CHAPTER 39
maverick
Frantic banging on my door in the middle of the night had me stumbling out of bed with a jolt.
Bleary-eyed and disoriented, I tried to get my bearings as the hits on my door just kept going—louder and faster like they weren’t going to go away until I answered.
Fucking hell. I grabbed the hunting knife I kept under my mattress because I didn’t trust anyone damn near breaking down my door in the middle of the night.
I tried to glance out the window, but saw nothing.
It was too dark to get a good view of whoever was losing their shit on my door.
My hand tensed around the handle of the knife as I unlocked one lock just enough to crack the door, expecting to find Aidan in some kind of drunken, pissed-off state.
That’d be pretty damn par for the course with him.
But it was Harley… wide-eyed and frantic.
I quickly undid the last lock and threw open the door. He didn’t wait for me to say anything. He just stormed right in, hand running through his hair, and his body wracked with stress.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I—why do you have a knife?” he asked, completely bewildered as his gaze dropped to my knife.
“Why the fuck didn’t you use the key I gave you?
” I shot back more out of instinct than anything else as the adrenaline refused to settle.
Locking the door, I wandered to the kitchen and tossed my knife on the counter.
I grabbed a half-empty, warm beer off the counter and tossed it back.
He was upset, I was grumpy, and beer was needed.
Only after the initial fight response in my body began to fade did I ask, “What are you doing here, Harley?”
I almost regretted asking as he picked up pacing, instantly agitated all over again. He ran his hands through his hair, practically tugging on the strands.
“I didn’t know where to go,” he said quickly. “I just… I just didn’t want to be there. I don’t want to be that person! I don’t want—she’s… she’s trying to marry me off.”
Something hot and painful spiraled through my stomach. She what?
“What the fuck does that mean?” I demanded, the words coming out rougher than I meant them to.
“First, it was going to live with my grandfather, and then, it was college and the family business and who I associate with and how I spend my time,” he rambled, “and now, she wants me to get married! And has someone picked out, and I can’t stand her.
She’s just like my mother, and I can’t… I can’t… I can’t… I can’t…”
Those two words fell out of his mouth on repeat as if his mind was glitching out over everything. I made a move toward him, but he paced right on by me. And so, I gave him the room to work it out and helped myself to another drink because I needed it.
A fucking wife. After everything we had, it was just so easily thrown away for some woman.
Correction: a woman from his world—the world of money, fancy things, and fucking entitlement. All the things I couldn’t bring to a relationship. I only had two jobs, broken down shit, and a slight attitude problem.
“I told her I didn’t want to leave,” Harley continued. I stopped mid-sip, shocked. He said what now? “I told her… I told her… and then she told me she’d make me regret it. I don’t know what she’d do, but I said it… oh, I shouldn’t have said it.”
I slowly set down the bottle while his words replayed in my head over and over. He’d told his mother he didn’t want to leave. The weight of that admission was monumental.
“I don’t know what I was thinking.” He just kept going. “I don’t know… I don’t know how to fix this… how do I fix this? How do I—”
“What if you stayed?” I interrupted. The question surprised me, even as it came out of my mouth. Still, I stood by it. It was risky. I didn’t have a plan any more than he did.
“What if I stayed?” Harley repeated in disbelief, his brows furrowing together as the question stopped his pacing.
“Yeah,” I said. “What if you stayed… with me?”
“With you…?” His voice was quiet, barely audible, as he repeated it back to me. I wasn’t sure if the anxiety was taking over or if I was just that far off with my question.
“Yeah,” I replied. I stepped closer, my hands itching to touch him, but I didn’t. “What if you stayed with me? We can stay here, or I have some money put away that could get an apartment in town if you wanted.”
His expression was painfully difficult to read. It set me on edge. I needed some kind of give—some kind of sign that I wasn’t an idiot. Was I making a mistake putting myself out there like this? By offering him a life with me?
“Or we could leave,” I suggested. “If you don’t want to stay here, we don’t have to. We can… just hit the road and drive until we find somewhere new. Or just put as much distance between us and here as possible. Go somewhere new and start over.”
“I…” The single word trailed off, and I deflated a little. That wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for. I wanted him to pick me. To pick us. “Mav… I…”
“I know I don’t have much,” I rushed to say before I lost the rest of my nerve.
“I know I can’t give you the life you’ve got now, Harley…
hell, I’m barely keeping myself alive here.
I have a little bit saved, and I can get another job or two or whatever it takes to make you happy. Just… just stay with me.”
“You want me to stay… why?” Harley asked. I could see the way his mind tried to sort out what I was asking of him.
“Because I love you,” I admitted, fully aware that it was a pathetic answer. It wasn’t enough, but I didn’t have anything else to offer him. Not really. This was it: just me and how much I loved him.
“You… you love me?” he said so softly that I almost missed it.
All I could do was nod. I didn’t have the words to describe the way I felt for him.
Silence stretched between us, ticking by at an agonizingly slow rate.
My skin itched with anticipation, and I did my best not to explode on him—to demand some kind of answer instead of giving him the space to think. “I have money saved away, too.”
“What?” I replied stupidly, the blood rushing to my head and the world tilting slightly as he spoke. Was I hearing things?
“And I don’t mind getting a job,” he continued. “I don’t have a lot of practical skills, but I could learn. We’d need somewhere bigger at some point. This place is barely big enough for one person. I don’t know how we’d make two people work in here. We’d be tripping over each other all the time.”
“You’ll stay?” I asked.
“I’m scared, Maverick,” Harley whispered.
The genuine fear in his voice as he said the words wrapped around my heart in a vise.
I closed the distance between us in quick strides and dragged his face to mine, kissing him once.
Twice. Three times. I hoped to hell it bled with the comfort he so desperately needed in this moment.
His arms folded around my waist as he hugged me close.
His chest heaved with unsteady breaths as he tried to hold it together.
“I can’t promise it’ll be okay,” I told him, my voice rasping against my throat.
Emotions surged through me in a wild, untamable way.
I wanted to protect him and whisk him away.
I wanted to make everything okay again and make him smile.
I wanted to make sure he had the kind of life he wanted.
But I couldn’t promise a single one of those.
“I know.”
“But you won’t be alone,” I promised. It was about the only thing I knew I could promise him.