My parents shared a look, and Hadley turned to look at the door as if expecting Knox to walk through it again. When she turned back around, she nodded and gave me a reassuring smile—but I’d had no doubts she would take my side. Of course Hadley would side with love.
“Harlow, we’ve respected Knox for a long time, and we’re thankful he was here for you,” Dad finally said. “However, after the events of the last couple days now might not be the best time to make this kind of decision. Starting a relationship with Knox would also probably not be the wisest decision. You need time.”
“I plan on taking things one day at a time, Dad. I won’t rush into anything with him just because he’s back in my life. But staying here with him . . . I know that’s what is right for me. He has always been right for me. I just lost my way for a little while.”
Before anyone could respond, there was a knock on the door, and one of the earlier nurses came in with some papers in her hands.
“Are you ready to go home?” she asked brightly.
“I’m ready to leave,” I responded, and wondered at the word home. At the moment, it felt like I didn’t have one. The house I’d lived in with Collin could never be considered a home.
My eyes flitted up to the person now filling the doorway, and my tensed body eased seeing Knox’s warm smile.
I might not have a home now, but I knew in that smile that someday, with that man, I would.
Knox
Present Day—Richland
“WE’LL CALL A company to come pick it up. All of it can be donated,” Harlow said dismissively a week later.
“Donate—what about—wait, don’t you want to go through any of it?” Mrs. Evans asked, stumbling over her words as she looked around the piles of things in Harlow’s old living room.
Harlow looked at her mom, then the piles with a confused expression. “We’ve spent most of this week going through all of it. Everything else went to the dump; this all gets donated.”
Her mom waved off Harlow’s words. “No, I meant don’t you want to go through any of it to see if you want to keep it.”
Even Harlow’s sisters looked shocked.
Hadley sifted through a pile closest to her. “The jewelry in here alone has to be worth close to a million,” she said in awe. “You can’t tell me you don’t want it.”
“What about the furniture?” Harlow’s dad asked. “It’ll help with that apartment you’re getting.”
“You can’t just give all this away!”
“Mom’s right,” Harlow’s older sister, Hayley, said. “At least sell it if you don’t want to keep it.”
The only people in the house not trying to persuade Harlow to do something with everything she and Collin had bought together, or that he’d forced her to buy, were Graham, Deacon, and me.
I knew she didn’t want to keep anything from their fucked-up life together—who would? And whether Graham and Deacon understood that or not, they just wanted whatever Harlow wanted.
“No,” Harlow said with a shake of her head. “Donate.”
“Har—” Her mom began again, but was cut off.
“Everything in this house is a memory in the form of a nightmare. I don’t want it, and I don’t want the money from it,” Harlow whispered harshly, each word holding a pain none of us could imagine. But from the looks on her family’s faces, they weren’t going to try to push her anymore.
“I’ll look up a company and arrange a pickup,” Hayley’s husband said, and immediately began tapping on his phone.
“Thank you,” Harlow said, and her body relaxed as she closed the distance between us. “I just want to be out of here and done with this place.”
When she got close, I pulled her into my arms and pressed my lips to the top of her head. “Soon,” I promised.
We’d all stayed in the hotel, with the exception of Graham and Deacon, for three nights before Harlow’s entire family had piled into our house. No one had wanted to stay in Harlow’s old house. I couldn’t blame them, and my roommates didn’t complain as long as they got to put an endless amount of food in front of Harlow.
When we hadn’t been clearing out the old house, we’d been apartment hunting for Harlow. She’d wanted, and found, a place in Richland so it was close to me, but still far enough away that she felt like she could have her space to figure things out. Her family didn’t understand why she was renting and continued to remind her it was a waste of money when she had enough to buy a new house with cash. Deacon and Graham had moped for nearly an hour when they’d found out the location. I’d gone with her to sign the papers and had smiled through it, because I knew it was what she needed.
I wanted her next to me every second of every day, but this apartment was what was best for her now—and for us later.
Harlow had picked up the keys this morning, but wanted to wait until her family left for their homes tomorrow—Hadley with her parents—to go shopping for the furniture and everything needed to move in.
She shifted in my arms when her phone chimed, and pulled it out of her pocket. With a slow exhale, Harlow showed me the screen, which held a text from Collin’s mom, asking if she would come over to talk.
“You gonna go?”
Harlow nodded once, then shook her head. “I’ve hardly talked to them since everything happened. They’re good people, Knox,” she whispered. Words she’d said before. “They’re good, but when I did talk to them, they sounded so mad.”
“They aren’t mad at you. They’re just having a hard time, too,” I reminded her. “It’s different than what you’re going through. They probably didn’t know this was happening.”
“They couldn’t have.”
“Then they’re probably in shock and didn’t know how to react to the situation, or how to talk to you. But it looks like they’re ready now . . . if you are.”
Even though Harlow had reached out to them a few times, Collin’s parents had been distant all week. They’d come by the house yesterday while everyone was gone to make sure there wasn’t anything they wanted after we’d already piled up everything that was to be donated, and bagged what was to go to the dumpsters. As far as we could tell, however, they’d only taken a few of Collin’s things from high school and college, and hadn’t responded to most of Harlow’s attempts to talk to them. Something that had been hard on her all week.