At least it was for a good cause.
I just kept telling myself that.
The brash decision to ask him to dinner came out of nowhere. I was quick to clarify that it wasn’t a date and made things awkward in the process.Two people who knew each other could have dinner, I’d told him. Fuck, I didn’t even know how to classify our relationship at this point.
I took him toThe Boathouseand opted for the overhang, sitting us right out on the lake. Its surface rippled gently below us, reflecting the soft colors of the fading sun. The air was a cool reprieve from the sweat drying on my skin, and I welcomed its openness. It sure as hell beat the awkward proximity of being locked in the truck with him.
I was acutely aware of everything Harley as we sat in silence over our food. The way he breathed, the way his brows furrowed in thought, the way he picked at his food. He never ate a lot, and that worried me.
“Can I ask you a question?” Harley said finally as he set down his fork, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“I guess that depends on the question, doesn’t it?” I replied around a bite of my burger. The response was a deflection—an easy way to say that I wasn’t sure I could handle whatever he was about to ask.
“I know that my mother had something to do with you going to jail,” he began quietly. I stilled and waited, unsure of where he was going with this.Thiswas the landmine we’d been avoiding at all costs. We talked about the most mundane things, but we never touchedthisconversation. “I don’t know exactly what happened…”
I crossed my arms and leaned back in my seat to stare at him. He stared right back, his expression full of uncertainty while he waited for an answer. I knew what he wanted of me, but I didn’t know if I could give it to him.
There was a laundry list of things I should’ve told him. If I were smart and ruthless, I would’ve ripped the band-aid off and told him everything. I would’ve shown him the kind of woman his mother was.
But I knew that’d hurt him.
Over the past two weeks, I had become aware of the situation with his mother. He was a good man trying to take care of the woman who had slowly chipped away at him for years, but I could see the toll that goodness was taking on him. Every conversation he had with the assisted living center left him frantic and worked up. I pretended not to know that he’d escape to the bathroom to have a panic attack. It was easier if I just kept focusing on what I could fix for him.
But this? I couldn’t give him this.
The truth of who she was would’ve ruined him. If I told him how she had weaponized our relationship, it would’ve crushed him. He was barely hanging on by a thread when it came to her. I didn’t know if he’d survive that truth.
And that weight was one I already knew how to carry. Nothing would change if I didn’t tell him the whole truth.
For Harley, I could be the bad guy.
“I made a mistake, Harley,” I told him. “I did rob your family to help my brother. I did it so Aidan wouldn’t hurt Clifford.”
The words weren’t the whole truth—not by a long shot—but they were close enough. They’d get the job done.
“Oh,” he whispered.
And there it was.
The moment everything clicked in his head as the wrong memories resurfaced—the phone call I could never take back. I could see him replaying it in his head right in front of me, and I hated it.
“The phone call was a lie.” The confession slipped out before I could stop myself. His gaze snapped to mine, searching for some kind of inclination that I was lying. “I was angry, Harley, and I… I just took it out on you because it was easier to hurt you than it was to be honest about my mistakes. You didn’t deserve that.”
I sighed, pushing out a long breath while I worked out the right words to say, because how did I explain this to him?The truth was that I couldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” I let out, my chest tightening. “You deserved better than me, Harley.”
That line placed the blame solely on me, as it needed to. Him knowing would do no good, and I kept that thought on repeat in the back of my mind.
He nodded, absorbing the words carefully as he turned toward the lake, a myriad of emotions dancing across his pretty face. His jaw clenched, and his throat worked as he swallowed hard.
And me? I did nothing because that was my role in all this. I went back to eating, I pretended not to notice the quiet breakdown unfolding across from me as Harley dissected my confession.
“Did you ever love me?” The question cut through every barrier I’d built to protect myself, and I glanced at him. He pointedly watched the water, those blue eyes unnaturally bright in the sunset. “I just need to know if any of it was real.”
Okay fair.I could understand that.
“Yeah, I didn’t lie about that,” I whispered. The words felt too small for something that had once consumed my life.
