avoidance I want to poke holes in but I’m naked and Savage is at the door, so I let it go. And for now, only now, I let Eric go, too. He scoops up my clothes and sets them on a barstool. I start dressing as he adjusts his pants, and then grabs his T-shirt. It’s then that my gaze catches his tattoos, rows and rows of letters and numbers inking his arms and chest to total completion. Ink that tells his story and that’s a story that I don’t fully understand yet. Just like the row of letters and numbers on the back of that business card tells a story. One I’m now reminded that Eric understands in some way that I don’t. And now, Savage is here to distract us, which isn’t well timed. Not when I’m certain that Eric isn’t going to share the details he now knows with Savage. He doesn’t even want to tell me.
I finish dressing and pull on my socks and shoes to find Eric watching me. “We need to go shopping so you have some things of your own.”
I swallow hard, thinking about my home in Denver. Will I go back? Will he stay here? I cut my gaze and Eric is suddenly in front of me. “I don’t want you to go back.” He pauses as if for effect. “Ever.”
This is what I want to hear from him, maybe even needed to hear from him, I realize. I don’t want to go back to Denver; I just don’t want to leave my mother behind, but as I study this handsome, brilliant man, I set that aside for now. I’m focused on him and the undertone to his words. I’m focused on a hint of trepidation in him, the uncertainty I think I see in his eyes. Does he really think I’d leave him? Does he really think I’m anything but one hundred percent here with him? Yes, I decide. He thinks I’m going to leave, if not now, one day. He thinks I’m somehow too good for him and this tells me that my man, my beautiful man, is so very damaged by this damn family.
There’s another knock on the door. “Maybe it’s urgent,” I say, starting to get concerned. “He knows we’re safe now and he’s still being pushy.”
“Or he’s just a pain in my ass,” Eric says, already walking toward the door.
I hug myself and step deeper into the kitchen to watch him close the space between us and the entryway, all long-legged grace and confidence, but there’s a sharpness to his spine, a tension in his shoulders. The connection between us got him out of his own head, but it was short-lived and we never dealt with whatever set him off.
There’s nothing I can do about it now though. Eric’s already opening the door and Savage steps inside, and just the brute size of the man is a force when entering a room. “Grayson’s in a hired car that just pulled up downstairs,” Savage announces, shutting the door. “I tried to call and warn you. We couldn’t stop him from coming. He said it’s critical that he talk with you.”
Eric grimaces, his hands settling on his hips. “I thought you were taking him home?”
“We did,” Savage confirms. “He made it all the way into his apartment and then he figured out that you weren’t joining him and he wasn’t having it. He said he needs to talk to you in private, one on one.”
I hug myself a little tighter now and digest this news. Grayson was worried. I know that. He had reason to be worried but this feels over the top. Or is it? Would I let Eric get away with shutting me down if I was worried? No. I wouldn’t. Well, outside of sex on the kitchen island, which distracted me, but that wasn’t meant to replace conversation. And yet it has. I can’t talk to him now.
Eric runs a hand through his hair, an act of utter frustration that he rarely displays. He’s a man of control and between myself and Grayson, we’re practically wrestling it from his grip. That can’t sit well. “Bring him up when he gets here.”
Savage’s phone buzzes with a text message and he glances at it and then Eric. “That would be now.”
Eric’s lips thin. “Of course it is. Is Mia with him?”
“No. Grayson made her stay with one of our men and,” he glances at me and then Eric again, “he seems to really want to talk to you alone.”
Eric turns away from Savage and just leaves him standing there. He walks right by me, through the living, to the bar area just beside his patio door. Shutting us out, claiming an empty space that I believe he lives inside far too often. Eager to fill that space, I cross to join him, watching as he pours himself a drink.
“Talk to me,” I whisper, aware of Savage nearby, and wishing he’d just step back into the hallway.
“Not now,” he says softly, and he still doesn’t look at me. “Later.”
The doorbell rings and he downs his drink, setting the glass on the bar before he turns to me, his hand cupping my neck as he drags his mouth to mine. “There’s much unsaid and undone between us, too much, but not for long.” He kisses me, a deep, drugging kiss that is over too soon. Suddenly, he’s set me aside, and he’s gone, his long legs eating away the space between him and the door again.
Something in his words, in his manner, guts me, cuts me, burns me but I can do nothing but feel his pain. I can’t stop it. Not now, and part of me wonders if I’ll ever be able to. I pour myself a drink and down it, another type of burn—the whiskey-induced kind—following, settling in my belly. I might regret that decision later, but right now I need to come down. I turn as Grayson and Eric enter the living room. “Harper,” Grayson greets.
“Hey, Grayson,” I say and without further preamble, I add, “I know you two need to talk. I’ll go upstairs.”
“We’ll step into my office,” Eric replies. “You stay here if you like. We won’t be long.”
They won’t be long. Eric doesn’t want to talk to Grayson anymore than he does me. I nod and the two men cross the living room and enter the office, the same office where Eric had cursed out Smith for leaving the door unguarded. I wonder who is at the door now. I wonder what it would be like to live without this kind of drama, without the Kingston imprint on our lives. I watch Eric and Grayson disappear into the room and shut themselves away. Once I’m fully alone, I pour a splash more of whiskey into my glass and down it, choking with the burn that slides along my throat.
Once I arrive at Eric’s bedroom, I pause at the doorway to stare at the massive bed, his bed. The bed he wants me to share with him again tonight. I’m so deeply entrenched in this man’s life and he in mine, that there’s no turning back. Whatever comes next, no matter how good or bad, it’s in motion. I inhale with the odd sense of foreboding that follows, rejecting it entirely. I’m here with Eric. He’s got men protecting my mother. We’re okay. We will stay okay.
Entering the room, I sit down on the chair in front of the window, staring forward without really seeing what’s beyond the glass. Eric’s voice lifts through the vent on the floor by the wall. “The bearded man gave her this,” I hear him say, and I assume that Eric’s now handing Grayson the card. “We received a similar message in Denver.”
“From who?” Grayson asks. “The bearded man? He was there, too?”
“A different man. He parked in front of her house. When I approached him, he drove away and threw a message out of his window.”
“Numbers and letters,” Grayson says. “It reads like a message to you but this message seemed to target her. Was the other one the same?”
“Same format, different letters and numbers.”
I stand up. I shouldn’t be listening. I need to just leave the room, but then Grayson says, “What do they mean?” And that question plants my feet.