Page 22 of Hearts Don't Lie
Hope burst forth. He smiled and nodded, beyond grateful for the chance. His voice broke. “Thank you.” He inhaled deeply and wrapped his blanket around himself. “What I say may be disjointed, but these are the things I know with certainty, and they didn’t necessarily come to me in chronological order or early in our separation. I want to be totally candid, Mac. I’ve never been anything but honest with you.”
“I know,” she said solemnly.
“I’ve felt some level of hollowness since the police escorted you home that night. I’ll start there, okay?”
Her answer of yes was more like a sigh, but he heard it. She took one of his blankets and wrapped it around herself, mirroring his position.
“Are you warm enough?”
“I am, thanks.”
“Good.” Hardin sighed and held her eyes as he began. “I left when you did that night, as you know. Not happy how things had gone at all. I wanted to take you home. Kiss you, damn… kiss you so much more.” His fingers touched his lips. “I never could get enough of the feel of our lips and tongues moving over each other. I still have dreams where I feel the electricity that sparks over my lips and remember how sweet you taste.”
Mac cleared her throat and lowered her eyes to her lap.
He peered at her and pursed his lips. “Sorry. It’s just that no one else has made me feel like that.” He had to know. His heart pounded as he asked, “Was it like that for you?”
Her eyes snapped to his, hardened, but she answered. “I reserve comment. You’re doing the talking right now.”
“Fair enough.” He nodded before looking down and blinking several times.Quit being a pussy. She hates pussies.
“I texted you when I got home, to say good night again. To make sure you were okay. I knew how upset Alicia got with you from time to time. You didn’t respond. Actually, I don’t think I slept at all. Too worried. I started calling and texting as soon as I got up. No answer. No response. I only stopped when an automated message said your number was no longer in service. What the fuck…” He shook his head. “I didn’t even know how to react.”
He noticed how sad Mac appeared, how her eyes were full of unshed tears.
“Want me to keep going?”
She nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving his.
He inhaled loudly and continued. “Before the car that was taking me to the airport arrived, I heard loud voices coming from downstairs. Not shouting, but close. Heated. Angry. Then the doors to Father’s study closed and it was quiet. The next thing I heard were footsteps I didn’t recognize in the hall. The front door opened. I rushed to my parents’ room and stepped out onto their veranda. Mac, it was Alicia.”
“Alicia?”
“Yeah. I didn’t even know she knew where I lived. But anyway… She glanced back at the house before she drove off, looking smug as fuck. I had a really bad feeling. I ran downstairs. Confronted my parents. They said their conversation with Alicia was private. It was none of my concern. I didn’t believe them. I knew it had to be something to do with you, with us. Arguing got me nowhere. My mom told me not to upset them when I was leaving, that saying goodbye was hard enough. Right,” he said sarcastically. “What a fucking excuse, like my being away was ever an issue for them. I left it because the tension in our house was so thick you could cut it with a knife. I was fucking miserable when I left.”
“You can’t blame yourself for your parents’ actions. Just as I can’t blame myself for Alicia’s.”
“You’re right. It’s so fucked up, Mac. There’s more.” His brows rose, asking her silently if he should continue.
She wiped at a tear that ran down her cheek and held her hand up when he leaned over to comfort her. “I’m okay. Keep going.”
“We loaded my luggage in the car and left. I continued to call and text your number all the way to O’Hare, in the concourse, and on the plane until we departed, but the message was always the same. Your number remained out of service until it was reassigned to someone else at the beginning of October. Then I stopped. I wrote you too. But all my letters came back unopened, with ‘no such person at this address.’ I was flying home at the end of the semester. I was going to come see you. Celebrate your graduation. Beg for forgiveness even though I didn’t know what I had done to make you turn your back on me. Get us back on track.” His voice cracked with emotion.
“Tell me.”
“My parents decided that a last-minute vacation in the Bahamas was just what we needed. They sprang it on me the day before my last final by overnighting my passport and flight info. I called and told them I wasn’t going. It got really ugly. That’s when my father told me I was not allowed to see you under any circumstances because Alicia had threatened to press charges of statutory rape against me. That was why she had shown up at our house that morning.”
“She what? Oh my God! Oh, Hardin.” Mac sounded stunned, blinked furiously.
“It gets worse, Mac.” He sat up taller and drew in a shaky breath. “I ended up going with my parents, and while we were in the Bahamas, I was privy to the finer details about what else happened. I eavesdropped. Father was celebrating having played great golf that day. He and a few of his investment and attorney cronies were pounding down drinks, laughing over theirwin,how easy it had been to protect the golden boy. Me.” He sneered, then rubbed at his eyes, which burned with unshed tears, before saying hoarsely, “A quarter mil to your mom to make her threat disappear and keep you away. They had her sign the nondisclosure agreement. Then my honorable father had you both served with a restraining order in Illinois, and there was one ready to be served in North Carolina too. Just in case. He fucking crowed about having your acceptance to NCU rescinded.”
He ground his knuckles in his eyes, but the tears flowed over them as he wept. “When I came by your place in May, at the end of the semester, you were gone. Someone else was living there. They hadn’t heard of you. I asked your neighbors. No one knew where you had gone.” He bowed his head and his body shuddered. “They fucking destroyed your dreams and mine.”
