He cups my face. “You stayed for your father. You told me that over and over.”
“And she took every step she could to wash away his legacy.”
He tilts my face up, forcing my gaze to his again. “You are his legacy. I will tell you that as many times as you need to hear it until you believe it.”
“Like you’re your mother’s?”
“Yeah, baby. Like I am to my mother, which is the only reason this family lived to see as many days as they have. I didn’t go where they led me. I went where she led me. And you. You kept me from forgetting her wishes. You kept me on the straight and narrow.”
“And Grayson?”
“My mother is why I connected with Grayson. He’s like her. He’s like her in ways he doesn’t even know and I’ve never told him.”
“Good. Good like her.”
“Incorruptible. That man will never care about money more than people. And neither will I.”
“That’s why you saved them. To save me, even before we were us.”
“Us, huh?”
“Yes. Us.”
“Harper,” he says, stroking my cheek. “We were always us. We were always going to end up here.” He laces the fingers of one of his hands with mine. “Let’s go find an office.”
“Eric, I want to go home.”
He leans in and kisses me. “Trust me, baby. You belong here and you need to feel that. We’re picking your office. Then we’re going home, and just so we’re clear, having you say the word home makes me want to take you there, get you naked and keep you naked the rest of the weekend. Say it again.”
“What? Say what?”
“Home. You want to go home, to our home.”
My hand settles on his warm, hard chest, over the thundering of his heart. “I do. I want to go home, to our home. I don’t want to go back to Denver. I thought I’d hate leaving my house behind, but I don’t. I need away from that place. I need away and I didn’t realize how much.”
“Come on. Let’s find that office and then get out of here.” He opens his door and we walk down a hallway, the desk and open area we travel empty of people. It’s a ghost town and I like it. We spend a good hour just looking at a few offices, and talking about who sits where, and what they do, what he thinks of their jobs and performances. It’s an oddly calming process. I don’t know how he knew it would be, but it is, and he was right. I don’t let myself think about where my mother is right this minute. I don’t think about when she will arrive. I just sink into this time with Eric. And that’s easy to do. He speaks of each person he works with, who I now work with, in relation to their work effort and skills, but they aren’t statistics to him. He knows personal things, like how Julie at the corner desk has three kids and Ellen in a particular office is a criminal attorney driven by being the daughter of a man wrongly accused of murder, and later a killer.
I notice these personal observations about him and I fall more in love with this man. He’s a savant who sees himself as a machine, but he’s not a machine at all. He’s more human than most people I know and one day he’ll see this. I’ll see it for him until he can, until he does. “What do you think?” he asks when we pause by a break room. “Which office is yours?”
“I think I should want the one farthest from yours, to fight off gossip and prove myself on my own two feet, but I know how hard I work. I know how hard I’ll go at any project I take on. I’ll prove myself as more than your girlfriend. My work will do that. I want the office you showed me close to yours.”
His arm gently wraps my neck and he pulls me close. “I want you in the office close to me, too, princess.”
“Princess?”
“You are my princess. And for the record, girlfriend isn’t enough, but we’ll talk about that. We have time. We have forever, and you’ll know that soon.” He kisses me. “Let’s go home.”
“Yes,” I whisper. “Please. Let’s go home. I really want to be there with you right now.”
***
Fifteen minutes later, we’re on the street walking in the chilly early evening, our arms linked, the city of New York a chatter of sounds and smells, collapsing around us. I try to focus on the way those things are assaulting our senses, but I can’t live in the moment. I know I have to deal with my mother soon. I know I have to face her. I have to face what she’s become. I even welcome it. This is about to end. I know that when I talk to her, I’ll break her. I’ll make her give me everything. I’m not ready yet, though. I want Eric. I want to feel our bond. I want to revel in what comes next, and that’s him. He’s what is now. He’s what’s next. I want him naked and in the bed we now share as our own.
I want nothing more. Just him. Just us.
He glances down at me, lifts our hands and kisses my knuckles and the look he gives me is tender and yet ravishing. I didn’t know such a look existed. I didn’t know anyone could be everything to me at once, but he is. Eric is all I could ever want and need. The irony is, he doesn’t believe that. He doesn’t know how perfect he is, but tonight…tonight I’m going to show him in every physical way possible. I double-step and pull him with me. I can’t get him to the apartment and alone fast enough.
He drags me to him and stops in the middle of a busy sidewalk, maneuvering us until I’m against a wall. “I’m so fucking crazy about you, I can’t breathe without you,” he says. And right there, on a busy Manhattan sidewalk with people bustling everywhere, we kiss like we’ve never kissed before, like we will never kiss again. He claims me. I claim him. There is a desperation between us I can’t explain. And when we finally part on a breath, he whispers, “We don’t talk about any of this when we get home. We just do us.”