“I will be soon.”
“Willyou?” he asked. “The same way youwilleat the food I make for you? The same way youwilltake time to rest on the weekends?”
This again? Matthew had tasked himself with personally seeing to my well-being. He’d inserted himself into my life as if he wasn’t my personal assistant but my dietitian, my doctor, my sleep therapist, and whatever else he deemed was his business on any given day. Everyone else had fucked off and left me alone. Why couldn’t he?
“I don’t have time for this.”
“You don’t have time for anything,” Matthew responded quickly. “You’re always busy, always working. You are more than that company, Harper.”
I huffed. “Am I, Matthew? Where? Tell me where I exist outside of that building. Tell me what else I have.”
He stood and marched over to me. “You haven’tallowedyourself to have anything.”
“I don’t have a choice!”
“You always have a choice!” Matthew had never yelled at me before. I didn’t know what to do with it. “You arekillingyourself!”
My mask faltered, the façade cracking. “So what?”
The rage in his features faded, hurt replacing it. “What do you meanso what?”
“I’m going to bed.”
“No you aren’t.” His long legs covered ground twice as fast as mine until he was standing in front of me. “Talk to me.Please.Because I can’t do this anymore. I can’t sit and watch you starve yourself and wither away to nothing. You’re punishing yourself for something. I can’t let you keep doing it. Whatever has happened, it’s enough now.”
My eyes burned. “It isn’t.”
His filled with tears. “Please. Tell me. Let me help you.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because… because you’re the only person left who I care about. I can’t lose you too.”
His tears fell as he stepped in closer. His hand found my shoulder, and he pulled me into him. “You could never lose me, Harpy.”
The nickname burned me. Hooked the Benny and Logan that haunted me at my core and dragged them to the surface, out of the shadows and into the light. “You can’t say that.” My voice trembled. I refused to hug him back. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Matthew’s hand rubbed my back. It was the most anyone had touched me in six months. “I was never fortunate enough to find a wife or have children of my own, but that doesn’t bother me. Do you know why?”
I shook my head.
“It’s because I had you and Logan. When I started working for your mother, you were so small. You should have learned to talk, but you hadn’t yet. You wouldn’t. Your parents tried to get you to, and you just wouldn’t. So I would talk to you. I’d let you show me things in the way you wanted to, and then you spoke to me and I was so happy. And I thought maybe you just hadn’t spoken yet because you didn’t have anyone who would listen to you.”
My mask crumbled. My arms wrapped around Matthew, clinging to him as I’d wanted to all this time.
“I was listening then.” He sniffed, his fingers running gently through my hair. “And I’ll listen now. Even if no one else will listen, Ialwayswill.”
I didn’t remember any of that. I’d known Matthew had started as my mother’s personal assistant, and that he’d been pushed into being a nanny when Logan had become attached to him. Mom hadn’t known what to do with children, even before all the pills. She still didn’t. But Matthew had been there for us more than either of our parents.
I wanted to tell him. I wanted to let him in. I wanted him to accept me despite it all.
“Come.” He pulled me toward the sofa and sat me down. “You stay here. I’ll be right back.”
I brought my knees up to my chest and hugged them. A short moment later and Matthew returned with a yellow plush blanket. “Where did you get that?”
“I bought it for you when you moved in here because it reminded me of Celestine. I put it in the linen closet in the hall.”
