CHAPTER 69
maverick
Hot water soothed my muscles, leaving me relaxed from head to toe.
Or maybe it was the mind-blowing way Harley had sucked me off in the shower.
It definitely could’ve been that. He kissed me three times, each one briefer than the one before, and stepped out.
The glass door clicked shut, and I let out a content sigh as I listened to Harley move around the bathroom.
“I’m going to make us non-drunken brownies in a mug,” he said, his voice distorted under the rush of water.
“All right,” I replied while I combed my fingers through my hair, head tipped back. “I’ll be done in a few minutes and meet you downstairs.”
If he heard me, he didn’t respond, or maybe he was already gone.
I was a little too preoccupied with loving the shower to care about anything else.
I took the time to genuinely relax under the spray of water.
It’d been a rough few days that had nothing to do with Harley.
Taking down the cabinets in my house had proved harder than expected, leaving my body sore and hurting in places I wasn’t used to.
While I could’ve stayed in there another hour—seriously, the water pressure and massage head combination were divine—I made myself get out.
I could always shower after I enjoyed a brownie with Harley.
The fact that he remembered them made me warm inside.
It was such a silly, small thing, but it meant a lot.
I shimmied and hopped around the bedroom to get my jeans over my wet legs. Probably should’ve tried to dry off better. I swiped my shirt off the ground and sniffed it. Holy fuck, I needed better deodorant.
“Can I borrow a shirt?” I shouted as I tossed my gross one on the dresser.
I waited for an answer, but there was none.
Honestly, he probably couldn’t hear me with how big the house was.
I took his silence as a yes and helped myself to his dresser.
I pulled out each drawer until I found one with a stack of shirts tucked away and riffled through them, looking for something that wasn’t a goddamn polo.
I’d rather be shirtless than wear a polo.
Something clinked on the bottom of the drawer as I shuffled things about, making me frown.
What the hell had I fucked up now? Carefully, I took each item out as I tried to figure out what I’d heard.
The sound had been small and metallic and completely out of place for a bunch of shirts. As I removed the last one, I saw it.
A gold wedding band.
My heart stuttered painfully in a way that made the world sway slightly where I stood.
I had to be seeing things.
I picked it up before I could talk myself out of it. The metal was cool against my fingers, solid and real. It wasn’t just some trick of light.
My mind scrambled for alternatives—for reasons as to why Harley would have a wedding ring tucked away in his drawer. Maybe it was his father’s. Or maybe it was his mother’s. No, it was too big to be hers. Maybe it was just some stupid thing he kept for no reason.
But it wasn’t carefully stored away like something you’d keep because it belonged to a deceased loved one. There was no trinket box or envelope. No, it was tossed in with the rest of his clothes, like an afterthought.
Like something he’d taken off recently.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
My pulse pounded in my ears, loud and disorienting.
Harley was married?
Married…
The word twisted in my gut, cutting deep.
Holy fuck, Harley was married.
And that made me the other man.
My mind replayed every conversation from the moment I knocked on his door with brutal clarity. The secret phone calls, the avoidance of his past, the push for me to stay here.
And fuck me, Aidan had known.
Heat crawled up my neck. Not in embarrassment but rather with rage. With humiliation. With hurt. The slow, nauseating realization that, while I’d been building something with him, he’d been hiding a completely different life.
Was he ever going to tell me?
My stomach rolled violently. I stared at the band, searching for some sign that I’d misunderstood this thing I held—something that would make it less definitive. Something to show me that it wasn’t Harley’s.
Except there was nothing.
This was his drawer, these were his shirts, and that made this his wedding ring.
I felt so fucking stupid.
Harley was married.
God, I was so fucking stupid.