming from him as it felt to me when I used it. He must have really been worried.
It was Monday, almost two o’clock, when I finally got to work and my first order of business had been to send all nonessential personnel home.
I knew my lawyer was coming in, and I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for people whispering in hallways and side-eyeing me in elevators.
Hattie argued when I told her to clear the floor, but one look at my face shut her up.
She just nodded, grabbed her bag, ready to slip out with the rest of them.
When Harrison stepped off the elevator, he smiled like he had a secret that would turn my day around. He gave Hattie a quick nod as he passed her, then walked into my office while I made sure she got on the elevator and left.
I didn’t bother shutting my office door. The floor was empty, so I just fell back onto the couch, adjacent to where Harrison had made himself comfortable in a plush chair, and started unloading everything that had been weighing on me.
I rattled off expectations, what I wanted handled, what needed to stop, how fast it should all be done.
I told him about the calls from Blue’s sister, and told him to make them stop.
I didn’t care what it cost, as long as Blue was left alone.
I even admitted I owed her an apology, even if she never forgave me.
But when I looked up, Harrison wasn’t taking notes like I expected. He was leaned back, legs crossed, arms folded behind his head like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Is there a reason you’re not writing any of this down?” I snapped.
“There’s no need.” He lifted his hands, grinning like he was about to pull a rabbit out of a hat. “I never filed your marriage license with the judge. You were thinking with your dick, and I saw this train wreck coming before you did.”
My body went cold. “What did you just say?” My voice was so slow and calm, it scared even me.
He stood, one hand held out like he was placating a wild animal.
“Now, West, don’t go blowing this out of proportion.
We still have the paperwork, and the girl will get her bar.
But you were never legally married, so you don’t owe her a thing.
Not the lake house, not a car, not her father’s care.
She’s lucky she’s even getting that shithole bar.
And as for her sister? Don’t lose sleep.
That kid isn’t a kid anymore, and I’m sure this whole sob story is just a ploy to squeeze you for child support.
We’ll handle your little… teenage transgression. Four or five zeros, problem solved.”
Shock roared through me, tightening every muscle.
I had trusted this man for years, and now I was staring at a side of him that was vile, cunning, heartless.
But what was worse, was that he was staring back at me, completely taken aback by the fact that I was so angry.
That he was looking at me thinking I was the kind of man who’d agree with him.
That was the part that gutted me most.
I may have run from Harmony Haven the first chance I got. I may have hidden every scar beneath a three-piece suit and stacked billions in the bank before I hit thirty-seven. But I hadn’t forgotten who raised me. I knew how to treat people. I knew how to be good, how to be honest.
So what the hell made him think—?
The thought cut itself off before I could finish, because every word I’d just told myself was a lie. The truth was uglier.
Didn’t this whole thing start with a lie?
Didn’t I strong-arm Blue with Fiddlers just to get what I wanted?
Didn’t I admit to her face that I was using her?
Didn’t I walk away when she had no control over the one thing that had broken me?
But she’d still seen the man behind the suit. She’d forgiven me for sins I didn’t even know how to atone for. She let me use her just so I could feel human again. She put her hands on my cracked, hollow chest and fixed a heart I hadn’t realized was even still beating.
And I knew right then at that moment that I wasn’t going back.
I wasn’t going to be the fucked-up version of West Brooks I was before her.
I might never deserve her, I might never get another second of what she made me feel, but staring at Harrison’s smug face, I knew I didn’t want to be whoever he thought I was.
I stepped forward, ready to give him the same treatment I’d given the Murphy brothers the night before. He deserved to have that smirk knocked clean off his face. But before I could, the sound of movement stopped me cold.
I turned, half-expecting Hattie to have come back for something she’d forgotten.
But it wasn’t Hattie.
It was Blue.
Her wide eyes locked on mine as she gasped, her head shaking violently, her body trembling from every poisonous word she’d just overheard. Words I hadn’t even had time to process myself.
“Blue—” I started toward her, but she only backed farther away, her gaze flicking toward the elevator like it was her only escape.
“It really was all about me being an idiot,” she whispered, her voice breaking apart in my chest. Her eyes, God, those bright blue eyes. They flashed with devastation. “And my sister. She was the one, wasn’t she? Or was that even true?”
“Nothing he just said was true,” I said quickly, desperate to reach her before she could leave.
“You got my sister pregnant?”
The accusation knocked the air out of me. My chest seized, my vision tunneled.
“No!” The word tore out of me so violently she froze, caught between disbelief and the elevator doors opening behind her. I lunged forward, caught her arm, pulled her against me like if I let go, everything would end right there.
She fought me, twisting, shoving, demanding I let her go. Maybe I should have. Maybe letting her run would’ve been kinder.
But I couldn’t.
Not when I was standing in the wreckage of a bomb I’d just dropped on both of us.
I needed her to stay. I needed her to see me. I needed her to understand.