Lie to Me (2 page)

Marcus taught me that.

I fought my way through after my parents died in the accident, with Marcus’s help. I fought for Dill. I fought for myself. And I just ran from Marcus, because I wasn’t sure I could fight…

What?

I’m kidding myself. I know what. I know what I felt for him, what I never stopped feeling, even after he was gone: no man has ever made me feel like that. Like he could turn me molten with just a look. Like I could drown in him, like I wanted to drown in him. Like I loved him so much that everything else faded away, like I could live on that feeling alone, burning bright and beautiful in the dark of my wounded heart.

I’ve thought about what it felt like to have Marcus Roma touch me so many times. What it was like to have him inside me. Even after he abandoned me without any explanation, even after he broke me, even after he did all that knowing exactly what it would do to me, he’s still the only man I’ve ever dreamed of. I tried with other men for a while, and every time I was  painfully aware of how much they were not Marcus.

Fuck him for that. Seriously.

I’m angry and overwhelmed and I’m feeling way too many things in a short period of time, like all the joy, rage, loss, grief, and lust of those years is condensed into this one moment on a public bus, speeding across the Williamsburg Bridge, and I just can’t shut down my brain. I can’t stop myself from asking what if? What if I don’t see him again? What if he just doesn’t care to try again? What if this is it?

What if this is the last time I see him, and I’ve run away?

Great. I get to add shame to the mix of emo crap I’ve got brewing inside me. I feel like I’m going to be sick. Apparently it’s noticeable, because a guy sitting up front actually gets up and offers me his seat. You have to be very pregnant or very old or, apparently, very much on the verge of totally losing your shit in public to get that offer.

I say thanks, but no thanks. I grip the handrail harder. I need to feel myself grounded to the physical earth, not resting on a seat, mind free to wander and think about all the what-ifs. About how, if I’m truly honest, for that one second when I locked eyes with him, I felt like I did back in the old days. Like I wasn’t alone in the world. Like I was safe. Just because he could see me and I could see him.

And if there’s one thing I still need, almost more than I need my next breath, it’s to feel like I’m not alone in the world.

Except that I am, and I have been, since Marcus left. Maybe when Dill is older I won’t feel like that, but right now I’m all Dill has, and I have to stay strong and sane. Which means no chasing after the man who made me this way, or letting him chase after me, or indulging in any of that hopeful bullshit that is sure to get my heart broken all over again.

So it’s done. He’s gone. Probably he won’t try to contact me or anything, because it was just a chance encounter, and now it’s over. That is a very good thing.

So why am I hyperventilating? Why is my palm sliding down the handrail, slick with sweat?

Why do I feel nauseous when I think,
It’s over
.

People are still looking at me. I’m soaking wet, my blonde hair plastered to my head, my leather jacket beaded with rain. I can feel that my lips are blue. The bus is slowing down, running into traffic on the other end of the bridge, and I think this is good. This will give me some time to get myself together, to get my head right before I have to go home and see Mr. Wolfe.

And then it hits me. Mr. Wolfe. Marcus.

Both back in town at the same time.

That can’t be a coincidence.

I think that, and relief blossoms in me. Because Marcus isn’t here for me. It’s not about me; it never was. Marcus left to go work for Mr. Wolfe, and he’s still working for him, and that’s why he’s here. So even if I’d decided that getting some kind of closure, or an explanation, or whatever was a good idea, it’s not like I’d get it. I just dodged a major, major bullet, because I can’t ever be in a position where I want more from Marcus than he wants from me.

This is what I tell myself while the bus lurches toward the other end of the bridge. This was a lucky escape. Good job, running away.

I have to tell myself this over and over and over again.

So by the time the bus slows to a stop in Williamsburg, I’ve calmed down slightly. Figuring out that Marcus still doesn’t give a crap is somehow liberating, I guess because it’s a familiar kind of pain. Like, this I know how to deal with, if only because I’ve had a lot of practice. It was just the shock of seeing him that put me off balance. I’m over it now.

I’m totally, totally over it.

I climb down the stairs, out of the bus, almost expecting to see, like, sunshine and bluebirds and whatever else—that’s how liberating that thought feels. Marcus is across the river, on a different island entirely, and out of my life, and if I can just avoid him from here on out, I will only have the real estate developers and Mr. Wolfe to deal with.

So, no worse than things were when I got up this morning.

I’m expecting the clouds to part and the sun to shine, but obviously it’s still raining. That’s ok, too. I let it wash over me, imagining the relief I’ve convinced myself I’m supposed to feel, trying to let it flow through me all over again before I walk home in the rain, umbrella-less.

I close my eyes, turn my face up to the sky.

When I open them again, I see Marcus.

Standing tall, breathing hard, his black hair wet with rain. Hat gone. Coat open, white dress shirt soaked through, his pecs and abs contracting with every strained breath. Pale gray green eyes on fire.

“Harlow,” he chokes out.

He’s still holding my umbrella.

He ran. He chased me across the bridge. He beat a bus, across the bridge.

To catch me.

He’s panting still, out of breath, and now it’s like he’s stolen mine, too. He takes another step toward me and this time I can’t look away. His eyes have me. It’s the same, the same as it always was, only different, now, too: more. There’s all those years, all those shared memories flying between us, swirling around in an invisible field that I know we both feel, all those things that we know about each other that no one else will ever really, truly know, no matter how much we might want to tell them, because they weren’t there. It was just us. Just Marcus and me.

And those eyes, seeing through me.

And now there’s what’s different about it, too. What’s changed. How I can’t ignore the man he’s become. Jesus God, no one could ignore that. Can he see through that, too? Can he see me watch his body move, watch how he brushes that black hair out of his eyes, how the rain is caught on those long eyelashes? How when he licks his lips, moving toward me, I’m transfixed?

The thing between us is alive, I swear to God. All that history, all those memories, and now this, this unique awareness of the physical man in front of me, and the way my traitorous body responds: it’s a living thing, whipping between us, drawing us closer, something blind and stupid, fierce and feral. It’s choking me, making it hard to see straight, to remember all the reasons I have to be afraid for my heart. All I can see is that strong jaw, those huge shoulders, that tie dancing in the wind, water dripping down his face while he looks at me with those beautiful, sad eyes…

No single human being has ever hurt me the way Marcus Roma has, and now he’s back. And I don’t want him to leave. And that will be my downfall.

If I let it.

“What are you doing?” I whisper. It’s all I can think to say. I don’t understand any of this. Why is here? What does he want from me?

“You ran,” he says. Like that’s an explanation.

“I can’t,” I say. I don’t know what to call what’s happening, or what might happen, but with every step he takes toward me, I know.

“I can’t,” I say again.

Marcus’s face screws up like he’s in actual pain. “Please, Harlow,” he says. “Just talk to me.”

He puts his hand out. Such a simple thing, and yet it means everything. I stare at it for I don’t know how long, not trusting myself to look him in the eyes again. The worst part of this is that I want to take it so badly. I want…whatever I can get.

And that is pathetic.

If it weren’t for Dill, I’d throw myself at his mercy all over again. My heart is pounding, my blood rushing in my ears, my body and soul screaming for some kind of release from the last five years of torture. From five years of not knowing why. From five years of thinking he just didn’t care enough, of thinking that I was just that easy to throw away. Five years of suffering.

And I’d do it all over again, if it weren’t for my responsibilities.

“I don’t talk to ghosts,” I say, and walk away.

I walk away, but I don’t escape. Not even a little bit. I feel his eyes on me the whole time. I feel him, with me. And all the way home, the only thing I can think is: What does Marcus Roma want from me?

After all this time, what does he want?

chapter 2

MARCUS

The first time I ever saw Harlow Chase, she got me with those eyes. Not even the eyes, but the way she was looking at me with them. Like she saw right through my bullshit.

Harlow was different. I was hooked from the moment I saw her. And I was done for the moment she saw me.

Both times.

Let me back up. Now, today, it’s about seven years, give or take, from that first time that I saw Harlow Chase. I feel old, even though I’m only twenty-four. I’ve seen a lot in the five years since I left Brooklyn to go work for Alex.

I don’t call him Mr. Wolfe anymore. I don’t call him Godfather.

I don’t call him anything unless I have to.

But he still calls me. And it was one of those phone calls that put me here, on the Lower East Side, watching Harlow Chase in the rain. I’ve been following her all day. She has no idea. I picked her up back in the old neighborhood, seeing she still lives in her parents’ old house, finally getting that inheritance she had coming. That was how it was supposed to happen and I made damn sure that it did, because there was no way in hell I was going to let her go it entirely alone, even if I couldn’t be there. But I wasn’t there when she got the keys. Or when she moved in.

There were a lot of things I wasn’t there for. I’m not there now, as far as Harlow’s concerned. And I know I don’t deserve to be.

Some decisions haunt you, even if it was the only decision you could make at the time.

I followed her all the way to Manhattan, crisscrossing all over the island below Fourteenth Street, hitting up every damn bar, even the sketchy ones I hated to watch her walk into. She was putting resumes out, or whatever it is bartenders do. Worried her place back in Brooklyn will close.

She’s right to be worried.

Because I’m supposed to be here as Alex’s fixer.That’s what I do, I fix problems. Find a solution, even if it’s not always pretty, or legal.

Only this time the problem is Harlow Chase and her refusal to sell that house she inherited so that Alex and his partners can move ahead with another development of luxury condos. Alex knows all about my history with Harlow. Hell, Alex Wolfe is part of that history. So I know he thinks that this is a test, in more ways than one. Alex has been grooming me as an heir to his business, right up there with his proper kids, and now he thinks he’s testing my loyalty.

Alex Wolfe, or Harlow Chase. My future, or my past.

Alex thinks he know which one is which. He has no idea. And I have to keep it that way if I’m going to protect Harlow from Alex Wolfe.

All of that’s in the background the whole time I’m watching her, the tension ratcheting up with every passing second. But the longer I stay on her tail, the more single-minded I become. She’s always had that effect on me, she’s always made the world simple. I see her and nothing else.

Five years without her made me dead inside, and now it’s like feeling is slowly coming back. Every second I watch her, it hurts more.

I wonder how she spends her time now when she’s not working. If she still trains at the gym. What she does for fun.

Who she does for fun.

That thought makes me growl, balls my fists up good, like some dipshit just threatened me. It’s stupid and I know it. And I have no right to it. Of course she’s been with other men. She’s a grown woman living her life, and I’m not in it.

And I can tell myself that all damn day, and it doesn’t do jack shit to change the way it makes me crazy.

I have checked up on her over the years—I’m not a complete asshole. Used to pay a guy, a private investigator, to check in every now and again, make sure she was doing ok. She always was. Creepy? Maybe. But I don’t apologize for what I am anymore.

What I did do, though, was make sure those reports didn’t tell me about any other guys, because of what I know I would do. I’m a man, after all. If she was dating, engaged, married, could I stay away like I had to, for Harlow’s sake?

Hell no.

So I tried to be good. But a report on a desk from some jerk in a bad suit who watches people all day long isn’t the same thing as seeing it for yourself. It isn’t the details. It isn’t watching her face as she walks from bar to bar in this weather, seeing faint circles under her eyes from lack of sleep, her lips almost starting to turn blue the way they always did when she got cold. It isn’t seeing the way she still hunts for happy moments in the middle of a shitty day like this, dancing with a little girl in a rain puddle, trying to cheer herself up, and in the process cheering up everyone around her.

I see that, and it all starts to come back. She’s never really been out of my mind, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t spend most of it thinking about her, but nothing compares to seeing her in real life. I see the way Harlow laughs, sticking her tongue out, catching raindrops, and there’s a twinge in my gut, like my body remembers already, screaming at my mind to let it go, let it all come rushing back. But I can’t. I fucking can’t. Harlow was always the strong one. I’m the guy who’d cave under the weight of remembering all that happiness that I used to have and do something stupid, something that would screw everything up, just because I can’t stand being without her one more minute.