“Your daughter deserves you in her life.”
“I’m not just doing it for her anymore.” I held her gaze. “I want to be in your life too.”
Those beautiful green eyes, the ones that reminded me of grass on a sunny day, held mine for a long moment.
“Harper …” I held my palm open, waiting for her to take my hand. When her warm palm slid against mine, I felt my heart rate settle and my blood pressure drop. She was my calm in the middle of the storm I’d been living in for fourteen years.
“I love you,” I said. “Trust me, there’s nothing I want more than to get out of here and build a life with you.”
She exhaled slowly. “Then that’s all you need to say. We don’t need to talk about what might happen. We need to focus on positive energy and manifest the outcome we want.”
My lips twitched. “Manifest?”
“Yes.” She lifted her chin, a hint of that stubborn optimism breaking through. “Feel like what we want is going to happen. Visualize it.”
I studied her. The soft curve of her mouth. The determined set of her shoulders. This woman had been through hell and still believed in things like manifesting and positive energy.
How was she even real?
“And what is it that you want, Harper?”
I needed to hear it from her. Why would this goddess of a woman settle for an inmate? A convicted murderer with eleven more years on his sentence if the hearing went sideways?
She didn’t hesitate. “I want to be there when those gates open. I want to bring you home and wake up next to you and have breakfast with you and dinner with you and every meal in between.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Moving in together? Don’t you think that’s skipping a few steps?”
She smiled and shrugged, that lightness dancing in her eyes again. “I just want to make up for all the lost time.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, forcing myself to say the thing that had been gnawing at me. “Let’s address the elephant in the room. Say the best-case scenario happens, and I get released. But then, after spending real time with me on the outside, you realize I’m not the man you want.”
“Doubtful.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Harper. I don’t want you staying with me out of obligation or guilt.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise me.”
She held up her hand like she was swearing on a Bible. “I promise. If you suck, I will kick your ass to the curb so fast, your head will spin.”
A chuckle escaped me. “Good.”
“Now”—she picked up her tablet again—“let me finish your exam.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Harper moved around me, checking my pupils again, testing my reflexes. But my favorite part was when she lifted my shirt to check my ribs.
I lay back on the exam table, unable to keep my eyes off her. Off the way she bit her bottom lip in concentration. Off the way her fingers pressed gently against my bruised skin, clinical and careful.
Clinical and careful, and yet every single touch lit me up like a live wire.
“You could look less thrilled about this exam,” she muttered.
“You’re touching me. So, that’s not possible.”
She shook her head, but I caught the hint of a smile. “A masochist. Great. That’s what I’m dealing with.”
