Chapter 62
HARLOW
I’ve been engaged a week and somehow, I’ve successfully dodged Spencer until now. It’s helped he’s busy with whatever movie he’s filming and hasn’t been able to pick Monroe up for school.
“Shit,” I curse under my breath when I find him on the other side of the door.
I war with myself on whether or not to answer the door.
It’s my day off and I had decided to hole up in the apartment to catch up on my schoolwork.
It’s evening now, nearing dark, and Monroe is at my parents and staying the night.
Jameson is away for work. He left yesterday.
It makes me wonder if he somehow knows my boyfriend—fiancé—isn’t here, but that doesn’t make any sense.
As I’m standing there running through a million thoughts in my mind, I realize he more than likely already spotted my car in the lot outside and knows I’m here.
Pasting on a smile, I swing the door open. “Hey,” I greet.
“Hey,” he echoes.
There’s something hollow about him. There are dark circles beneath his eyes, and I wonder if he got verbally reprimanded about them from whatever makeup artist he works with. Hopefully not.
“Can we talk?” he asks in such a desperate way that I can’t help but say yes.
“Yeah.”
I step aside to let him in, but he shakes his head. “Can we go for a drive while we talk?”
I look around like I’m searching for an excuse to say no, but I find none.
“Sure.”
He knows about the engagement. I have no doubts even though I haven’t told him.
I grab my keys and follow him out to his Range Rover. He opens the passenger door for me and waits for me to hop in and buckle before he closes it. That’s Spencer—always the gentleman, even when he’s hurt.
I tuck my hair behind my ear, my eyes tracking his movements as he comes around the front of the car. He’s dressed simply in a pair of light washed jeans, heather gray t-shirt, and black baseball cap.
“Did you come here straight from set?” I ask as when he gets in.
He gives me a furrowed brow expression like he can’t possibly figure out why I’m asking that.
“Yes. It’s the only short day we’ve had this week. I’ve been getting off at like two in the morning because of night shooting or I would’ve talked to you sooner.”
“You could’ve called me or texted,” I say softly.
He glowers at me. I don’t think Spencer has ever looked at me with such barely contained rage and torment. The pain that inhabits his eyes is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, and I know that I’m the reason for it.
“I wasn’t doing that for this. You should know that. Especially not after you let me find out from a photo Willa posted.”
He throws the car in reverse and looks around before backing out despite the vehicle’s camera.
We drive in silence along the coast for a while. I don’t know what to say, so I wait for him to speak first. Even though nothing is said, it’s as if I can feel the words between us.
How could you?
We were just together.
Did it mean nothing?
Why are you so heartless?
I wonder how long he’ll drive like this, in the silence, letting the unspoken truths fill the car until they overflow like a bathtub.
I watch the clock. Thirty minutes pass. Forty-five. An hour.
It’s at the hour and twelve-minute mark that he says, “Do you hate me?”
I wish he asked it maliciously, accusingly, but that’s not how it comes out. The four words are pain-filled and etched in terror like he’s afraid I’ll say yes, I hate him and slept with him just to torment him. He knows me better than that, but he’s hurting.
“I could never hate you.” My words are heavy with my own pain.
Sometimes, in my darkest moments, I’ve wished I could.
It would be so much easier if I felt that way.
If Spencer was like a lot of young fathers that didn’t want to be there.
But he’s always been unfailingly the best. I’m the one in the wrong.
I’m the one who doesn’t deserve him. I’m the one who let my fears and insecurities get to me back then and I’m the one who’s fucked everything up now.
I don’t put any of the blame on him. This is my fault.
“It feels like you do.”
“I’m sorry.” I look down at my lap, wringing my fingers together.
“You’re engaged,” he says, the word laced with so much pain. “You’re going to marry him.”
It’s a statement, not a question.
“I don’t know,” I confess in a whisper. “I…”
“You said yes to him in a dress I bought you—in the dress I proposed to you in. You said no, but you told him yes. Fuck you, Harlow.”
I slam my eyes shut. I deserve that.
I’ve blocked out most of that night from my memory.
Of the Hollywood elite party. Of Lydia pulling me aside and telling me I was making an embarrassment of myself hanging onto Spencer.
That I needed to let him go so he could flourish.
It was the wrong thing to say to me when I was already struggling so much with him being part of that world and being a young mom and being normal when he was surrounded by the most beautiful people in the world.
Though, I suppose, in her eyes it was the right thing to say to me, because when he proposed to me later that night when it was just the two of us in our apartment kitchen and the glow of candles, I said no.
It was the end of us, even if we did hook up again later.
I never told him what Lydia said to me, because frankly it doesn’t change anything. With as messed up in the head as I was at the time, I would’ve said no regardless.
He exits the highway and when I look over at him there are silent tears tracking down his cheeks. My throat feels tight.
How do I keep doing this? How do I keep fucking up over and over again? Is there something wrong with me—like some disease running rampant in my bloodstream but instead of making me sick it just has me making every wrong choice possible.
It’s silent again and I look around and realize we’re driving through the streets of L.A. At one intersection a billboard with Spencer’s profile kissing his co-star stares down at us.
It’s as if the billboard opens the dam to his words again.
“What happened to us? Where did it go wrong? Was it when you got pregnant? Or when I was scouted? Or when we moved out of your parents? Or maybe when I moved from modeling to acting? Was it when I proposed? I … I need to know, Harlow. What was the moment when I lost you?”
I press my lips together in an effort to keep my sob inside. “I … I don’t know.”
Back then, my reasons seemed valid. We were so young I didn’t know anyone but him, and with him entering the Hollywood scene I felt like I didn’t want to be part of that world.
“I was scared,” I finally say, and it’s the truth. “We were…”
I guess the truth of the matter is that while Spencer reveled in the intensity of our relationship, embraced that feeling of me being his forever person, I was terrified of it.
“We were what?” he prompts. “I thought you loved me, Harlow, but there must have been something I did.”
“I did,” I say softly. “But I was young and scared and stupid. And the worst part is I was confused then and somehow, I’m even more confused now.” A tear escapes and I hastily wipe it away. “And I—” I slam my mouth closed.
“And you what?” he asks it with such raw desperation that I think I’d almost certainly rather have him punch me in the face than to deal with his pain.
I force myself to swallow past my fear. “I still love you.”
Spencer turns off the road into a dark, mostly empty parking lot between buildings.
“What are you—”
My question is cut off when he parks and promptly undoes his seatbelt. Reaching over, he clicks the button on mine.
“Get over here,” he growls in a possessive command.
He practically lifts me from the passenger seat so that I’m straddling him in his.
His fingers delve in my hair, and he captures my mouth in a kiss that I feel through not just my entire body, but my entire soul. He pours everything into the kiss. Our past, present, and a future it feels like he’s begging me to give him.
He pulls back, hand cupping my neck. His chest rises and falls rapidly, and I lay my palm over his heart.
“Don’t marry him.” He doesn’t give me a chance to respond, kissing me again instead. “Don’t marry him,” he says again in pleading tone, biting at my neck. “Please. I’m begging you.”
Tears fall and I’m helpless to stop them. I never knew it was possible to be this confused over two men. Why do they have to be so good? I don’t deserve either of them.
“I’ll do anything,” he goes on. “But, please, don’t marry him.”
He kisses away my salty tears and I let him, because I’m selfish. I don’t know what this is—if it’s goodbye or something else.
Leaning his seat back to give us more room, we both work frantically at each other’s clothes.
He rises slightly so I can yank down his athletic shorts.
He shoves my cotton shorts to the side and cry out when he fills me a moment later.
Wrapping my arms around his neck, I hold on as he fucks me hard and fast. It’s downright punishing, but I don’t ask him to stop.
Instead, I beg, “Harder. More. Give me more.”
His tears soon mingle with my own and I wonder how we got here—how I let things get so fucked up.
My hand slaps against the window and I bite down on my lip.
“Spencer,” I whimper.
“It’s okay, baby.” He kisses my neck. “Come on my cock. You know you want to.”
I lean back and bump into the horn, the loud sound ringing out into the night, but it doesn’t slow us down.
“Right there,” I whimper when his thumb finds my clit. It doesn’t take long for me to come, and he holds my hips, pumping into me with that same relentless pace until he comes too.
“Yes,” he growls into my neck, filling me up with his cum.
He stills, holding me to him. Despite the darkness, I see him clearly from the light casting over the car from the streetlight across the way.
His eyes are darkly shadowed as they track over my face.
“Look at you,” he croons. “You’re going to go home to your fiancé with my cum dripping out of your sweet cunt.
He might’ve put his ring on your finger, but you’re mine. ”
I don’t correct him that Jameson isn’t there, because it doesn’t matter when he’s right about one thing—I’m his and I never stood a chance of outrunning him.