He drags me close. “There’s no protecting you from me. I told you, if you run, I’ll run faster.”
“And yet, you shoved me away today.”
His expression tightens. “Because I don’t want to have to run after you, Harper.”
“But you think you’ll have to,” I say, and it’s not a question. He made this point tonight.
“Look. Harper, baby. I’d just confessed a fear of my father dying, which contrasted my desire to kill the bastard. That conflicting slew of emotions drove home who I am: my father’s bastard son. When you called him the devil, this family the devil, it was in a moment when I was connected to them in an uncomfortable way.”
My hand settles on the warm, hard wall of his chest. “I want you to trust me. I want you to believe in me.”
His hand covers mine. “Let’s go eat. Let’s share a meal. Let’s just be you and me for a few hours.”
“You don’t trust me,” I whisper, my chin and lashes lowering with the defeat of this moment.
His finger slides under my chin, lifting my gaze to his. “Of course I trust you.”
“No, but it’s okay. I know how much and many ways you’ve been betrayed. Trust comes with time and experience.”
“I trust you, Harper, or you wouldn’t be here.” He cups my face. “And I trust me. I know me and you don’t yet. Not in all the ways you will one day. You’ll know the savant and the man, and you are uniquely equipped to see the Kingston in me.”
“You’re right. I am and I already do. Kingstons are driven, powerful, smart. You are those things, but you’re also your mother’s son. You’re a Mitchell, which means humble, kind, compassionate. And I’ll remind you of that over and over if I have to.”
His eyes warm. “As long as you remember, I’ll remember.”
“Tonight—”
“I dealt with grieving for a man I hate, who all but killed my mother. That fucked with my head. I need us tonight.”
Us.
He needs us.
“Don’t forget that,” I say. “Don’t push me away like you did tonight. Pull me closer. Talk to me like you are now. Be with me and—”
He cups my head and kisses me. “I will.” His lips thin and he amends, “I’ll try. They trigger me, Harper. I won’t lie and say they don’t, but if I step back, just step with me.”
“Yes,” I whisper, my eyes burning, emotion welling inside me. “Yes. I will. I will always step with you.”
He laces the fingers of one of his hands with mine and kisses my knuckles. “My turn to say: remember that.”
We share a smile and in that moment, I feel the growth between us, the expanding bond, the intimacy. I start to turn away and he pulls me back to face him. “Harper, I know what it’s like to be in a house that doesn’t feel like home. This is your home. Our home. I will make sure you are fully settled before we leave here again. And I meant what I said, if we have to buy a new place to make that happen—”
“We don’t. We don’t need a new place. No place is home. People are home. You’re home to me. The only home I’ve had in a long—a very long—time. I do need to feel stable. I need solid footing but this apartment isn’t what does that or even my place in Denver. You do. We do.”
“We do,” he agrees. “You’re home to me, too, Harper. Never, not one time tonight when we were fighting did I think—this is it, I want her gone. I thought—this is it—I can’t lose her. I won’t lose her.”
I wrap my arms around him. “You won’t. That’s a promise.”
“Never break a promise, Harper,” he says. “And neither will I.”
And there it is. In a short conversation, we’ve defined what matters to us both: home, stability, and most importantly, trust. We both need to trust each other, especially when we might turn our backs and be stabbed by a Kingston at any moment.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Harper
Eric calls downstairs to have our shopping haul delivered and then pulls on a T-shirt, while I dress in a pair of black tights and a black tee from the things Mia bought for me. Not long afterwards, the bellman arrives, and while Eric talks to him, I place t