Chapter Twelve #2
“I’ll be back in a minute.” She wasn’t even certain they could hear her. The words came out strained, trembling and barely audible.
Harlow didn’t wait for anyone to comment.
She hurried out of the great room, down the hall toward the bathroom.
To her shock, Wilder was leaning against the bathroom door.
He stepped forward and took her into his arms, pushing the door open with his foot and walking her backward into the privacy of the room.
She buried her face in his shirt and cried.
He wrapped her tightly in the safety of his arms, sheltering her, giving her the freedom to be emotional.
She’d never had that before. Because he was so gentle and loving, she gave herself permission to have a breakdown in front of him, not that it would have mattered.
The floodgates had opened some time ago, and she couldn’t get them turned off.
“I knew this would be hard on you, Harlow, reliving everything. But you do realize the good that’s come from it?
Your friends are with you all the way. Very few people have what you have.
” He interspersed his quiet statements with kisses brushed over the top of her head.
“Each woman in that room would walk through hell for you and with you.”
“I didn’t want Zahra to have to relive the past along with me. She had nightmares for years. It was a very violent attack.”
“You still have nightmares,” Wilder pointed out, using that same gentle voice.
“Zahra wanted to help you. You have to give her that. You’re so used to being the one to look out for everyone that you have a difficult time accepting it in return.
Your friends need to give back. It’s easy to see that the give and take with you women is always reciprocal.
This is your turn to receive, and you just have to let them. ”
He made sense. He did. She might have a difficult time accepting that he was right—she wasn’t used to being on the receiving end—but it wouldn’t be fair to throw Zahra’s disclosure in her face.
“She did it out of love, concern and showing solidarity. It also was brilliant because if Guadalupe is the woman your father assaulted and sent back to Mexico, she might have been wondering if you were deliberately telling her everything about your family because you were suspicious of her. With Zahra bringing the attention to her and taking it from you, the conversation appears far more organic.”
“I protected Zahra’s involvement with my father from everyone.
It was such a horrible time in her life.
The rift with her family, a narrow escape, and then I bring her home with me, believing she would be safe, and the senator corners her and attacks.
It was the last thing she needed. Believe me, if I hadn’t witnessed it and stopped him and then forced my mother to help Zahra, she would have been sent back into a situation where she could have been killed. ”
Wilder let her tell him what he already knew.
He maintained his gentle patience, a trait she would never have guessed he had until she witnessed it several times.
He was always considerate with her, patient and also consistent in his treatment of her.
She went very still as a revelation hit her.
At one of the worst times of her life, she was actually the luckiest woman alive.
She had five friends who would do anything for her.
Stand by her, even if the world around her collapsed.
They took time out of their busy lives to help her when she needed it the most. She had Rainier and the men who worked for him.
Sam. Zale. Good men. Men who would stand by her the way her female friends did.
And there was Wilder. In his quiet way, he had bulldozed every objection, every fear.
He represented safety and acceptance, two things she’d never had.
She’d always been impossibly strong, the helpful, nurturing one, but she’d fallen to pieces, and every one of her friends had immediately come to her aid.
There it was: the one thing she’d always wanted.
Needed. Believed she would never have. It hadn’t come from her birth family, but the bonds were just as strong, maybe stronger because they chose one another.
“I don’t see how I was so blind all this time,” she murmured between hiccups as she tried to get control. “I’m so lucky to have them.” Harlow slid her arms around his neck and pressed her face tighter against his chest. His heartbeat was steady, just like he was.
“We’re all programmed from our childhood, Harlow,” he pointed out in that same gentle tone, interspersing his wisdom with kisses on the top of her head.
“We can fight the trauma, let it take us down, or we can stand up and take responsibility for what happens to us going forward. You stood up, took that responsibility, and it earned you incomparable friends. Family, if you will.”
“And you,” she whispered, admitting it to him. Admitting it to herself.
“I think I was born to be with you,” Wilder said. “You had me from the first moment you were born.” He kissed her temple and gently set her an inch from him. “Wash your face and go back in. They will have changed the subject by now.”
Harlow knew he was right. She did what he said, and they stepped out of the room, Wilder once more sweeping her into his arms to hold her tight against him. She loved the feeling of him, that strength that was so much a part of him.
His head went up alertly, and he looked over her shoulder. She half turned to see Stella sauntering down the hall. “Oh no, Wilder,” Harlow whispered. “I’m sorry. I know you’re supposed to be a huge secret.”
“Hey, Wilder,” Stella said, not sounding in the least surprised. She didn’t look surprised. “Are you okay, Harlow?”
Harlow nodded, her fingers digging into Wilder’s arm.
He was completely relaxed. “I’m just fine, but need to wash my splotchy face again.
It would be nice if I were a pretty crier like Zahra.
She looks good no matter what she’s doing.
” She tipped her head back. “I know Sam would never break a confidence if Rainier asked him not to let anyone know about Wilder, but clearly you did know he was alive and here with me.”
“It wasn’t that difficult to figure out, Harlow, not after we all heard Blom going on about how dangerous Wilder is.
You weren’t freaking out. Not even a little bit.
All of us know how you feel about him. If you believed he was dead or off somewhere hurt, you would be moving heaven and earth to find him.
You’d call in every favor and ask Sam, Zale and Rainier to find him.
You didn’t do any of those things. You didn’t want us to hold our girls’ night at your house.
All of those things added up to Wilder being alive and hiding out with you. ”
Wilder laughed. That laugh. Like velvet running over her skin.
He wasn’t a man to laugh, and yet lately, that’s exactly what he’d been doing.
Harlow often wondered what she was giving to him, what her contribution to their relationship was.
It occurred to her that her role was to give him a semblance of normalcy.
Something simple, like laughter, that so many others took for granted.
With Harlow, Wilder wasn’t living every moment in a state of fight or flight. He could actually relax.
“All of you knew?” Wilder questioned.
“We didn’t discuss it, but I would guess everyone knew,” Stella said with a little smug smirk.
“Raine and Zahra for certain. And Shabina. She’s the master of observation.
Vienna is wicked smart, and she knows Harlow very well.
They spend a lot of time together.” She nodded decisively. “I’d say she knew.”
Harlow rubbed her tear-wet face on Wilder’s shirt. “That’s friends for you. Nothing gets past them.”
“Good thing. I’m going to leave you in good hands if you’re okay now,” Wilder said, stepping slightly away from her so he could frame her face with his hands. “Are you good, mon rêve? I can stay if you need me.”
He melted her heart every single time. “I’m good,” she reassured him.
And she was. She would hate it if Guadalupe, a woman she considered a friend, despised her so much that she would conspire with someone else to leave death threats in her mailbox, but that didn’t lessen the fact that she had sisters of the heart, men who cared to protect her, and Wilder, a partner she never thought she would have.
“I’m good,” she repeated. “Thank you for taking the time to come to me when I was falling apart.”
“Every time,” he assured, and bent his head to brush a kiss on her nose. “Look after my woman, Stella.”
Stella flashed a grin and waved him away. “If you don’t disappear, and we don’t get back to that room, they’ll all be heading this way. Vienna will most likely carry Raine, and Rush will lose his mind. It will be a thing.”
“We can’t have a thing,” Wilder stated, and sauntered off, using the shortcut through the wall to get to the security room.
“Shabina’s home is a maze,” Stella said. “She probably has an entire house behind the walls and underground.”
Harlow tied her hair back so she could splash cold water on her face. “Rainier’s most likely digging out a miles-long tunnel that goes from Shabina’s house straight to his compound.”
“Don’t forget the café,” Stella said. “He would want her to have an escape tunnel from there as well.”
“Someday the entire ground under Knightly will collapse.” Harlow continued her imaginative narrative, although she thought Rainier was perfectly capable of making such a fantasy come true. “Archeologists will be called in to see why there is a labyrinth of tunnels below the town.”
“They’ll find several armories stocked with every kind of weapon imaginable,” Stella added.
“And dungeons,” Harlow supplied. The nonsense was helping to rid her face of the evidence of tears.