Chapter 22 Harry
Harry
Dr. Frasier is as cold as usual as he finishes up the scan, the wand gliding over the small mound of Elena’s stomach with at least some care.
“I’m not as good at this as Mary,” he says, turning the screen so Elena and Sarah can both see.
“But everything looks on track. Heartbeat’s strong.
The fetus is, I believe, measuring right on track for fourteen weeks. ”
Elena exhales, her head falling back against the cushions with relief and awe.
Sarah scrunches her nose, saying something about how she thought doctors called it a baby when it's wanted, and Dr. Frasier stumbles over an apology for the midwife, Mary, being on vacation and him having to cover this portion.
I, on the other hand, can’t stop staring.
I’m sitting in the armchair furthest from Elena so she can have her sister by her side, but I can’t stop wanting to be closer, can’t stop thinking about how I’ve been through this before.
Been to all the scans, all the check-ups, the scare of Braxton-hicks, the delivery — with Geraldine. Decades ago.
But this feels new in ways I wasn’t expecting.
Dr. Frasier taps a few keys on the machine, focusing intently before glancing back at us.
“Mary can do the full anatomy scan in six weeks,” he says.
“That’ll be in her office in town. She’s got the whole set-up for it there.
I don’t feel confident enough to try to tell you the sex, so if you want to know, you’ll have to wait for that one. ”
Elena looks over at me, a glimmer in her eye like she’s not sure whether to smile or cry. “We haven’t decided if we want to know yet.”
I nod, clearing my throat, take a deep breath to control myself from doing something stupid like letting a tear fall this early. “We’ll decide later. Don’t worry about that for now,” I say to her.
Dr. Frasier nods and pulls the wand off Elena, passing her a warm towel to wipe the jelly off her stomach. Sarah leans forward, pointing at a glob of it that slid down and around to the back of her waist, and Elena groans in slight irritation.
“I’ll be back in a second,” Elena says, pushing up off her bed and holding her shirt up to stay off the glob. “Just gotta… wipe myself down.”
“Apologies,” Dr. Frasier says, but it’s noncommittal.
Sarah sits back as Elena steps out of the room, her arms folding over her chest, an air of protective sharpness around her that I’ve noticed over the two trips she’s taken down and now recognize as distinctly White-family.
I shift my weight in my chair, adjusting the cuffs of my shirt more out of nerves than necessity.
Being alone with a woman I barely know and a doctor who is hellbent on thinking I murdered my wife isn’t exactly the most calming atmosphere, but Dr. Frasier slips out of the room, mumbling something about needing a cigarette, and it gets infinitely more awkward.
Sarah doesn’t waste time. Her head snaps toward me the moment the door shuts behind Frasier.
“You care about her?”
I blink, taking in the determination between her brows. “Yeah,” I breathe. “Of course I do.”
Her lips form a thin line as she studies me, hesitating.
“I don’t think you understand me,” she says carefully.
“I’m asking if you care. Not about the deal, not about the fact that she’s pregnant, not because you feel a responsibility to take care of her now.
I’m asking if you care about her, as a person. ”
I huff out a breath. Part of me wants to deflect, to bury this conversation tactically.
But I know she just wants to make sure her sister isn’t about to raise a child with someone who couldn’t give a shit about her, and I can’t find it in me to shut it down.
I open my mouth to try to formulate an answer, but she cuts in.
“She’s always protected me,” she says, keeping her voice down so Elena won’t hear. “Since we were kids, she’s just… taken the hits so I wouldn’t have to. The arrangement, the marriage, the business pressure — all of it.”
I swallow. “I know,” I say.
“She’s not had anyone there to take bullets for her like I have,” she adds. “So I need to know that you would. Don’t just… take what you want from her because it’s convenient and she’s there.”
My throat closes. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”
She shrugs. “Not necessarily, but I don’t know. I’ve barely spoken to you.”
My mouth opens, then shuts, the truth of it lodged low in my throat, hot and uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t do that to her,” I rasp, the words coming out like gravel. “I couldn’t.”
I stare at the spot where Elena had been laying, the blanket still askew from where it had been draped over her legs, the echo of her heartbeat and the baby’s coming through the monitor still playing on repeat in my head.
“I care about her,” I say, the words quiet but feeling like a heavy stone dropped in the middle of a pool. It’s not just words — it’s something I’ve been trying not to observe in myself. I drag a hand down my face out of discomfort, trying to find the right thing to say. “She gets under my skin.”
Sarah’s face contorts, her head moving back like a flinch.
“Not like that,” I correct. “It’s not… It’s not duty. Not convenience. She matters to me, Sarah, more than I should admit. She’s in my head, morning to night, and I can’t… I can’t shake her. Not sure I want to.”
Sarah says nothing for a moment. But then she nods, just once, like she’s been waiting for me to admit it out loud, or like she knew I needed to properly acknowledge it to myself.
But now that it’s out, I’m not sure if I stand any chance of trying to get it to go back in.
————
Later that night, I watch from the manor’s front step as Sarah hugs Elena tightly by the open car door.
The driver waits, engine humming, headlights cutting across the gravel.
Elena tucks her face into her sister’s neck, and even from here, I can see the way her shoulders tremble, the way her hands fist into Sarah’s coat like she desperately doesn’t want to let go.
But Ralph White has never been lenient with his daughters, and Sarah has to go.
I look away before I’m caught staring. By the time the car pulls out, the sky’s darkened, the stars just starting to come out, and Elena hasn’t moved from where she’s standing. Her arms are wrapped around her waist, her body still, silent as she watches the empty driveway.
I step down the path toward her. “Hey,” I say softly, reaching out toward her, dragging my hand along her forearm. “You okay?”
She doesn’t answer at first. Just blinks at the gate like she can will the car to come back, then slowly turns her head to me, her eyes glossy and chin wavering. “Can you come back with me? To the cottage?” she asks, her voice a little wobbly. “I just… I don’t want to be alone.”
There’s something about the way she says it that makes my chest tighten.
She’s not fragile. I know that. She doesn’t break easily, but right now, she looks like she’s seconds from it — and it genuinely kills me a little.
“Yeah,” I murmur, pulling her into me just enough to press a kiss to her temple. “Of course.”
We walk across the lawn together, her pace slow, our hands brushing. She doesn’t pull away from me, and instead, just leans into it a bit, stepping in silence into my space.
Inside the cottage, she flicks on the lights and toes off her boots.
I close the door behind us, and for a second, I’m not entirely sure what to do with myself.
It’s the first time since the explosion at dinner that she’s actually asked for my presence, and now that we’re in a smaller space alone instead of outdoors, it feels almost suffocating.
I have to do something.
“Do you want to just… hang out for a bit?” she asks, stepping in front of me toward the sofa. “We could watch something, or—”
I grab her by the wrist and pull her gently toward me, meeting her halfway, and take her face in my hands. Her eyes widen just a little, her mouth popping open, her pupils flicking back and forth between my own.
Then I kiss her.
It’s not heated. It’s not desperate. It’s slow and soft and careful, but certain. Her breath stutters against my lips, but she lets me in, lets me deepen it just a bit before I pull back just enough to meet her gaze again.
She blinks at me like I’ve just tilted her world sideways.
“You’ve had a long day,” I murmur, brushing her cheeks with my thumbs. “Let me give you a massage instead.”
The grin that spreads across her cheeks, sudden and unashamed and adorable, knocks the air out of me. That smile — god, it’s unfair, open and unguarded like I’ve just hung the moon for her. “Yes, please.”
I take her up to her room, arranging the pillows in a way that feels somewhat correct so that she won’t put pressure on her stomach while she gets undressed.
Rummaging through the bedside drawers for oil gets me nothing but a peek at a sex toy that looks like something out of space, and I slip into the bathroom quickly, plucking an oil from the bottom shelf of the medicine cabinet.
She snorts when she climbs onto the pillow mound, just in her underwear, shifting some of them out of the way. “You know I can be on my stomach, right? I’m nowhere near needing to worry about that,” she says, collapsing down on the sheets and resting her head on her forearms.
I throw a knee over her thighs, lowering myself carefully, supporting most of my weight with my heels and ankles.
“I genuinely had no idea,” I admit, gently brushing her blonde waves out of the way before oiling up my hands.
“In my defense, I’ve been focusing more on getting through the first trimester than worrying about what comes next. ”
She breathes out shakily as my hands gently rub along the backs of her shoulders, easy at first. “Yeah, well, we’ve passed that goal post. You’ve got to catch up now,” she grins.
She melts the moment I put a bit more pressure on her muscles, a soft groan leaving her and sending heat straight down my spine.
“Jesus,” she whimpers. “You didn’t tell me you were good at this.”
I chuckle, working the back of her neck with my thumbs. “You probably would have begged me from your knees to marry you if I had,” I tease, coaxing out another groan that’s half from what my hands are doing and half an annoyed grumble. “Couldn’t have you debasing yourself even further.”
“You’re an—ah—asshole,” she grunts, but there’s no heat in it.
I lean forward, careful not to put my weight on her, and press a kiss against her cheek. “I know.”
I work in slow circles, easing the tightness in her shoulders, her neck, then slowly moving down her back as we fall into an easy silence.
My fingers work the spots that feel like they need it first before moving out, working the places that feel good, her skin heating as a groan slips out that sounds slightly deeper than just a standard grunt.
Her skin’s warm, her breath steady, and I can’t help but want to keep my hands on her.
“There was this place,” she says into the quiet, her voice a little muffled as she turns her head into her arms. “Upstate. Near the Adirondacks. Eighty acres, maybe more, of woods and trails and this stream with little rock pools. Sarah and I used to go there a lot when we were teenagers and needed to get away from our parents. We’d get lost on purpose. Pretend it was—ah—ours.”
I keep my hands moving, my lips pursing as I try to work out where she’s going with this. “What happened to it?” I ask, my knuckles brushing softly across her spine, forcing a little shiver.
“She told me it’s being sold.” Her voice is smaller now, sad in a way I wasn’t expecting. “Development. Apartments, probably. It’s stupid, I know, but it… I don’t know. It feels like something important is dying. It’s just been playing on my mind.”
“That’s not stupid,” I murmur, rubbing at a spot I’d already hit that I knew she liked.
She hums like she doesn’t quite believe me, but doesn’t have the energy to argue it. “I haven’t been in years, anyway,” she says, turning her head a bit to look at me over her shoulder. “I just—I liked knowing it was still there. Like a little piece of my past hadn’t been paved over yet.”
I run my fingers along her sides, just gently, calming. “I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head a little, dislodging some of her hair from where I’d tucked it over her shoulder, and I carefully put it back. “Don’t apologize,” she says. “It’s not your fault.”
“No,” I agree, “but I feel bad that that’s happening.”
We sit in silence a little longer, my hands moving to her arms, her hands, careful with her hips and sides.
“I know it isn’t the same,” I offer, my voice low, “but you’re welcome to claim as many acres as you want of Highcourt land for yourself. As long as you're safe with it.”
She snorts softly. “You mean as long as I have a gun with me?”
My thumbs trace back and forth as I hold her waist. “Something like that.”
The grin she gives me is slow, gentle, her eyes fluttering shut. “I’ll think about it,” she whispers. “Thank you, by the way. For staying.”
I don’t say that she doesn’t have to thank me.
I don’t say that I couldn’t have stayed away even if I tried.
Instead, I watch the curve of her shoulders, the slow rise and fall of her back with each breath, taking in the trust she’s giving to let me in not just physically but to that little tidbit of information, too.
And a growing part of me never wants to leave whatever fragile thing we’ve built right now.
And on top of it all, I can’t seem to shake the one question on repeat in my mind: does she feel the same for me that I do for her?