Chapter 17
Elena
Ican’t move.
The second I spot George standing in the driveway, leaning against the wall by the front door like he owns every inch of Highcourt Hall and me, my stomach lurches for reasons unrelated to my pregnancy for once.
He looks tanned in the headlights of Harry’s car, cocky and annoyed, as if he isn’t the one who left me in a silk gown and heels at the altar two and a half months ago. As if he isn’t the reason my life detonated and reshaped itself into something unrecognizable.
Harry’s hand grazes the small of my back as I stand frozen halfway out of the car, one foot on the gravel, the other still on the floor mat like I might claw my way back inside if I try hard enough.
I almost ask him to drive us back to Manhattan. Almost.
“Let me walk you up,” Harry murmurs, not giving me a choice. I want to tell him to walk me around the back to the cottage instead and avoid George at all costs, but I don’t.
Instead, I nod.
My pulse pounds louder than the crunch of our boots on the gravel. George doesn’t even flinch when we approach, not a flicker of shame or discomfort — just stands there in clothes that look like he just stepped off a flight from somewhere tropical.
“George,” Harry says, his voice clipped, cold.
“Dad.” George nods as if they’re trading good mornings.
Harry keeps his hold on me for a second longer, then sighs, leaning down to my ear. “Find me after you talk to him,” he whispers before straightening back up and shooting George a glare. “You’d better have a damn good explanation for her.”
He disappears inside the house before I can protest, leaving me alone with George on the porch.
Bastard.
I turn to George, my arms folded across my chest tight enough that I wonder if I could snap my own ribs. Does he know?
I raise my brows, inviting conversation as best as I can. “Say whatever it is you want to say.”
He glances at the front door where Harry vanished, then back to me with a crooked grin. “You look… good.”
Good? That’s what he opens with? Not, I’m sorry. Not, you deserve better. Not even, I didn’t mean to make everything spiral out of control.
His tongue rubs against his gums. “You’ve been busy,” he says, shrugging like he’s unbothered. “The tabloids had a field day with the wedding. You and my father playing house here like some sort of twisted royal couple.”
“Playing house?” I laugh, sharp and humorless. He doesn’t know. If his information is from the tabloids, there’s no chance. “You think I planned for any of this?”
“I think,” George starts, pushing off the wall with infuriating ease, “that if you really didn’t want this, you’d have walked away. But you didn’t, did you? You married him. You wore the dress, smiled for the cameras, let him put the Highcourt name on you like it was his to give.”
I take a single step toward him. “What the hell was I supposed to do, George? Let my family crash and burn because you couldn’t get your ass to the church? I begged him to take your place because I had no other choice. That’s your fault.”
“I wasn’t ready,” he says. Simple. Easy. Like that makes any difference.
It’s like pouring gasoline on an open fire.
“Not ready?” I balk at him, anger rising in me, burning my veins.
“You had fourteen years to get ready. Fourteen years to grow up, to stop partying, to stop playing jet-set prince and get your act together. But no. You waited until the day of our wedding to figure out your life wasn’t a goddamn vacation. ”
George sneers at me, his lip curling. “So you figured screwing my father was the answer?”
I move before I’ve decided to.
My hands brace against his shoulders, pushing once, hard, shoving him back half a step. His eyes go wide as he catches himself on the wall.
“You don’t get to talk to me like that,” I hiss. “You don’t ever get to talk to me like that again.”
He scoffs, moving to the side to get out of my reach. “God, who gave you confidence?” he spits.
“You left me!” I shout. “You detonated everything. You made my parents look at me like I was defective, like I was so unappealing as a bride that you couldn’t stomach it.
You let them think I wasn’t worth marrying, that Sarah would be a better choice.
Do you have any idea what that does to a person?
Do you understand how it feels to have your father think you’re worthless because someone else ran? ”
He blinks, genuinely frowning like I’ve started speaking a different language. “Who the hell is Sarah?”
The temptation to punch him square in the jaw surges through me, and I dig my nails into my palm, trying to curtail it. “My sister,” I seethe. “Which you would know if you’d ever paid more than five seconds worth of attention to me in the lead up to the wedding.”
He laughs, hollow and disbelieving. “Jesus, I didn’t have a fucking spreadsheet on your family tree. Sorry I wasn’t keeping track.”
“No, you just had a flight plan and your fucking passport,” I snap. “While you were halfway across the Atlantic, I was watching my father eye my sister like prey. You vanished, and suddenly she was the next bargaining chip. You started a war and left me stranded in the trenches.”
He flinches like the word war offends him, as if he couldn’t possibly be guilty of something that dramatic.
“You really think this was easy for me?” he fires back, his voice rising, his arrogance creeping back in.
“I didn’t ask my father to marry you. I just needed time, Elena.
Do you really think I wanted this to happen? That I wanted my dad—”
“Oh, please,” I cut in, my hands trembling in front of me now, the temptation to slap him or shove him again eating away at me.
But I don’t. “You wanted out. You just didn’t have the guts to say it, so you ran.
You went to Croatia like a spoiled brat, fucked god knows who, and let someone else clean up your mess. ”
“Don’t pretend like you were some helpless victim,” he sneers, leaning toward me just enough to make me step back. “You could’ve said no.”
“To what, exactly?” I laugh, but my voice is breaking, the sound bitter and ragged.
“To watching them hand my sister off like a consolation prize? To the insinuation that I was too broken to be marriage material unless I clawed my way back into their good graces with a ring on my finger so Sarah wouldn’t have to? ”
The backs of my eyes burn, but I refuse to let the tears come.
“I begged your father to do this. I didn’t do it because I was weak, I said I do because it was the only way to stop them.”
He’s silent. For once in his fucking life, he doesn’t have something to say.
“I married your father because I had to. But staying? Living here, on the property, instead of keeping my distance and living a separate life? That was my choice.”
His brows raise. “You’re happy?” he laughs. “With him?”
I take a breath, steadying myself. “I’m just saying that I’m glad it happened. I obviously married the better Highcourt.”
The air between us crackles as he stares at me, lost for words. He looks almost like I’ve gutted him, and for a second, just a flickering second, I see the boy I’d agreed to marry at sixteen — lost, small, pathetic.
And then the mask is back on.
He scoffs and stands back upright. “Right. Good luck with that,” he says. ‘You think he’s going to love you? My dad? I’m not sure he’s loved anyone in his entire life—”
“I don’t need him to love me to be better than you,” I snap before the words he said hit.
What the fuck did that mean?
He opens his mouth, probably to spew some different poison at me, but the door wrenches open. Harry stands there, silent as a storm, staring at his son.
George stares right back.
“That’s enough,” Harry says, his gaze hard as steel. “This conversation is done until you learn how to take some fucking accountability.”
Harry reaches for me, his arm sliding around my waist before tugging once, a little too harshly, pulling me back toward the house.
“Unless you’re going to apologize to my wife,” Harry adds.
George’s jaw clenches. He doesn’t say a word.
“Leave, then,” Harry says. “You can stay at the penthouse tonight. You’re not sleeping here.”
For once, George listens. He doesn’t yell, doesn’t argue, just turns on his heel and walks down the steps, shoulders tight, and slides into his Jaguar without looking back.
The engine revs. The tires kick up gravel.
And then he’s gone.
I don’t realize how badly I’m shaking until Harry’s arms are around me, pulling me into his chest, and I let myself fall forward into him, burying my head in his chest.
“You’re okay,” he murmurs.
I’d never stood up to George, not in all the years I’d known him. I’d avoided him as long as I could remember, folding anytime I needed to be near him.
He’d never seen who I was outside of him.
But now he knew. And now I didn’t have to hide it.