CHAPTER 57
maverick
Harley halted work on the house, asking Frank for a momentary pause on the project. A week. He asked for a week. He told Frank that it was impossible to repair the house while so many boxes were piled inside. He asked for time to work on it, but I wasn’t a moron. The timing was too convenient.
Harley wanted space from me. I couldn’t blame him.
I never replied to his text. I typed up more than a dozen replies, ranging from I still love you to I can’t see you again and I’ll have Frank finish the house.
Every single one of them felt wrong the moment I looked at the words on the screen.
They were too honest, too cruel, or too late. None of them worked.
So I said nothing, and the silence sat between us like a loaded gun just waiting to go off without intention.
It ruined me. I spent four days throwing myself into every available project that Frank was willing to throw at me.
Eventually, my grumpy mood pushed him to send me to the garage, which was the smarter choice.
I didn’t have to deal with people, and a broken car didn’t give a fuck about my attitude.
Engines were easier than feelings. You could take an engine apart, figure out what was wrong, and put it back together again. It was simple and predictable. It worked when you were done.
It wasn’t like that with Harley. It never would be.
And the reality was that I wasn’t okay.
I was hung up on the fact that Harley loved me and what the hell I was supposed to do now. I couldn’t think straight when Harley was involved. One part of me wanted to run to him and ask if he meant it. If he really loved me.
The other part of me—the part trying real damn hard to protect me from repeating old habits—demanded distance from Harley. Loving Harley always ended in pain. I wouldn’t survive being hurt like that again.
In the end, impulsivity won out. I went running right back to Harley. Only time would tell if it’d be worth it or if I was an idiot.
After work, I drove through the growing storm to Harley’s house. I didn’t have a plan, and I didn’t know what to say. I just drove with the intention of finding him. Everything else I’d figure out on the fly.
The whole way there, my stomach twisted itself into knots.
Every mile amped up my anxiety. I devoured the sour candy in my glove compartment with hopes it’d help, but it didn’t.
The sharp taste barely cut through the mess in my chest, and my thoughts raced faster than the road beneath me.
My grip tightened on the steering wheel, knuckles going white as I tried to keep it together.
But the shorter the distance between us, the closer I came to unraveling.
When he didn’t answer the front door, I should’ve taken it as a sign.
But instead of doing the smart thing, I wandered around the side of the house.
The curtains were all drawn, making it impossible to see inside or tell if he was there.
I followed the path to the backyard and looked around.
The back lawn offered a scenic view of the lake, with a sloping hill leading down to their private beach.
And there I saw him.
Despite the heavier rain, Harley was down by the water.
My heart lurched in my throat. The lake was particularly active with violent waves, like it always got before a storm, and of course, he was in it.
It didn’t matter that he was only up to his hips.
It wasn’t safe, especially for someone who probably still couldn’t swim.
For a split second, my chest seized with a fear so intense it stole the air right out of my lungs.
Fuck.
Taking off at a jog, I hurried down to the beach, damn near tripping over my feet as I went. Harley never once looked up, but I tracked his every movement as he scooped something out of the water and started back toward the beach.
“What are you doing?” I yelled at him when I was close enough to be heard over the rush of wind and water. He strode across the sand, ignoring me as he dropped something onto the sand, and I followed his movement.
Seashells. The man was out in a fucking storm gathering seashells. Was he fucking nuts?
“I’m collecting seashells,” Harley said. The way he said it instantly irritated me, as if it were a completely normal activity to do with a storm brewing.
“Are you fucking kidding?” I demanded. “In this weather? Do you have any idea how stupid that is?”
He shrugged. His nonchalant attitude pissed me off. But under the anger was something else—something tight and uneasy that built rapidly in my chest.
“What the hell were you thinking?” I snapped.
“That I can!” he exclaimed. “I could fill the whole goddamn house with seashells if I wanted, because who cares about the sand? No one fucking cares! No one! Because there is no one! There’s no one to tell me no or what to do! There’s no one left to care about me!”
Oh, shit. Those words hit hard. They were unexpected and cut straight through my anger like a knife.
“Harley…” His name caught in my throat. I didn’t know what to say to all of that.
“And you know the worst part about it?” he continued without acknowledging me.
The tremble in his voice ripped me apart.
“She gets to forget. All of it! Everything! Every little thing she ever did… she won’t remember.
Guess who forgot my father killed himself today?
Yeah, that was a fun thing to have to relive with her . ”
Jesus fuck. I could only imagine. Actually, I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. I knew how hard his father’s death had been on him, and I knew how horribly his mother had handled it. Reopening those wounds… I knew it had to kill a part of him to do so.
And suddenly, the seashells didn’t seem so stupid anymore. They were the only thing he could control.
He took my silence as an invitation to leave, storming up the beach in a huff. He left me and the pile of seashells behind. I stared at his retreating back, my mind glitching out as I tried to figure out how to handle this.
How the fuck did I help him?
Well, I wasn’t any good to him if I just kept standing here.
“Harley!” I shouted, chasing after him, up the hill and through his backyard.
“Don’t!” he snapped without ever looking back at me. “Just don’t!”
“Hey—”
“I don’t want your pity, Maverick.”
“I wasn’t about to—”
“Yes, you were!” Harley cut me off once more. Jesus fuck, this man needed to let me get a word in edgewise. “Just go away.”
“No,” I said. Like hell I was leaving him like this. The part of me that needed to help him was running on adrenaline and instinct. I couldn’t just do nothing. I couldn’t walk away knowing he was falling apart.
“Go away!”
I grabbed his arm and yanked him back. As he stumbled, I used his momentum to turn him and drag him in for a hug.
It barely qualified as a hug as I folded my arms around him, doing whatever I could to make him realize he wasn’t alone.
He pushed against me in an attempt to free himself, but I held on tighter.
He shook violently in my arms, and I squeezed, doing my best to hold him together however I could.
“Let go,” Harley ordered, his voice loud in my ear.
“No.”
“Yes—”
“No,” I interjected. He shoved harder, and I took the brunt of it without a word.
“Maverick—”
“You are not alone,” I interrupted, speaking over him loudly. The words stunned him, and I felt his fight weaken slightly. I took it as a good sign and kept going. “You are not alone, Harley.”
“I am—”
“You’re not.”
“But I am,” he whispered. The way his voice cracked shattered my heart.
I pulled back, taking hold of his face and forcing him to look at me.
That drowned expression in his pretty eyes was overwhelming.
I hated seeing what he’d become. He deserved better than the broken version of himself that the world had carved him into.
“You’re not alone, Harley,” I repeated, soft and gentle. My forehead tipped against his as he trembled under my hands.
The storm rumbled overhead, drifting in closer in a quiet cascade of thunder.
Despite the growing darkness, neither of us moved.
Rain fell harder. Drops slid down his pretty face and caught on his long lashes.
He looked wrecked, like the weight of everything he’d been carrying had finally cracked something open inside him.
“I need you to… stop looking at me like that,” he whispered.
“Like what?” I asked, though I knew. I knew what I was thinking as I dragged the pad of my thumb over his bottom lip. It was so damn easy to fall back into this with him. Too easy.
“Please, Mav…” Harley said, his breath catching in his throat. “You once told me that you respected my decisions but asked that I respect yours… I need you to not, Mav.”
The words should’ve been enough to stop me. Once upon a time, I would’ve stepped back without hesitation. I would’ve respected the boundary he laid down without question.
But this was different. This was us standing on the precipice of something life-changing.
Stepping back wasn’t an option anymore.
“Why?” I pushed him. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did. I wanted to know what he’d say.
“Please…” His voice was barely audible as those blue eyes collided with mine, a million fractured emotions building within them. I waited. I didn’t push it and just silently hoped to hell he’d find his way back to me. “Because I want to kiss you.”
The confession settled between us like a spark just waiting for the chance to explode. Everything inside me stilled. Six years of distance, of anger, of regret, of missing him more than I’d ever admit aloud had led to this.
We teetered on the edge of something dangerous—something that carried the potential to destroy us all over again. But the what-if hung there too. What if we didn’t pull away? What if we did give ourselves a chance all over again?
What if we were meant for this?
I watched the careful expressions shift on his face as he braced for the backlash. Whatever my response was, it’d change everything between us.
For a fraction of a second, I just stared at him. I memorized the way his eyes searched mine, the way his breath stuttered in his chest, the way his lips parted slightly.
And suddenly there was no choice. The answer was obvious, hanging right there between us, just waiting to be taken.
“Then kiss me, princess.”