Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 61953 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61953 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
“Okay,” Chase said, holding me tight. “Okay. I don’t know why you’re crying. But it’s okay, baby girl. It’s okay.”
“I got in,” I repeated.
“That’s not cause for celebration?”
He pet my hair, brushing it gently out of my face. My mom used to do that same thing when I had a breakdown, growing up. It was therapeutic enough that my tears slowed, and I just lay in his lap, sniffling.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, swiping at my eyes.
“I don’t want you to apologize, Harley. I want to understand.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Oh, this was going to suck.
“Remember when we were in Seattle and my dad saw us together?”
He tensed at the words and was slow to say, “Yes.”
“Remember how I said that you didn’t have to worry about him telling anyone?”
He sighed heavily. “What happened?”
I sat up, scrubbing my face clean before meeting his eyes. “Well, I made a deal with him. He wouldn’t tell anyone, and…I’d let him pay for law school.”
“Okay,” he said.
“He said if I got into Harvard, I was going, and he’d pay.”
Chase clenched his jaw. “Why would you do that? You hate him.”
“At the time, it felt like the right thing to do. Like it was the only way to get him to back off. He’s conniving, and I thought that I could beat him at his own game.”
“But you didn’t,” he said, coming to his feet and pacing away from me. “You gave him exactly what he wanted. And for what?”
“For this,” I insisted.
“You did it without even telling me. Harley, you can’t make those decisions for us.”
“I had to.” He didn’t understand. He had a terrible father, but Owen Wright was his own breed of manipulative. He would have ruined everything. The one thing I wanted to keep all to myself. “I had to do it. And I’d do it again.”
“So that you’d end up here?” he asked in disbelief. “Crying in my arms because your father is forcing you to go to law school.” He fisted his hands. “I don’t want that, and I don’t want you to make decisions like that for us without talking to me.”
I jumped to my feet and splayed my hands before him. Anger welled up in me. Maybe this was the wrong decision, but I’d made it in good faith, and he certainly wouldn’t have been able to do better.
“What would you have done differently?”
“I would have told your brothers before I let him get under your skin,” he growled.
I jerked backward in shock. My mouth dropped open. “What?”
“Do you understand? I would have walked right up to your family who hates me and told them we were together. I’d have gone to bat for us before this.”
I had no words. There was nothing to say to that. Because that hadn’t even remotely seemed like a possibility this summer. We were so far from that, that even hearing him say the words was a shock to my system.
“No you wouldn’t have.”
He blew out a harsh breath. “We’ll never know now, will we?”
“It wouldn’t have happened that way,” I told him. “You were the one who wanted to hide that we’d been together. You were the one who gave us a graduation deadline. That was you, Chase.”
“I know, and I still think it was the right thing to do. For you.”
“For me,” I said with a laugh.
“Yes, all of this was for you.” He shook his head. “Look, let’s step back. We’re getting away from the real issue here.”
“Are we? It’s not the fact that we’ve been going back and forth for three years because neither of us can stay away from the other. And now, I’m supposed to be moving across the whole fucking country. Where does that put us, Chase?”
“It puts us exactly wherever you want us to be on graduation,” he said simply.
“Does it?” I asked helplessly. “Why does it feel like I’ll be a world away?”
“Harley, do you even want to go to law school?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“You’re looking at this in all the wrong way.”
“Enlighten me.”
He huffed. “Take me out of the equation.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Just for a minute. Hypothetically, take me out of the equation. Erase your father’s machinations. Remove all of that extra angst about your decision.” He took my hands in his. “You just got into Harvard Law School.”
“I know,” I whispered.
“The best law school in the country.”
“I know.”
“And you’re not even a little happy?”
I bit my lip, waffling on the truth of that. What if Owen weren’t going to pay for it? What if Chase weren’t going to be so far away from me? What if this were just me, making the decision for myself? This was the accumulation of everything I’d ever worked for. I just hadn’t been able to see through the haze of it all.
“Yes,” I finally said. “Yes, I’m happy.”