Impulsion (Station 32 #1)(61)

“And you want to do this on a world stage?”

“No, I’m not that cruel. I’m thinking just before the party. I want to explain it to your father, then mine, and move forward. The only ones we need to shock are our mothers in front of a crowd. Both our fathers will allow that, I’m sure of it, as long as we do this with class.”

Harley didn’t say anything. In her mind, she kept asking what was the worst that could happen, and she could not come up with anything she couldn’t live with. Her gut was telling her just to tell her parents, lay it out there for them, not play the games. She bit her lip when she realized that the Doran mantra of ‘say what you mean and mean what you say’ must have been instilled in her as well.

At the same time, she could see Collin’s point. Family names were important in the world they grew up in. Her father was proud of his bloodline, of the wealth he had built, his legacy; shaming that didn’t feel right either.

“You may have a point. Maybe this is best.”

“I think it’s perfect. Hell, if anything you can tell your mother if she wasn’t such a bitch you would have told her that we had drifted—make it her fault.”

Harley smiled. “Collin, go propose to your girl. I promised a boy I would go on a walk with him.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah…”

“Harley…do me a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t think too much. Take your own advice.”

“I’ll try.”

As Harley took a shower and got dressed, she went over Collin’s plan in her mind. It really was perfect. Their mothers never would have caught that she and Collin had been apart as much as they were. At least half those days she and Collin were together over the last few months were at an event with their families, events where everyone acted the same, all with the fake smiles. Harley imagined throwing that in her mother’s face, telling her if she did not live in such a fake world it would have been even easier for her to see this coming.

Those thoughts left her, and all of her life back home drifted deep into the back of her mind as she took in her reflection. She was wearing a summer dress that was almost identical to the one she had worn that first night with Wyatt in the back seat of his truck. Very little had changed about her since then, simply because here, she never really bothered with much makeup, never ran a brush through her hair over and over or made sure it was just so. Here, she was the raw version of Harley.

When she went to leave, she walked to the window and had pulled it all the way up before she realized what she was doing. She caught herself smiling as she pulled it down as silently as she could. She grabbed her phone and made her way downstairs. She wasn’t really sure what she would say to anyone if they asked her where she was going, but thankfully she made it to the front door with no one crossing her path.

She thought about leaving the phone on the porch, wasn’t even sure why she grabbed it, but as she looked out into the dark fields she decided she needed the light.

Harley halfway expected to find Wyatt waiting where he had always parked the golf cart in the past, but he wasn’t there.

Wayward thoughts that she had read this all wrong or maybe he read her wrong crossed her mind as she began to walk down a path that looked far more worn than it had in the past.

Breathe.

That was the only word or thought in her mind.





Chapter Thirteen



Wyatt’s heart had yet to settle from this morning. Just the thought of Harley, or the casual brush of her against his body, would cause that thunder in his chest. He kept hearing those words of hers before that transfixing kiss. How cold she was.

It was hard for him to shift blame in his mind. One second he was furious that she was with someone now and saw fit to be cold to him because he had dared to sleep with a girl here or there, but the next thought, he felt like an ass. He regretted his past, regretted trying to get over her, for not fighting harder.

In his mind, he should have demanded a final goodbye. Before he took another girl to his bed, he should have found a way to come eye-to-eye with her and had her tell him it was over, to move on. He could halfway argue that they had never broken up, that in some way they had both just cheated on the other and now he needed to beg for forgiveness.

All of that sounded perfect in his mind, but he had no idea how he would make sure his words would not get caught in his throat.

When he had come home after dinner, he hung white lights in the trees around the bank of the creek, then took a shower. Once he was dressed in fresh jeans and a shirt, he turned every light out in his house and the power on to the lights he had hung.

And as he lit a few candles and let them float where the creek pooled, then began to light candles in carefully placed sand bags on the path to the creek, he said over and over in his mind what he had to get out, what had to come off his chest. As far as he knew, he only had one shot at this, one chance to make the last years seem as if they were nothing but a nightmare they both were now awakened from.

He kept staring off into the distance, waiting for her truck lights to creep down the path. Each moment they didn’t show, he felt himself sink a little further.

Wyatt was wrestling with his thoughts as he sat on his four-wheeler which he had parked off to the side of the path he’d made. He was watching more than one candle burn out or float away—trying to gather the nerve just to climb in her window, make her listen, not allow her to hide or act like she didn’t know he was waiting on her—when he saw a small light move through the darkness.