Chapter 12
TWELVE
HARPER
On impulse, I reach out to grab Caleb’s hand and drag him toward the stairs. I don’t dare look behind me to see if anyone can see us from the living room or back deck, but I don’t think they can.
It’s too late to stop now that the house of cards is suddenly crashing down.
“Harper?” Caleb sounds so confused, even as his hand clamps down on mine while I start dragging us up the stairs. “What’s going on?”
“I need to talk to you somewhere alone. Now.”
I don’t dare look at him as I continue all but running up the stairs, him on my heels, still connected by his unrelenting grip on my hand.
Everything I thought I knew is rupturing in real time, and I don’t know what I’ll do if he makes eye contact with me right now. His grip is steady. He feels it and he’s in it with me even before he knows what it is.
I just know I have to have this meltdown somewhere private.
I head for his bedroom, but when I shove open the door, it’s not his orderly little full-size bed and the old band posters he used to have arranged at regular intervals on his wall.
Instead, there are gorgeous Ansel Adams black-and-white photographs mounted in sophisticated black frames on the walls, and the bedroom has clearly been transformed into a little office.
“Here.” He ushers me inside and shuts the door behind us as I pace manically back and forth on the familiar wood floor that is the only familiar thing about the room.
“Harper? What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
What’s wrong? What’s wrong?!
My fingers press my temples.
Oh, just the little fact that I’d never seen a picture of you as a child before, and now that I have, I’ve just realized you might as well be my son's identical twin.
THAT’S what’s wrong.
Which means, which means…!
Which means Z isn’t his father.
Caleb is.
Even thinking it takes my breath away. But I don’t dare say that out loud yet.
If I say it out loud, that makes it true.
It is true, you fucking idiot.
Because I am, aren’t I?
My eyes shoot to Caleb. Holy shit.
“Harper?” he asks. And it’s only now that I fully allow myself to take him in—just how fucking gorgeous he is as a grown man. “What? What is it?”
My hands crave to touch him. He’s all I’ve wanted but never let myself have because I was trying to be noble and good, and because—
I pace away from Caleb again.
Because I’m the world’s biggest idiot and the most na?ve, trusting fool.
I thought I was such a hard-ass who trusted no one—I just had one gigantic blind spot. Zedekiah Dawson.
There were so many things I never questioned because I trusted Z. Oh my God, I trusted him! About everything.
Suddenly, that awful night flashes through my mind. The night I got so drunk and woke up undressed the next morning. The night that changed everything.
It always felt wrong to me. I never thought I would ever betray Caleb like that.
But now that I know what a lying, manipulative fuck Zedekiah actually is, I mean—I drag my hands down my face. Oh my fucking God.
Did… we even? Z and me? Or did he—
My hand covers my mouth.
Oh, fuck, I’m gonna be sick.
Did he ra—
Then I shake my head. No. I remember thinking the next morning that I didn’t even feel sore down there. I thought that meant I must have wanted it and that Z must have been telling the truth when he said I climbed on top of him.
Because I never considered the alternative.
It never even entered my mind that Z could be lying about the entire fucking thing. That he might be using the fact that I trusted him so implicitly against me—
I’m going to kill that fucking bastard!
“Harp? Your face keeps changing expressions every three seconds. Seriously, what is going on?”
“What?” I blink over at him.
And that’s when it hits me. If Z was lying to me the entire time—
I never betrayed Caleb.
It was only after Z tricked me into thinking the baby was his that I slept with him. Which is really fucked up, and I’m going to have to seriously work through that… another time. Because I’ve lost too much already.
Caleb got destiny-swapped by a truly sick motherfucker who stole what was supposed to be our future—
“Harp,” Caleb asks, “What is it? You’re starting to scare me.”
I open my mouth. There’s so much to explain. My son is our son. Holy shit. Caleb has an entire child he doesn’t even know about.
There’s so much to take back.
Can we?
I barely know anything about Caleb’s life now. I’ve gotten the smallest sliver of a picture today.
No wonder Z tried to keep me away from Dallas all this time. He knew all it would take was one single conversation, and his house of lies would come crumbling down. Oh God, it’s been so fragile this whole time, but still, enough to build my entire life on a lie.
Because even back then, Z saw that the love between Caleb and me was the lasting kind. So he took what he wanted the only way he could—by stealing it.
Caleb stomps toward me and snatches my hand the next time I spin to pace across the room, and his touch lights up every nerve ending I have.
For the first time in ten years, I feel fucking alive again.
And I know only one thing for certain.
I’m done wasting time.
I’m done letting anyone or anything steal what should have rightfully been ours all along.
It’s as if my body has a mind of its own when my hands lift to grab Caleb’s chiseled face to force him to look into my eyes.
And then I whisper the only three words that have ever mattered between us.
“I love you, Caleb. I never stopped loving you.”