Impulsion (Station 32 #1)(37)

She could not wrap her head around how one act could feel so differently from partner to partner. She’d told herself it could not be that hard. Wyatt had told her he hated Dorcas, that she was gross, but he went down that road with her. She’d never call Collin gross or dare to hate him because there was some kind of love there, some kind of bond. He had protected her over and over from her mother, given her space. He was a logical choice. She should be thrilled that she had managed to find the only non-* in her world.

Then there that image was, right in her face. She was weighed down by her past, and Wyatt looked as if he were in Heaven. That hurt so bad that it made her angry. At herself. There was too much time between them now, a lot of time for him to come to his senses about Dorcas, to call her or something. Harley was pretty positive that girl kissing his cheek was not Dorcas, which meant he did come to his senses about her and had moved on to the next girl.

Harley needed to get over him. She had no choice.

“I just thought—Harley, you love him,” Collin said.

“It can be better between us,” she said as she flushed.

“It can be the same, too,” he said, moving closer to her, wrapping his arms around her. He pulled her to his chest and swayed her, feeling how tense she was.

All in all, over the months they tried three times more to hold one another. Harley didn’t cry, but she wasn’t there. She was the one that told Collin he was right. They sat up all night in his apartment in New York, talking through it all.

“Every day you’re away from your mother, you get a little stronger. But the second she calls you, the second you see her, you fall back again. We have to get you away from her more. I think if that happens, you’re going to figure out who you are, what you want. Until you do…you’re not going to be able to connect with anyone or anything.”

Harley nodded to agree.

The next day, Collin asked her to move in with him. It was his way of keeping her safe. That started rumors in their social circles and in their families, but he told her they would deal with them later.

Living with Collin was easy. He was never there, in general. He was always at school or his father’s firm, if not out with his friends. When they were in the same town, they did share that bed, not because they were still lovers but because it was the only one in the luxurious studio.

Collin was Harley’s ambassador to her mother. He was the one that told her what Harley was doing, the plans she had, and he always did it with charm, with a classic smile in front of several so her mother had no choice but to play into it.

That was why Harley was able to take a semester off from school, why she had flown down to train with Danny Boy that entire time without any grief from her mother. All of that was presented to Claire Tatum by Collin as if it were his idea.

Collin even went out of his way to fly down to Florida just to keep up the fallacy.

“How’d last night go?” Harley asked him as she padded her way into the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee.

Collin grinned up at her, still in his clothes from the night before, with that ‘just f*cked’ look all over his face.

“That good, huh?” Harley said with a smirk.

“We might go out again.”

Harley’s only condition to allowing Collin to take all this time and effort to defend her was that he didn’t pause his love life. She wanted to make sure he was not playing the role of the best friend and waiting for her to come around.

He never had any serious relationships. For one, school and his budding career took a lot of his time; two, he never found anyone he cared to see more than a few times; and most of all, he was trying to protect Harley’s reputation. Their society would eat up that gossip, Collin stepping out on Harley.

Almost ten months ago, when he’d come down with Harley to meet the trainer before shipping Danny Boy, he met a girl, Quinn. Her family had a home in Wellington, but she went to school in Boston. She wasn’t in the same world as Harley and Collin, but at the same time, as brilliant as she was there was little to no doubt one day she would be there, if not, then very close at least.

Harley knew it was getting serious, at least taking root, because each time after he went out with her, he’d give that same comment, that same smile. The girls before her, he’d just shake his head and ask Harley about her day.

“Did you get everything packed yesterday?” he asked.

Harley was taking Danny Boy home again. He wasn’t really progressing anymore in Wellington, and Harley didn’t want him that far away from her when she went back home. Her hiatus was almost over. Her mother had made more than one random remark, with Collin’s mother backing her, that the only reason for Harley to take more time off from school after this upcoming summer would be to plan a wedding.

Basically, Collin and Harley had backed themselves into a corner. They were sure they could stall for a while. Even if they mocked an engagement, they could get out of it, but to get out of it there would have to be some family drama, some hell.

Collin wouldn’t really care either way—he liked driving his mother mad—but he wasn’t sure how Harley would make out. Her dad was an old man that had lived a long life, and old men that have bad hearts leave this world. He knew that, had told Harley that a million times. But he also knew that if they staged some break up and her father happened to pass away within any time frame after that, Harley would carry that blame. Always the martyr.