Chapter 34
HARPER
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I’d spent years fantasizing about the day I could make Levi fall to his knees. I’d obsessed over it, wanting him to feel just a tiny bit of the pain he’d caused me.
But this wasn’t what I had in mind at all.
Levi sat at the other end of the couch, head bowed, his shoulders stiff as tension cloaked every inch of him. He looked wrecked. Ravaged. Completely wrung out. And that didn’t make sense with the story I’d been told, nor the one I’d been telling myself for years.
If this was nothing to him—if I was nothing to him—as he’d made me feel this morning when he’d bailed, then why would he look so fucking destroyed? Especially when he thought no one was watching. That, paired with everything else that had happened between us since I’d arrived, and things weren’t adding up. But none of it was more confusing than the single word that had shocked me just as much now as it had when I’d remembered it from last night.
None.
I had to be recalling it wrong. He hadn’t meant it like that, or I’d heard incorrectly. Because there was simply no way Levi hadn’t been with anyone else since me. Sure, he seemed to get off on deprivation, denying himself his release as long as possible, but twelve years? That was going a little far, even for him.
“I figured you’d be happy about this, considering how much you hate me,” I said, my voice still a little scratchy from all the swelling.
Levi snapped his head in my direction, and the devastation written across his face nearly took my breath away. “Happy? Jesus Christ, that’s what you think of me?”
I shrugged, shifting myself back into a sitting position. “What am I supposed to think when the hate you feel toward me has never been a secret?”
He was quiet for long moments, and when he finally spoke, his voice was ragged. “I’ve never hated you, sparrow. Not for a single second. But I did everything in my power to make sure you hated me.”
I didn’t know if it was the aftereffects of the epinephrine or something else, but none of this made any sense. Not his reaction when he’d found me, already in the throes of anaphylaxis. Not his admission to me the night I’d been drunk. Not last night when, even during the times he’d said the filthiest things—done the filthiest things—I’d felt…cherished.
And definitely not when held up against the fact that he’d thrown me away in the first place.
“Maybe not hate,” I conceded. “But it had to be something close. You couldn’t even be around me anymore. One day, we were in love, and the next, we were nothing. Instead of breaking up with me and going back to the friends we’d always been, you just cut me out. Blocked me everywhere you could. Erased me like I never existed.”
“You and I both know we could never be friends.” His gaze pinned me in place, so many emotions swirling in his ice-blue eyes. “I’ve loved you since I was ten fucking years old, sparrow. There was no way I could go back to being friends after I had you.”
I sucked in a shocked breath, stunned as his words settled in, so different from what I’d thought for nearly half my life. “So, what? It was better to go no-contact? Act like I’d died?”
He flinched at that but didn’t back down, his determination seeming to grow more resolved as he squared his shoulders. “When it was that or you lose out on the life you’d worked so hard for? Yeah, that’s what I chose. I chose you. I’ll always choose you. Even at the expense of myself.”
I shook my head, my brow pinched as I tried to process what he was saying, everything I’d believed for the past twelve years slowly falling away to reveal the truth. “Levi, this doesn’t make any sense. What do you mean, lose out on the life I’d worked hard for?”
“I heard your dad the night we got caught.” He cleared his throat, staring down at his hands loosely clasped between his knees. “I heard him. The whole fucking station heard him.”
Levi saying the words shoved me straight back to that night, after we’d gotten caught in the back seat of my dad’s car. I’d never seen my father so angry. Angry enough that he’d slipped that night, showing a crack in the facade he’d perfected for years as I’d cried and he’d yelled at me, not caring who heard.
“He was going to cut you off if I was still in your life,” Levi continued. “For good reason, too. He might’ve been an asshole, but he was right about that. I would’ve been nothing but a stain on your future. You were meant for so much more than me.”
Tears filled my eyes as he spoke, partially because of the words he was saying, but more so because I could see exactly how much he believed them.
He believed them.
“I knew you’d never do it…would never end things,” he said. “So I did it for you.”
For several moments, I sat there, stunned into silence. I huffed out a disbelieving laugh, though this situation was anything but funny. Thinking about all the years wasted—more than a decade—made me equal parts furious and distraught.
And what cut the most was the fact that what he’d been trying so hard to save me from, I’d chosen anyway.
“You didn’t choose me. You chose for me,” I said, my voice as firm as I could make it. “And regardless of whatever white knight bullshit reasoning you had for doing so, it’s no different from what my parents put me through for years.”
Realization swept over him, regret and guilt swimming in his eyes before he seemed to shove it all away with a shake of his head. “I’m not good enough for you, Harper. Never was, never will be.”
“That’s not for you to decide!” I snapped. “I get to decide that. It’s my life, and it’s my choice who I do and don’t want in it. Which is exactly why I cut out my parents.”
He snapped his head toward me. “You what?”
“Cut them out. The day I turned eighteen, I left and never once looked back.”
It hadn’t been a difficult choice. I didn’t grow up in a loving home. It may have looked that way from the outside, but in reality, I was raised by nannies and cooks because my parents couldn’t be bothered to deal with any of the messiness that came with having a child. The only time they concerned themselves with me was when I could do something for them—namely, pretend for all the world that I was a perfect little girl and we were the perfect little family.
All the while, outsiders were none the wiser that my nanny signed my school papers and showed up for parent-teacher conferences. That the only birthday celebration I’d had when I was seven had been at school because my parents had forgotten. Or that I’d never been allowed to select my own interests or extracurriculars…those had all been chosen for me.
Everything had been chosen for me.
And Levi had done the same damn thing.
While I knew, logically, that Levi’s choice for me had come from a place of love, while my parents’ decisions had come from a place of control, the end result was the same. A life I didn’t have autonomy over.
And I wasn’t going to go back to that. Not even for him.
It hadn’t hurt when my parents cut me off and willingly removed themselves from my life because they couldn’t respect the boundaries I’d set. Losing Levi, though? Not just the Levi who’d been my boyfriend for three years, but the Levi who’d been my best friend for eight… Losing him along with Chase—both of them the only two souls in the world who knew me—had hurt more than anything I’d ever faced.
“You were supposed to go to Harvard,” he finally said, his voice unsure. “You were set to leave in ten days. Ten fucking days. That’s not something you just turn your back on.”
That was what my parents had thought, too. When I’d told my dad I had no plans to keep living under his thumb, he’d laughed, assuming I was lying. That because I’d grown up with a silver spoon in my mouth, I wouldn’t be able to survive without it.
And then I’d walked out of their house forever.
I turned eighteen the day before the semester started, withdrew my admission, and left the prison my parents called a home with a single bag. I went to the college I’d wanted to go to as long as I could remember. The one my parents had said wasn’t good enough, that what I wanted to study wasn’t realistic. They’d said I’d never find a job or make a living with a journalism degree. I’d worked my ass off, holding down three jobs to be able to cover rent until the spring semester, when I enrolled with a full scholarship. And that was it.
My life truly started the day I walked out of my parents’ house. A life that wasn’t perfect, but it was mine.
I’d been so tied up in thinking that Levi and I could’ve been together back then if he hadn’t taken that choice away from me. But maybe, if he hadn’t taken that choice away from me, my life wouldn’t look anything like it did now. Maybe I wouldn’t have attended my dream college or studied journalism or traveled the world. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten that first gig with Weekend Wanderlust…maybe I wouldn’t have gotten this one.
Maybe everything would’ve been different…and in the end, I still might have been without him.
While I didn’t appreciate his methods and I wouldn’t stand for it going forward, I could admit that his doing what he’d done had allowed my life to turn out exactly as it had. Exactly how I’d designed it to.
“Well, I did turn my back on it,” I said, my tone softer than it had been. I could see from the gutted look in his eyes that he was coming to the realization I’d already faced—that if he hadn’t done what I’d done, we might’ve been together this whole time. “I’m a big girl, Levi. And I can do hard things. With or without you. But it’s my choice. What I do with my life, who I want in it, and who I want to be with.”
I sat up and crawled to him before settling astride his lap. Gripping his jaw in my hands, I stared into his eyes, so full of love for me, it took my breath away. I had no idea how I’d never seen it. “And right now, despite you being a complete dumbass, I choose you.”