Total pages in book: 211
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
“Okay,” she says. “And since that’s not news to me, keep talking. What do you really have to say to me?”
Too much. Not enough. Too fucking much. I walk to the sunken alcove that frames the only window in the room, folding my arms in front of my chest. I don’t know what to say to her and seconds tick into a full minute before she steps to my side. My side, where I want her to remain. Together, the way it should be, we stare out of the glass. “This skyline,” I say finally, indicating the jagged edges of buildings and the ocean that is our view, “this damnable skyline is what I thought would make me forget the mountaintops of Denver I always loved so damn much.”
“But it didn’t? It doesn’t?”
I turn and lean on the inner wall of the alcove and she does the same, facing me. I meet her stare, I let her see the truth she questions in my eyes. “There are times when my mother is in my memories—times when I wanted the mountains back. When I wanted what I couldn’t have. Times when I wanted to destroy every Kingston that lives and breathes.”
“Past tense?”
“For the most part, yes but I have nightmares, Harper. They come and go and all of them are either about my time living with the Kingstons, or about my mother, and how that family all but held a gun to my mother’s head.”
“How often?” she asks, sounding worried. “How bad?”
“Not often, not any more, and as for how bad? Bad. Really fucking bad. So much so that I usually take a week off at the office, hole up in here and get a grip on myself. I still work, but I’m absent from the rest of the world to avoid any exterior triggers.”
“Grayson knows?”
I nod. “Yes. Grayson knows.”
Her lips thin and her expression tightens. “What else does he know that I should know?”
“The last time it happened was right after I heard about the second Kingston recall. The company was weak, ripe for an attack.”
“An attack?” she asks. “By who?”
“A lot of people, but in this case, I’m referring to me. I set out to weaken them and take them over. Grayson knew. It was a business move, nothing more, our path into the automobile industry, or that’s how I painted it.”
“And Grayson believed that?”
“No, Grayson believed it was personal but if it finally gave me closure, he wanted me to have closure.”
“What about all those morals you say he possesses?”
“He’s a businessman and it’s not like someone else wouldn’t have done it, had they seen the opportunity. We both knew we’d treat the employees and the customers better. We’d make them all safe. We’d make them all more secure.”
“And I was a Kingston. Is that where this is going? It didn’t matter if you hurt me?”
“Yes,” I admit. “Exactly. I had plans to ensure your trust fund was defunct. You’d never see it. I did that because I didn’t want the Kingstons to have a way to use it to save themselves, which is exactly what they did. They used your money and—”
She tries to move away. I catch her arm. “Harper. Damn it, you agreed to listen. To hear me out.”
Her eyes are fire and pain. “You tried to destroy me. Didn’t you?” Her voice trembles with barely contained anger. “Is that why my trust fund is gone? Was I supposed to come to you and beg for help? Was I?”
“No. No. And no. Listen to me. I told you I wanted to ruin them. I told you I included you in the Kingston family. I never held that back.”
“Did you take actions to destroy me and my mother?”
“I prepped a plan. I didn’t act, but I was close. I even negotiated with the banks that Kingston uses for their credit lines to strip them away. Now, ask the next obvious question.”
“Why didn’t you do it?”
“You. You are the reason I didn’t do it.”
“You say that now but—”
I drag her to me. “Ask Grayson. I was sixty seconds from pulling the switch but you stopped me.”
“Me? You hadn’t seen me in years.”
“I did. I had. I went to Denver to finish the takeover. I was at the bank when you walked in. You fought with Isaac. I didn’t know why. I couldn’t hear you, but you fought with the same fierceness I always felt when I fought with him, when I believed I was right and he was wrong. When something mattered to me. Watching you with him made that night in the cottage come back to me. That conversation you and I had about your need to protect your father’s empire came back to me. You’re the reason I backed out of the takeover. I know it sounds impossible. I knew it then, and I know now, but I fell hard for you the moment I met you, harder than I wanted to admit. That’s why I never forgot you. That’s why I tattooed you on my damn arm.”