Page 28 of The Destined SEAL
I place my hands on my hips to keep from reaching out for her. “Nothing is right about him. Look what he did to you.” The distance is too much. She feels the same because she stands up as I approach, and I fold her into my arms. The Harper well is filling. I breathe in her hair and tuck my face into the crook of her long neck. I kiss her there, where his fingerprints stained her creamy, delicate skin.
“You make it all better,” she whispers. It’s like we’re kids again and I’m helping her with her homework or playing pranks on the mean girls to make her smile. It’s not that easy anymore. Life is far more complicated than that.
I hear the bedroom door open as I’m pressing another kiss against Harper’s rapid pulse.
“Is everything okay out here? Harper? Are you okay?”
I don’t even pull away from the embrace. It’s that comforting—that satisfying, even given the horrendous circumstances. Let Norah see it all. She’s about to know everything anyway.
“Harper’s going to stay here for a bit,” I say as an explanation.
Norah comes through the front door pulling the last suitcase. Harper follows a second later with an armful of textbooks. She’s parked down the street in an alleyway to hide her car and refuses to move it until she’s sure of his brother’s arrival. I wish he’d come to my house looking for her, but she’s a pacifist, and I know I won’t win this argument today.
My anger is tempered by the fact that she’s here. More so than she’s ever been.
Harper heaves the texts down on a writing desk in the corner of my living room. “You don’t mind if I work here?” she asks Norah.
I finally have her where I’ve always wanted her…where she’s always wanted to be, and yet it took far more than it should have.
My girlfriend pats her back. Not in a condescending manner, but in a way that tells me she’s as good as I always assumed she was. “Work wherever you want. I don’t mind at all. It’s Ben’s house, after all.” They exchange polite smiles, and my fraction of happiness fades as a new realization dawns. Norah might not possess the intuition to understand the severity of what’s happening. “Let me know if you need anything. I’m headed into work for a bit, and I can swing by the store and pick up anything you want that Ben doesn’t have.” Norah glances at me, a small, sweeping smile lighting her face.
I back away, terrified of what this means, knowing exactly what I’ll need to do to her. Instead of agreeing with her or replying at all, I grab one of Harper’s bags, one I know is her bathroom stuff, and disappear into the hallway.
Norah pokes her head in, her brows raised. Clearing her throat, she says, “Harper didn’t need anything. I’ll leave you guys alone tonight. I’m sure you have a lot to talk about. She gave me the gist of it on the walk to her car.” Norah pauses, waiting to see if I’ll offer anything further. When I don’t, she whispers, “I can’t believe he did that.”
Looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, I see a traitor. A coward of a man. A man who protects innocent people for a career but couldn’t protect the person he loves the most in the entire world. “I know,” I say, voice low.
“Are you okay?” Norah asks, tilting my face to hers, using her soft, cold hand.
“I’m pissed, Norah. That’s all. Thank you for being so helpful, but you’re right. We have a lot to talk about tonight.”
She holds out both palms in my direction. “I won’t be in your way. Say no more.”
I scowl, eyes narrowed and lips pursed. “A month ago you were badgering me with questions about my feelings for her, and now you’re okay with this?” Badgering is the wrong word, she merely asked, but I have a giant case of displaced anger.
She looks away from me but steps forward and closes the door behind her. “You told me she’s your best friend, and that’s never going to change. Fine. I decided to look at her like your best friend. If she were a man, there would be no issues, so I try to have no issues. Harper told me that you guys were always only going to be friends.”
My stomach sinks. “When did she say that?” I already know when, but I don’t want to talk, and I need time to compose my thoughts.
She tells me about the double date and what Harper said. I’m irritated that Norah approached her to begin with, but I can also understand it completely. She clears her throat, and I meet her eyes. “I’ll ask one more time, Ben. Only because I love you and I want a future with you. Do I need to be worried about your friendship?”
I grab her face with both hands. Her pretty eyes and her thin lips are things I’ve found comfort in for a while now. A salve. A patch. She arrived in my life at the perfect time. “I love you, Norah,” I say, brushing my lips on hers. Her eyes flutterclosed and then open again, searching mine in earnest. “But my friendship with Harper is something you should always be worried about.”
Pressing her lips together, she leans her forehead on mine. “I already knew that, though. Didn’t I? Guess I need some time to figure out if that’s something I’m willing to live with.”
Maybe it’s that I’ll never be able to live without Harper. That the empty well inside me only craves one person, and even if I wanted to fill it with someone or something else, it would stay a dark, pitiful cavern of loneliness.
“Any woman I’m ever with will have the same concern. She was first,” I explain, shrugging. “I can’t give you what’s already gone.”
She’s too good for me, and I’m left with a fleeting sense of guilt. I wish she were a one-night stand. Maybe then she’d smack me, storm off, and leave a dead fish in the back of my truck. Instead, she leaves the bathroom and my house quietly, asking once more if Harper needs anything before she leaves.
Harper is in the kitchen making herself a sandwich when I finally steel myself away. My cell phone vibrates on the counter in front of her. She doesn’t look at it. She maintains pure focus on the ham and swiss on rye. She has her hair pulled over the front of her neck, trying to hide the mark I desperately want to see.
It’s work calling. With a pounding heart, I silence the call. Maybe if I had silenced the call all those years ago, this vision in my kitchen would be less of a nightmare. Harper licks her thumb to get errant mayonnaise off and puts the jar back in the refrigerator. “I still have the mustard out. Want one?” she asks, finally looking up. “You still hate mayo, right?”
I nod, eyeing her neck. “No, thank you,” I growl.
My cell phone starts buzzing again, and I have to close my eyes and take a deep breath.
