CHAPTER 68
harley
I’d done a lot of stupid things in my life, but giving Maverick a shred of hope for a future was the worst thing I could do. What the hell was I thinking?
I wasn’t, and that was the problem.
Hearing him say he wanted to plan a future with me had melted straight through my defenses.
I hadn’t seen the traps or consequences.
I’d seen us and all the potential of what we could have been.
It made me weak in the knees—not in the world-falling-apart kind of way but more in the swoon-worthy kind of way.
It was silly, but it mattered. It was special.
It wasn’t full of obligation or expectation.
I didn’t know what to do with that other than cling to it.
Weeks of domestic life with him had built something unexpected. A want. A need. An insane belief that there was some way to make this work. The quiet ease of existing beside him without performance had begun to feel dangerously normal.
I wanted to believe I could make this work. And maybe I could find a way. I didn’t have a clue how, but maybe I could.
Maybe I could make going back and forth work.
Maybe I could build two lives.
Maybe I could leave her.
Maybe I could start over.
Each possibility bloomed bright and intoxicating for a fraction of a second before reality burned it to nothing but bitter ashes.
Going back and forth meant constant lies. It meant watching Maverick accept scraps of my time while pretending it was enough. It meant turning him into the secret he didn’t want to be.
Building two lives meant splitting myself down the middle when I already had so little holding me together as it was.
Leaving her… well, that one terrified me. It was throwing a bomb in everything we’d built for years and hoping I could survive the fallout. My entire life was entangled with hers.
Starting over sounded romantic until I remembered that starting over required burning the world down as I knew it first. I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t brave enough for that. The unknowns terrified me.
The maybes compounded on one another, stacking higher and higher until they felt less like options and more like delusions. Each one offered potential without any real answers. They were hopes without blueprints.
And all the while, the texts from Vivienne complaining about Holly were slowly shattering the delusions my mind clung to.
Among all of the hope-ruining texts were texts mentioning the likelihood that Holly was pregnant—that she was showing symptoms. Most of Vivienne’s texts were frantic ramblings, things I gave up trying to piece together.
Stepping outside, I decided to give Holly a call to sort out the exact details of what was going on.
“She won’t stop bugging you, am I right?” Holly said as a greeting when she answered the call. “I told her I was fine and to leave you alone.”
Vivienne didn’t know how to leave me alone. The more riled up she was, the more insistent she was.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“I said I’m fine—I told her I was fine,” she repeated. “I ate some bad food. That’s all.”
“Are you sure?” I hated even asking. I hated hoping that it was just food poisoning and that she wasn’t pregnant.
“I’d know if I was pregnant, Harley,” she replied. I couldn’t comment on that, so I stayed quiet. “Everything I’ve read says to prepare yourself for several rounds of IVF mentally, and so that’s what I’m doing. Several rounds, and I’ll stop eating gas station food at one in the morning.”
“Why were you eating gas station food at one in the morning?” I was afraid to even ask. Holly lived life in a way I couldn’t begin to fathom.
“Because I forgot to go grocery shopping,” Holly said simply, as if it were a completely normal thing to do.
“Holly?”
“Yeah, boss?”
“Please, go grocery shopping. No one should be eating gas station food,” I said.
“Oh, come on!” she exclaimed with a laugh. “You don’t know what you’re missing until you’ve eaten a half-cold taquito and cheesy hotdog from your local gas station.”
That didn’t sound appealing at all.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I told her. I wouldn’t. “Just take care of yourself, Holly, okay?”
The dramatic sigh she let out made me smile.
“Okay, fine. You win. No more one-am gas station food, promise,” she retorted. “I’ll buy some groceries and eat real food.”
“Thank you.”
“I can’t promise I won’t include junk food.”
“That’s fine.”
“I like hot Cheetos.”
“They’re disgusting, but you’re allowed to be wrong,” I said, making her laugh.
“You’re missing out on the finer things in life, Harley Lowell,” Holly told me. “One day, I will get you to try them, and you’ll thank me.”
I highly doubted that.
“I do have one question for you. The doctor said I can test in two days,” she began. Oh. In two days, the course of my entire life could change. “Should I just do it and then tell her, or should I involve her?”
“I know it’s inconvenient, but please let Vivienne be involved. She won’t believe anything she can’t see for herself.”
“Ah, yes, peeing in front of the ice queen… it’s every girl’s dream.”
“Holly…”
“I’ll tone it down, I’ll tone it down,” she promised. I needed her to because I couldn’t handle the animosity between the two of them.
“Has everything else been okay?” It wasn’t a door I wanted to open, but I needed to. “She hasn’t been giving you too much trouble?”
“Honestly, unless it’s surrogacy-related, she just pretends I don’t exist.” That didn’t surprise me. “And I’m okay with that.”
“Good.”
“Are you coming back soon?” she asked. I sighed, running a hand through my hair.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “I’ll be back soon.”
I had to go back soon, didn’t I? I couldn’t just stay here, forever displaced from my entire life. Soon. The word echoed in my head long after I hung up.
I would’ve given anything to avoid soon.