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)
“Fell for me? You hated me enough to try to destroy me then. That wasn’t a long time ago. It’s present day and now you dare to say you love me?”
“I never hated you and I would have told you all of this but the events of the past week have been lightning speed.”
“You’re only telling me now because someone else knows. You’re telling me because the message on the back of that business card made you believe that someone else knows about your plans to destroy me.”
“Do you think I want you to know what a vengeful asshole I was? I am? I didn’t, but I would have told you.”
“When?”
“After you agreed to stay here with me. After I saved your mother so you believed I would.”
Her fingers curl on my chest. My hand comes down on her face, tilting her gaze to mine. “I know this is happening fast, Harper, and I’m not an easy man to understand or live with. This savant thing is hell. I’m hell sometimes in ways you don’t know yet, but I don’t want to do this without you.”
“Do what without me?”
“Everything. Anything.” My voice lowers, a tremble in the depth of my words that I can’t control. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. Stay with me.”
Harper doesn’t immediately respond, her intelligent eyes searching my face for the sincerity in my apology, and my desire to have her with me. “Stay because I can’t live another day, let alone another six years, without you,” I add softly. “Stay because I hope like hell you feel the same.” And with that confession, I wait, I hold my breath, and pray that she doesn't walk away from me and us.
Chapter ninety-one
Harper
I’m reeling. I’m confused.
Eric and I stand in that alcove of the window in his office, the warmth of our bodies doing nothing to wash away the coldness of what he’d planned to do to me and the Kingston empire. “You tried to ruin me,” I whisper. “I still don’t even know what to do with that information.” I step back, force away his touch, and lean against the stone wall behind me; needing the extra support as I search his handsome face, probing his blue eyes that tell a story I need desperately to understand. “It all feels like a lie. We feel like a lie.”
“We’re not a lie.” He steps toward me and presses a hand to the wall just above my head, but he doesn’t touch me. I want him to touch me. I want to push him away. I’m a conflicted mess where this man is concerned.
“Nothing I have told you is a lie, Harper. If I wanted to ruin you, you know me well enough to know I would have. I stopped before I went too far.”
“I can’t get over how far you took it. You met with bankers.”
“But I didn’t do it.”
“You should have told me on your own. Not because that message I was given at the hospital forced you to. Not because I overheard your conversation with Grayson.”
“What you overheard was pieces of a bigger picture, not the full picture. It’s been a crazy few days. I would have told you.”
“Grayson didn’t believe you were going to tell me.”
“Grayson doesn’t know all that’s transpired the past few days. He doesn’t know how much either of us have had to digest. He doesn’t understand the extent of this war which we’re in together. Together, Harper, and fuck, I want to touch you right now, but I feel like you don’t want me to. I would have told you. I swear to you on my mother’s memory, God rest her soul.”
“No.” My hands come down on his chest, heat and emotion spiking between us with the connection. “No, don’t do that. Don’t swear on your mother’s memory. I believe you. I have to believe you would have told me because any other place my mind goes is not a good place. I don’t want to believe that you saw my visit as a way to attack that family.”
“I was done with them,” he replies, his voice a snap of barely contained anger. “I went back for you. I saved that damn family for you.”
“Saved them from yourself?”
“Yes. You saved them from me. If we’re going to be honest here, you saved them from me more than once, at least where my father’s concerned.”
“How do I believe I have that power? Why would I have that power?” I shake my head. “I don’t know how I have that power.”
“And yet you do. There are only three people in my life who have ever been able to pull me back when I’m charging forward: my mother, Grayson, and you.”
“I want to be able to do that for you, but we just talked about trust on the plane. You say you would have told me—”