CHAPTER 60
maverick
Water clung to my skin as we wandered back into Harley’s dark bedroom.
The windows rattled faintly as the storm overhead picked up.
The darkness and the rumble created a familiar, comfortable ambiance as we climbed into his bed.
We hadn’t said much while we cleaned up, just small things as we passed a towel back and forth.
It became clear Harley’s head was somewhere else, and I let him think.
I pushed down the growing unease in my chest that everything was about to fall apart all over again.
I tried not to get ahead of myself. For all I knew, it was the come-down getting to him as the high wore off.
That happened. Either way, I did my best not to interpret his silence as a bad thing.
I collapsed on the bed with a long exhale, folding my arms behind my head and staring up at the ceiling.
My body felt pleasantly heavy, as if every muscle was finally relaxed.
It wouldn’t last long. It never did. I hadn’t been able to truly relax my entire life. I wasn’t about to start now.
The mattress dipped, and Harley crawled onto the bed, his body covering mine.
The immediate weight and warmth coaxed a soft sigh out of me.
His mouth found the hollow of my neck in a gentle press of a kiss that sent my heart lurching into my throat.
If he noticed how I tensed slightly, he said nothing.
Instead, he slowly worked his way down my body in faint kisses.
As he did, I studied him. The pensive expression was still there, even as he doted on me. I could see the way he was trying to lose himself in the moment—or run away from thoughts.
“Why are you so easy?” Harley murmured against my skin.
“Wow,” I drawled as I fisted his hair and pulled his head back up, staring at him. “It’s like that now, is it?”
He rolled his eyes, chuckling.
“You know what I mean.”
“I’ll have you know, I haven’t been with anyone since you,” I continued as I let him go. “And I was in prison. There were options.”
The words came out of me a lot easier than I expected to.
It was a messy confession I should’ve kept to myself.
My heart pounded harder, each beat louder than the last, like my body suddenly realized what I’d admitted out loud.
A ripple of anxiety worked its way through my chest and settled under my skin.
I didn’t want him to think that I was waiting for him.
That kind of pressure was unfair to him.
The last thing I ever wanted was for Harley to feel trapped by a situation I created.
Those blue eyes watched me, as if taking me apart layer by layer and trying to figure me out.
Seconds dragged on as we just stared at one another, the words hanging there between us.
I did my best to keep my expression steady and unfazed—not to give away the tension creeping its way into my shoulders.
“I meant,” he continued, and his lips brushed over my hip, “why is being with you so easy?”
Relief flooded my system as he let the confession fall to the side.
“Is it though?” I asked. “We’re good at this part, and we’re not too bad at some of the other stuff, but as soon as life gets involved…”
I didn’t need to say more. Life had been cruel to both of us in different ways, tearing us apart when things started to feel right. It was hard to ignore that kind of evidence.
He sighed heavily and rolled off of me, settling on the bed beside me. I shifted to face him and waited for him to say something more. His fingers found mine, threading through them.
“Can I ask you about prison… what it was like for you?” Harley replied quietly. There was a tentativeness in his voice, which I understood. There were so many ways this conversation could go.
“It was uneventful for me,” I said. I wasn’t lying.
Mrs. Lowell had kept her word, much to my surprise.
Whatever she had on Robert Howard worked in my favor.
I didn’t go through the same experiences as some of the other new guys.
Instead, I just hung around Rob and waited my time out, because no one messed with Rob.
Oddly enough, the guy wasn’t so bad. Sure, he’d done a lot of fucked up shit that I forced myself to never think about, but he was quiet and damn near philosophical.
It was a weird thing to bond with a guy who had definitely murdered way more people than he was sentenced for.
“It was?”
“Yeah. I was in four and a half years, I got sober because I had to, and I got out early on good behavior because I’m a good fucking boy like that.” I chuckled at my own joke, mostly because I had to. “I was on parole for eighteen months, I go to A.A., and that’s… that.”
I didn’t know what else to say. There wasn’t anything else to add. Yeah, the experience sucked, but it could’ve been worse. Honestly, parole sucked more thanks to Levi’s intensity and drive to be all up in my business.
“How did you get your scar?” His fingers touched the scar cutting my brow.
“Oh, that.” I blew out a breath of air. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“I’m not thinking anything.”
“It did happen in prison.”
“Okay…”
“I tripped on my first day there and hit my head on the metal bedframe,” I told him. His lips flattened into a line, and I watched the struggle on his face as he tried to maintain his expression. “You can laugh, Harley.”
“I’m not going to laugh,” he said, his voice a whole notch higher.
“Well, you should, because it’s funny,” I retorted. My permission shook a laugh free of him, and he covered his face. Just the sound of him letting go was more than enough to make me laugh, too.
“Only you.”
“Right!” I exclaimed. “If it helps, I tell people they should see the other guy.”
“Of course you do,” Harley murmured.
“What about you?” I asked, broaching the topic carefully. I knew the kind of mess he was from the little bit I’d pieced together. It felt a lot like opening a can of worms, and I wasn’t sure he could put them back in if I did. “You don’t have to talk about…”
Though I wanted him to.
“Uh…” His voice trailed off, and he rubbed a hand over his chest. Reaching out, I gently pushed his hand out of the way and did it for him, hoping some ounce of comfort would bleed from me to him. His heart raced frantically under my palm. Shit.
“Just breathe, princess,” I whispered. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“I took over my family’s business,” he said, his voice so quiet that I barely heard it in the silence of the room. “I hate it.”
I just waited, giving him the room to either continue or not talk at all. It was up to him. I wanted to know all the details of his life, but I also didn’t want to torture him just to know.
“I hate the people, and I hate what I have to be to be around them,” he continued softly. His chest rose and fell too quickly under my hand, tension radiating off of him. I didn’t pull away. I was determined to give him something to hold onto as I pressed my fingers a little firmer into his skin.
Harley stared at the ceiling, eyes unfocused and a million miles away in a place I couldn’t quite reach.
There wasn’t a damn thing I could do to bring him back.
And so I stayed quiet because that’s what he needed from me.
I let the silence exist between us, even though the list of questions I had about his life continued to grow longer.
He swallowed hard, and his breath hitched under my palm. He was barely holding it together, the weight of his thoughts crushing him. I inched closer and slipped my arm around his waist. I kissed his shoulder for comfort.
“It’s okay, Harley,” I assured him. It was the only thing I could do.
“It’s not,” he replied, his voice cracking. “It’s not…”
His jaw ticked, and his head turned away from me. He didn’t try to keep talking and didn’t push through it. The words simply stopped, sealed off by whatever walls he’d built up to survive the life he’d made for himself.
I didn’t push him. I just held him as the only reassurance I could give him that I wasn’t going anywhere.