“Yet, you dismissed her when you saw her in the street,” Knox reminded her. “That part I just don’t get.”
“I bumped into one of your aunts once,” she told Harper. “She gave me one hell of a lecture about leaving you on Jolene’s doorstep when you were a baby, and I realized that Jolene hadn’t told people the whole version. I was worried that if you came to me, Jolene would be mad enough to tell you everything so that you stayed away from me. I didn’t want you to know just how cruel to you I really was. So I made sure I seemed unreceptive.”
Bray ran both hands through his hair. “You should have told me, Carla.”
Carla flicked a glance at him. “I was worried you would leave me.”
Bray looked at Harper, perplexed. “You don’t seem upset.”
Harper shrugged. “I had a good life. Maybe not a normal life, but it was good. I was happy. If your mate was really such a mess at the time I was born, I doubt she could have given me that. We were both better off without the other.”
“But she’s your mother.”
“I traveled a lot over the years. I’ve seen a lot of places. Some weren’t good. I saw suffering that would make all this seem like a damn fairytale. One friend I had…her mother did the opposite of what Carla did. She kept her daughter, but she hated her. Hated her and was cruel to her while doting on the other kids. I would rather not have lived that life.”
Bray was silent for a few moments. “You’re very mature and wise for your age.” His face hardened as his attention returned to Carla. “We’re going home, and you’re going to tell me everything. Everything.”
“I will.” Carla got to her feet.
“Larkin and Keenan will escort you out,” Knox told them.
On reaching the door, Carla glanced at Harper over her shoulder. “I really am sorry I couldn’t be the mother you needed.” With that, she left.
Knox turned to Harper, concerned by her blank expression. “You okay?”
“I want to go home.” She knew she probably sounded a little lost, but she felt off-kilter.
“Then we go home.”
Sitting across the dining table from Harper, Knox watched as she absently shoved the food around the plate with her fork. When he brought her home earlier, she’d claimed she just wanted to lounge around for a while. Although she’d settled comfortably on the sofa, she hadn’t really been watching the T.V. Her expression had been vacant, her eyes faraway. She’d been quiet for hours now. Pensive. It wasn’t like Harper to overthink things. “Eat, baby.”
Her brow wrinkled. “I’m not really that hungry.”
“Eat or Meg will be offended.” When she shoved a piece of pasta in her mouth, he arched a brow. “You’ll do it for Meg, but not for me?”
“She might stop making me muffins.”
He would have smiled if she hadn’t dropped her fork with a clang and sighed. Knox moved to sit beside her. Forking some pasta, he held it up to her mouth. Casting him a sour look, she ate it. “Good girl. Tell me what’s bothering you so much that you can’t eat.”
Swallowing down her pasta, Harper sipped at her wine. “It’s stupid.”
“If it matters to you, it matters. That means it isn’t stupid. Tell me.”
“In my head, I’ve always had Carla in a box safely marked ‘selfish and unfeeling.’ She was the baddie, and so I didn’t have to care what she did. The things she said earlier…they still make her selfish, but not exactly unfeeling. I don’t know how to see her differently. I don’t want to see her differently.” Because if she wasn’t bad, Harper might have to care. To care meant to be hurt by what had happened.
Knox gripped Harper’s chin. “She should have put you first, no matter what shit was going on in her life, but she didn’t. She doesn’t deserve your forgiveness, so don’t expect it of yourself. Carla fucked up royally, and she never once tried to fix it.” He forced Harper to eat more pasta before he continued. “You can concede that just maybe things weren’t as clear-cut as you thought, but that doesn’t mean you have to be understanding.” He certainly fucking wasn’t. “Nothing can excuse what she did.”
“I guess I just don’t know what box to put her in now.”
“No one can be firmly marked anything, baby. No one’s all good, and no one’s all bad. Everyone has different dimensions to their personality, and everyone has different things that drive them. People can change, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. A person’s nature is a fluid thing.”
He was right, she realized. “I love you.” And now he was gaping at her, which wasn’t surprising. “I know it’s a really weird time to say it. I get that. But it occurred to me before that I grew up never really knowing for sure if the people in my life loved me. I don’t want you to wonder.”
Knox snapped out of his stunned state as she rose from her seat. He grabbed her wrist. “Baby, you don’t get to say something like that and then walk away.”
“I so do.” She slipped out of his hold and headed to the bedroom, close to laughing at the fact that she’d managed to shock the unshockable Knox Thorne. She hadn’t waited for him to return the sentiment, because she’d known he wouldn’t. She wasn’t fanciful, she was practical. As she’d told Khloë, she didn’t think ‘love’ was on his emotional scale. Even if it was, he’d been solitary for too long for him to suddenly be alive with feelings other people took for granted. It was enough that he cared for her.