“Hello,” I said. I couldn’t say “mother.” I didn’t know her. The woman I had always thought of as my mother was an image of a young woman with laughing hazel eyes and a big smile. One that was full of life. That was my mother. This woman . . . she wasn’t someone I knew.
“Harlow, this is your mother, Emily. Emmy, this is Harlow. Remember that sweet baby girl you held? We look at her pictures and talk about the things we did and places we went? She was too small when she was born, and we were so scared we would lose her. But we didn’t. You loved her too much to let her die. You did a good job, honey. She’s all grown up now.”
Emily Manning continued to stare at me. I wanted to accept that she was the woman in the photos I’d spent my childhood staring at and daydreaming about. But then that broke my heart even more. The happy, vibrant woman was gone. This was what was left.
“She’s old enough to come see you now. Would you like that? If I brought her here with me sometimes?” Dad asked as he pulled the chair up beside her and held her hand in his. “I think it would make you smile more. You know I love to see you smile.”
This wasn’t happening. I was asleep. Nothing seemed real.
“Come over here so she can see you better, Harlow. She doesn’t do well with far distances,” my dad said without taking his eyes off Emily’s face.
I was afraid to argue with him. It was obvious he would move heaven and earth to make sure she was happy. I sure didn’t want to be the one to upset her.
I walked over to her, and she followed my every move with her eyes. Her eyelashes batted quickly and she made a grunting noise.
“That’s close enough,” Dad said. “Don’t make her nervous.”
I stopped.
“She looks like you. Can you see that? She has your beautiful mouth and hands. And her hair—that’s all you. God knows mine is shit,” he told her affectionately.
Her body leaned over toward Dad. I wasn’t sure if she just slipped or if she was trying to get closer to him. “It’s okay. See, I have you right here with me. I wouldn’t let anyone in here hurt you, would I? You know I take care of my favorite girl,” he said, pressing a kiss to her head.
The emotion in my chest exploded and I understood it now. This wasn’t about me. This wasn’t about what I had been denied. The bitterness of betrayal faded to sorrow in that moment. Not for me—not because I hadn’t been given a chance to know my mom—but for my dad. Tears pricked my eyes and I knew I was going to cry. He was killing me. His devotion and obvious love for her was breaking me in two.
“I need to go into the other room a moment,” I told him as my eyes filled with tears.
“Go on,” he said as he turned Emily back around to face him.
“We’re going to let her get a drink and rest. She’s traveled a long way to see you today,” I heard him explaining to her. Did she even understand him? Was he just talking to her to make himself feel better because he missed her so much?
By the time I walked into the sitting room area, tears were streaming down my face. I covered my mouth to hold in the sound of my sobbing. My strong, hard, powerful father, who loved to tell the world “fuck you” and live like he had no worries, was sitting in there holding my mother’s hand and treating her like a queen. As if she were the most precious thing in this world. I had always known he loved her. He made sure everyone knew that the day he lost her marked him for life. But the scene I’d just witnessed? Oh, God, my heart hurt so much.
People saw him as a legend. He had it all. They worshipped him. Yet none of them knew. I hadn’t known. I had always seen him as strong and impossible to hurt. I knew that wasn’t true anymore. That illusion was gone. My father hurt. He hurt more than I could have ever imagined.
I sank down onto the sofa and buried my face in my hands and cried. I cried for the woman in there whose life was cut too short. I cried for the little girl who never got to know her. But mostly I cried for the man who would always love her, even if she would never again be the one he fell in love with.
Grant
The moment I got into the rental car my phone rang. I reached for it and saw Nan’s name on the screen. I started to ignore it but decided it was time to deal with her. I wasn’t going to hide the fact I was seeing Harlow. Besides, she was with August.
“Yeah,” I said. She must’ve had some reason for calling, so I’d let her get that out.
“Where are you?” she demanded.
“Why?”
“Because Harlow’s gone, you’re gone, and Mase is gone. Where the f**k are you?”
“You need to keep up with your roomies better,” I drawled, bored already by this conversation.
I needed a cigarette whenever I talked to her. I was doing good. I hadn’t had a smoke in two months. I wasn’t about to let Nan send me backpedaling.
“I don’t give a shit where those two are but I want to know if you’re with them. I won’t let that happen. Do you understand me?”
I understood that she was delusional, as always.
“Nannette, if I start sleeping in Harlow’s bed, there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it. So back the f**k off. It’s over. I’m tired of being your backup.”
The boiling rage implicit in her silence made me smile. I liked pissing her off.
For so long I had just wanted to make her smile. I had wanted to save her from herself. But she’d made sure to destroy all those feelings in me. Sleeping with one man after another and rubbing it in my face, then calling me the moment she needed someone. I had let her use me, and slowly it had eaten away at me. Being needed was something I thought I wanted. I thought it would make me feel like I had a purpose. What I hadn’t realized was I had become Nan’s bitch. That was a sour pill to swallow. Backing out of her life hadn’t been easy, but once I had managed to kill my feelings for her and accept that she was bitter and angry, and that I could never change that, I had been a happier person. Sleeping with her when I was drunk was just easy. I knew what to expect in the morning. I knew I was no longer in danger of falling in love with her.
“Is this because I’m screwing around with August? You’re being childish. I told you I just wanted to do the friends with benefits thing for a while. I don’t like serious, and you wanted serious.”
I’d been f**king insane. She’d saved us both from hell—I should thank her for that.
“I’m bored, Nannette. The benefits thing is over. We’re in the past. I don’t want it from you anymore. You can f**k whomever the hell you want to, and I’m okay with that. Hell, if he needs a condom I’ll tell him where I left my stash.”
Nan squeaked in disbelief. “You think she’s sweet and pretty, but that’ll get old, too. She’s uptight and boring. When you’re done trying to f**k Harlow, don’t come running back to me when you realize it wasn’t worth the effort.”
I didn’t take the bait. She was fishing. I wasn’t stupid and I wasn’t about to give her anything to throw in Harlow’s face later. Nan played games. Mean, brutal games.
“Who I decide to spend time with is my business. I’m not yours, Nan. Never was. Now, if you’re done I have important things to get to.”
“Where are you?!” she screamed into the phone.
“Not in Rosemary,” I replied, then hung up the phone and dropped it. Nan had been a hard lesson to learn. She was the kind of girl her father had warned me about. Loving Nan would only lead to disaster. Good thing I never really fell in love with her . . .
My phone rang again before I could think too much about Nan.
This time it was Rush.
“Hey,” I said, thankful for someone I could actually talk to.
“Just talked to Dad,” was his only reply.
“Yeah. It’s f**ked up. I’m headed there now. She wanted to go alone but I want to be there when she leaves.”
“You and her talk things out before all this shit happened?”
We talked it out, all right. We talked it out in ways I hadn’t expected.
“Yeah, we did. We weren’t done but then Dean dropped this on her and she was gone.”
“I’m having a hard time believing this, and it ain’t even my momma. I can’t imagine Harlow is handling this well. She seems so breakable.”
I pushed back the possessiveness that rose up in me. Thinking about Harlow being breakable upset me. I didn’t want to think about that. Not when I wasn’t there to catch her.
“Not gonna lie. I’m pissed at your dad. He just blurted it out—no preparation or anything. That kind of shit needs to be eased into. He didn’t ease into it.”
Rush sighed. “Yeah, well, he’s not exactly good with words. He just says what he’s thinking.”
That excuse wasn’t enough for me. Dean was on my shit list.
“Nan is looking for you,” Rush said.
“She called me,” I replied. This was not something I wanted to talk about with him. Nan wasn’t one of my favorite people but she was still his family.
“She’ll eat Harlow alive. Be careful.”
Not what I expected him to say but I agreed.
“I know. I won’t let Harlow get hurt.”
“If you do then Kiro will never accept Nan. She needs him to accept her. She might not deserve it, but she needs it.”
I should have known his concern was more for Nan than Harlow.
“I won’t let her near Harlow,” was my only response.
“It would be nice if you wanted into the panties of someone who isn’t Kiro’s offspring. Less complicated.”
I just laughed. Yeah, it would be, but Harlow . . . well, she was Harlow.
Harlow
“You can’t go in there looking like that,” Dad said as he entered the room. “You’ll scare her.”
I lifted my tear-streaked face to see my father. I would never see him the same way again. No matter how many girls he screwed around with and how many crude things he did or said. All I would be able to see was the man in there holding my mother’s hand.
“I came here angry. At you. At Grandmama. But now, I’m just . . .” I shrugged. I couldn’t say heartbroken. I didn’t want him to know his pain had shattered my heart.
“I was protecting her. You were a kid. You wouldn’t have been able to understand, and you would have upset her. I couldn’t let that happen, Harlow. I love you, kid. I’ve always loved you. You are the only piece I have of the woman I met and fell completely in love with. But she’s still here, even if that spirit is gone. And I’ll protect her with my life. She’ll always come first. Even before you.”
I just nodded, because I got it. Before I arrived, I’d thought there was nothing he could say that would prevent me from hating him. What I hadn’t expected was that all it would take was to see him with her. He hadn’t needed to say a word to me.
“How often do you come see her?” I asked.
Dad walked over to the fireplace and leaned against the stone. “Three, four times a week.”