First Comes Love (Love Comes To Town)

God, have I been an idiot.

What am I thinking, asking him to put Storm Inc. on the line like that? How could I be so selfish? This is his life and family we’re talking about.

“Forget it,” I say quickly. “That was unfair of me.”

I rise.

Now that I’ve told him, I have to let him go while I can still bear to. Maybe Greyson hasn’t given me a real answer, but he doesn’t need to. His face has already said it all.

“Don’t feel like you owe me anything,” I say coolly. “I’d still like that glowing reference, but that’s it. I can handle myself from here on out.”

“Harley, wait,” he says.

I pause.

“I…” He swallows. “Can I just have some time to think? This is all so sudden. And I…” He exhales. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Of course,” I say, already walking away. Greyson isn’t uncertain—he’s buying time. Time to figure out a delicate way to say that the only involvement he wants is a check to soothe his guilty conscience. I saw his face. The last thing I want to do is to guilt him into anything he doesn’t want. “It’s fine, really. You go live your life. I’ll go live mine. Just thought you should know.”

And then I keep on walking away.

“Harley,” he says from behind me.

But I don’t stop. Can’t.

If I stop, it’ll all spill out, all the unfair and ridiculous hopes I have that somehow we can still be together, make this work without toppling his company. That he’ll choose me.

But I can’t stomach rejection again, not after my deepest wish got nothing more than a stunned blink in response. If Greyson was going to choose me, us, he would’ve done so in the first place, back before this pregnancy was even a thing.

He’s already made his decision.

Back inside our place, I sink onto the couch and look at Hannah.

“That bad?” she asks quietly.

Even Anchovy is curled into a sad ball on the armrest.

“Yeah,” I say, not letting the grief settle, not letting myself curl on the couch beside Anchovy in my own sad ball. I force a smile. “I have an idea.”Chapter 33Greyson

What… just happened?

I came here, excited and worried and frustrated, expecting… I don’t know. Not that. Definitely not that.

If I closed my eyes, I could still see her face perfectly clear: makeup-free, gorgeous beyond all reasonableness, sad. As if we’d lost each other again.

With how she walked away just now, have we?

I stare at the picnic table’s scratchy grain, trying to get my head around it all. A baby.

Her and my… baby. And her idea of what I should do: leave the company. Then backtracking. It was too much to process right then.

All I knew was that as soon as I’d seen her, seen that she was OK, something inside of me relaxed, warmed.

And now all is tense and cold again. I hurt her again, I could see that.

I get out my phone, ready to call her up, tell her to come back down, talk this out with me. I pause.

That would be a very bad idea. My head isn’t any clearer than it was when we were talking.

This has all been too sudden. I need to sober up, sleep. Get my head straightened out. And then, when I’m ready, I’ll go to her.

After I call up the cab, it comes quickly enough.

Back at my place, Nolan and his date are already passed out under a blanket on my wraparound leather couch. Landon’s muscular physique is just visible at the microwave heating up… an entire tin of apple pie?

“Want some?” he asks, as if this is a perfectly natural thing to be doing at two in the morning.

“No?” I say.

In bed, I lie there, eyes closed, fatigue closing on me like a vacuum. Sleep doesn’t come.

Only the scraping certainty that I’ve failed Harley yet again.

**

I awake to the serene sounds of a burbling brook.

“What… the fuck?” I grumble.

Landon smiles. “Rise and shine, brother. We have work to get to, remember? Isn’t the alarm I set for you nice?”

I swipe at my phone, glare at the time I see. “It’s 5 AM for fuck’s sake!”

He nods, straightening his tie in my mirror. “Thought I’d wake you before I headed out for the gym. Nolan pranked your phone by changing your alarm to ‘Who Let the Dogs Out’ for noon.”

“Fucker,” I mutter.

Guess waking up at 5 AM beats waking up at noon. Although I feel like shit.

“Everything OK last night?” he asks, his eyes meeting mine in the mirror.

“Meaning?”

“You jetted off—probably to see that cinematographer I’m assuming?”

When I don’t answer, he continues, “Then you came back looking like absolute shit.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not,” he says smoothly.

“Good.”

“Good.” Landon heads for the door, throwing me a wave. “See ya.”

I glare at his receding back. Trust him to throw salt in a wound that I didn’t even know I had. Not that I thought things were at all OK after last night. Just—I don’t need any more reminders that things are fucked. Royally.