Chapter 24 Harry
Harry
Dinner is, apparently, a slow spiral into hell.
Elena sits beside me, an empty wine glass in front of her, her gaze fixed somewhere between everyone.
Grace is on my other side, refilling hers before the appetizers hit.
Liam stares at his lap, clearly playing on his phone beneath the table.
Joe and Ann and Sienna are across from us, casual and calm, but I can tell Elena is on edge and can feel the energy in the air.
Not to mention the comment Joseph made.
I try to pretend like it doesn’t bother me, sipping my wine, listening as people talk.
“You’re in event planning, right?” Joseph asks, his eyes glancing at her empty ring finger. I really should get her something to wear there, even just as a placeholder to make it look less obvious.
“Mhm,” Elena says, her fingers twitching against her napkin. She hasn’t reached out for my leg again yet, but I’m tempted to take her hand anyway, to hold it just to give her a little more confidence. “For my family’s estate. White Distillery.”
Joseph hums, swirling his wine in his glass. “Right, of course. But still… event planning? Not exactly the most profitable arm of the business, I imagine.”
Her brows knit a little. “It’s very profitable,” she says flatly.
“Sure, we’re selling at a lower profit margin, but we’re also charging an arm and a leg for the service.
It’s not just showing up with buckets of wine — it’s hosting and staffing and interacting, and not to mention scheduling, capacity calculations, and resource management. ”
The corner of my mouth twitches, my pride over her standing her ground curdling too quickly into annoyance as Ann leans in with a conspiratorial smirk.
“It’s such a different shift in circumstances for you now, though, isn’t it? From a modest family and career to…” Her eyes drift to me, lingering too long. “Well, all of this.”
I open my mouth to shut it down, but Elena beats me to it. “It wasn’t modest before, and it’s not modest now. I’m not with him for the money, in case that’s what you’re implying.”
“No, no, of course that’s not what we’re saying,” Ann says, her voice too sweet, too suffocating. God. Why are they behaving like this?
Grace’s eyebrow arches as she glances at me, daring me to say something, but part of me is reeling at the fact that they’re doing this in the first place. Joseph and Ann have always been shallow, but never this bad.
“But, you know, these things do tend to move quickly when there’s… urgency involved,” Joe says, and I don’t miss the way his gaze briefly dips to where the table covers Elena’s midsection.
Shit—
Grace sets her glass down with a sharp clink. “You’re being crass.”
“I’m being honest,” he answers. “Harry, surely you’ve considered that this could be—”
“What?” I ask, my voice flat, annoyance slipping into the carefully curated stone I was trying to face this down with.
Joseph gestures vaguely with his hands, trying to get the point across without speaking. When I don’t bite, he says it. “A situation. A planned situation.”
I blink at him. “You’re implying she trapped me.”
He shrugs. “I’m saying it’s not unheard of. You’re not exactly a run-of-the-mill bachelor. There are incentives.”
“Don’t pretend like both of you don’t know exactly what happened in that church,” I counter. “My son didn’t show up. I did what needed to be done, and I’m not exactly upset with the result of—”
“We just want to make sure you’re thinking clearly,” Ann cuts in, folding her hands neatly in front of her. “After Geraldine.”
The name drops like a corpse on the table.
Elena stiffens beside me. I hiss in a breath, my brain trying to catch up, trying to work out if they’d genuinely brought her up or if my mind is playing tricks on me.
Ann leans back, faux-casual and relaxed. “I just mean that it was all so sudden, and we never really knew anything about the Whites since she was meant for George,” she says, her voice so obviously dripping with fake worry. “Forgive us for being a little protective.”
“Protective?” I repeat, setting my glass down. Irritation bubbles in my blood, threatening to tip over into everything else. “You’re calling this protection?”
Ann smiles, thin and far more vicious than I’m used to from her. “We worry. That’s all.”
My chair scrapes back. I’m on my feet in a second, my napkin tumbling onto my plate, my hand held out to Elena in offering as I stare Ann down. “I’m not doing this,” I say. “I’m not going to let you spend the evening interrogating the woman I’ve married.”
Elena looks up at me wide-eyed, her hand hesitantly lifting toward my offered one, unsure if she should take it. I force myself not to look at her.
“I’m allowed to fall in love again,” I add, my voice like gravel. “I’m not going to apologize for it or justify it.”
The silence is total, heavy, and so loud it feels like ringing in my ears. Grace exhales beside me like she’s been holding her breath for hours. Ann looks momentarily thrown, like she wasn’t expecting me to react, and sips at her wine. Liam couldn’t be bothered in the slightest.
Joseph sits back, pulls once at his suit jacket. “If you’re sure, Harry,” he sighs, shrugging. “Just don’t let this one get so miserable.”
My throat closes. Grace’s chair scrapes across the floor. He did not—
“Fuck you.” The words leave my mouth before I even realize I’m saying them. “Fuck you both.”
Elena’s hand finds mine, and before I can even catch up with what my body has chosen to do, I’m halfway to the door with Elena in tow, my hand tight around hers.
Grace and Liam trail behind, but my heart is beating too wildly to pay too much attention to anything at all.
I grab my coat from the closet, pass Elena hers, and drag her back out into the night.
Liam drives. I don’t trust myself to, Elena doesn’t know the way, and Grace was two glasses of wine deep.
The air is leaden as Liam fumbles with the controls, his nerves getting the better of him in my car, but the abrupt stops only force me back to the present instead of lingering in my head for too long.
For the most part, no one speaks apart from the occasional reminder to Liam to use his turn signal.
When we park back up at Highcourt Hall, the only sound is the wind whipping through the trees and the faint beep as Liam locks the car before depositing the keys in my waiting hand.
He starts walking toward the far side of the manor, and Grace hesitates, leaning in close to me for the briefest of seconds.
“I’d assume Elena’s had as bad a night as you have,” she murmurs. “Maybe don’t leave her alone tonight.”
She walks off, following Liam, before I can even get a reply in. I’m still burning, still furious, and the last thing I want is for Elena to see it — the best thing for her is, unfortunately, a night without me in it.
I shove the keys into my pocket and stalk across the gravel toward the house, avoiding everything altogether.
I only manage to get a few steps before her voice cuts through the silence.
“Harry?”
I hesitate. She makes me hesitate too easily.
“You’re just going to walk off?” she shouts. Her heels shift the gravel behind me. “After that?”
I turn, slowly, watching as she stalks toward me, her jaw set.
“You haven’t said a word to me since before we sat down for dinner.”
I open my mouth, poised to say something, but my mind is blank. I don’t know what to say to that.
She stops a few feet in front of me, her lips pursing, anger pulling her brows down in the center. “Do you expect me to ignore what you said?”
I swallow. Shit. “I wasn’t expecting you to ignore it.”
“Did you mean it?” She presses, jutting her chin up at me. “Are you falling in love with me? Or was that just a weapon to throw at them for being such—such cunts?”
The words hit like a slap, even if that’s not how she means them.
I don’t let myself overthink it.
I move.
Gravel crunches between us, the floodlight kicking on, haloing her in light. She looks somewhere between angry and confused, her chest rising quickly with each breath.
I close the space. I don’t answer.
I kiss her instead.
It’s not polite, not careful — it’s a collision. I grasp her face in my hands, one sliding around to the back of her neck, holding her to me as I pry her lips open with my tongue, demanding entry. Her hands push against my chest for half a second before tightening in my jacket, pulling instead.
I shift, turning her, pressing her against the pillar by the front door of the east wing. She gasps into my mouth, her body melting and hardening all at once, her hands moving up, cupping the sides of my neck.
When I pull back, my ragged breath clouds between us, my lips hovering over hers.
“I meant it,” I admit, my voice low, my throat closing.
————
My mouth meets hers in a storm of need the moment I get her through the cottage door.
I kick it shut, one hand around her waist, the other seeking out the railing for the stairs as I walk her backward.
I don’t give her time to breathe or time to set her purse down or take off her jacket. I just show her what I need.
The kiss isn’t gentle. It’s a claiming, a silent scream of everything I want to say but don’t have the balls to, and I can taste the sweet hint of her lipstick between my teeth.
“Upstairs,” I rasp, lifting her against me as I finally find the railing.
We’re in her room before I’ve fully wrapped my mind around it all.
Her jacket hits the floor with a light thud, and then mine, followed by my tie and, somehow, my shirt.
I walk her backward to the bed in the dark, only the faint light of a hall lamp guiding me, and memorize the feel of her neck and collarbone beneath my lips as I search for the stupid zipper on her dress.
“Here,” she breathes, the sound almost a laugh, as she guides my hand.
The dress is off seconds later.
I can feel her hands fumbling at my belt, hear the jingling of metal as she sets it free, but I’m too caught up in the way she feels. So soft, so perfect, and every single time my hand brushes the swell of her stomach, over what we’ve made, I nearly lose my mind.
“You’re mine,” I murmur, nipping at her jaw just once before moving my lips over the spot where her pulse thrums.
She nods, and my chest feels like it's swelling.
Everything is a blur of need and anger — but not anger at her, never at her. It’s anger at the world, at the people I’ve surrounded us with, at the reactions, at the ridiculousness of it all when I just want her and the life we’ve made.
My hand’s between her legs before I’ve even realized, her back arching, her mouth parting on a moan against my own.
My cock is in her a moment later.
She opens for me so easily, so desperately, gripping every inch of me as I slide home. “Look at me,” I murmur, but she already is, her chest rising and falling rapidly beneath me as I lift my thumb to her lips, letting her taste. “So fucking perfect.”
Her fingers dig into my shoulders, holding on like I’m the only solid thing in a world that’s tilting off its axis. I set a rhythm that’s not gentle, not rushed, but insistent. Every thrust is a word I don’t have the guts to say aloud.
My mouth finds hers again, swallowing the soft, broken sounds she makes.
I can’t get close enough to her — my palm slides from her hip, over the gentle, impossible curve of her stomach.
The heat of her skin there, the tangible proof of this, sends a jolt through me so violently that my rhythm falters.
“God, Elena,” I rasp against her lips, my voice a broken, gravelly sound. My thumb traces the swell of her. “Look at you. Look what we made.”
She arches, a whimper breaking from her throat, her eyes wide and dark in the dim light. But they’re fixed on me.
I drive into her harder, deeper, chasing away the ghosts, the whispers, the doubt as much as I can. I want to erase everything that isn’t this.
Her nails scrape down my back, a sharp pain that makes my breath catch in the best way. “Harry—”
“I know,” I murmur.
My control splinters. The sight of her beneath me, needy and accepting and fucking pregnant with my kid, is too much. A groan tears from my chest, raw and desperate, and I bury my face in the curve of her neck, my hips pistoning too quickly, too needy.
“Come for me,” I beg, my voice barely more than a broken whisper. “God, please—”
She shatters beneath me, a cry ripping from her, her entire body convulsing beneath me, pulling me under right behind her. My own release crashes through me like a tsunami, filling her, drowning me in heat and light and sheer, overwhelming rightness of her.
For a moment, there is only the sound of ragged breathing and the thundering beat of my heart in my ears.
I stay buried inside of her, my weight settled on my elbows so I don’t crush her, my face still hidden in her neck.
Aftershock after aftershock rumbles through her, squeezing me, making her twitch.
It takes me too long to gain the courage to lift my head and press a kiss to her cheeks, her forehead, her lips.
“I meant it,” I say again. “Every fucking word.”