Prince Charming Can Wait (Ever After) (14 page)

Son of a bitch.

It wasn't enough.

He was going to die, and it wasn't fucking enough. He wanted to
matter.
Not to just anyone. He wanted to matter to
her.
And that made him the most selfish son of a bitch ever. He wanted to matter to her, so she would cry for him? He was a true bastard.

He was still the same as his father, and what he'd done with Emma wasn't going to change that fact, no matter how many damn times he replayed their lovemaking in his mind or called her his wife. He'd been a fool to think he could change who he was, to become a man other than the one he was destined to be.

His breath started to gurgle, and he knew he was out of time.

He was going to die alone, and he grimly realized that was the way it was supposed to be. "Emma," he said, his voice raw with the effort of speaking. "I release you from your promise."

It was done. This story was over.

Three weeks had passed since the call.

Three excruciating weeks.

There had been no word about Harlan.

Astrid had been horrified when Emma had told her about the call from Harlan's business, and she'd sent repeated emails to Harlan, but received no answer. She'd even relented and given his email address to Emma, and she'd sent emails, too.

No replies.

In the last year, he'd never once replied to an email sent to that address, and Emma had a feeling he never checked it. The fact he hadn't responded didn't mean he was dead. He could be alive. Or not. The uncertainty haunted her night and day. Was he alive, dead, or suffering terribly somewhere? She couldn't shake the pulsating sense of fear that stalked her at every moment.

It was unnerving, how she was reacting to his disappearance. She didn't know him and had married him with the intention of never seeing him again. The situation was playing out exactly as he had predicted, so she should be fine, or even relieved. But instead, there was a dark cloud of uncertainty, fear, and raw grief following her around. She couldn't stop thinking of him dying somewhere. Alone.

She knew what alone was. Alone had haunted her for the first twenty-five years of her life, until marriage to Preston had finally showed her that going through life alone, which she'd always thought was hell, could actually be the greatest solace that existed. Alone meant no Preston, no one to rule her, no one to control her. She'd learned it too late, because her fear of being alone had been what had driven her into the arms of the man who had done his best to destroy her.

Alone was her safety now, but that didn't change the fact that there were days when it was no longer a relief, and instead plunged her into a darkness so penetrating that it seemed to suck the life from her soul, make her heart bleed, and strip her of the courage to take even one more step. Before she'd connected with Harlan, she'd been surviving in her shell, but now that she'd had her night with him, now that her name was etched beside his on a marriage certificate, now that she'd known what it was like to truly connect with someone, alone seemed to have retreated back to what it used to be. Too dark. Too haunting. Too agonizing. Was that the kind of alone that Harlan had faced before he died? Or that he was facing in that exact moment?

No one deserved that. Not Harlan. Not Mattie. No one.

Except maybe Preston, she thought with a small smile.

Not that she had time to dwell, she reminded herself as she gripped her steering wheel, heading toward her cabin. The summer Shakespeare festival was only two days away, and the town was running on all cylinders trying to get everything in shape for the tourists who would descend for the week. The field at the rec center had been cleared of soccer nets to make room for the carnival. The town green was already decorated with dozens of tents for the local businesses. Emma, Clare, and Astrid usually shared a tent to sell Emma's art, Astrid's jewelry, and Clare's cupcakes, but this year, now that Clare's cupcake store was going strong, she had the tent next door to herself, and was paying Katie and Brooke, the teen queens, to help her run it.

Birch Crossing was alive with energy and fire, tearing Emma from her unsettling emotions about Harlan. Chloe had arranged for Emma to bring Mattie to the carnival on the last day, and Emma was excited about that. It wasn't a foster test or anything, just a field trip with a favorite teacher, but she knew it would make Mattie happy, and that was a start.

But Emma did have a home study scheduled in less than twenty-four hours, where a social worker would stop by and interview Emma and inspect her home. She had to pass the home study in order to get approved to adopt or even foster, and she was becoming increasingly nervous about it...especially the fact that she had a husband who had never lived there.

Just as the oppression seemed to settle in, however, she saw a stream of trucks driving toward her on the winding road. Her mood lifted immediately as she watched the caravan with the carnival rides pass by the town green, heading in the opposite direction than she was driving. Suddenly, she was flooded with years of memories about the carnival, all the wonderful times she and Clare had shared sneaking onto rides, begging for free cotton candy, and spying on all the actors while they were practicing their lines. The last truck had the painted horses of the carousel, and she grinned at the sight of it. She and Clare had ridden that merry-go-round a hundred times every summer until they were eighteen, the summer Clare had gotten married.

Maybe she would start a new tradition with Mattie.

Smiling to herself, she pulled up in front of her house, starting to think about what pictures she would display at the booth this year. There were none that she wanted to display. They all felt wrong for where she was right now.

She needed new ones. She hadn't painted much in the last weeks, so busy with the fair, but suddenly, she needed to. Desperately. She needed to sit out on her dock, and pour her emotions onto the canvas. Pour her feelings about Harlan into her art.

Grabbing her purse off the front seat, she ran up the steps to her cabin, the image she wanted to paint already forming in her mind. A carousel on a cloudy day. Empty, except for a half of a cupcake on the edge. The shadow of a man, just his shoulders, darkening the flank of a white horse—

A shadow moved on her couch, and she screamed, jumping backward.

As she stumbled back, Harlan sat up on her sofa, his broad shoulders hunched, his face ashen and hollow.

Shock rippled through her and she grabbed the door frame. "Harlan?" she whispered. Was she dreaming? There was no way that Harlan could be sitting on her couch in the middle of the afternoon. "You're alive?"

"Yeah." His voice was low and rough, and it sent chills tumbling through her. Chills of fear. Of relief. Of a thousand different emotions that threatened to overwhelm her. She wanted to burst into tears, race across the room, and throw herself into his arms. At the same time, her instincts were shouting at her to back out of the room, away from this man that she had bound herself to in one dangerous night, who had been haunting her since the day he'd walked out.

He lifted his head to look at her, and her heart seemed to shatter at the haunting shadows in his eyes. Suddenly, all the connection they had shared that night came flooding back, and her fear left. This man was not like Preston. He was not like all the others who had betrayed her. She had been right to trust him. "You came back," she whispered, putting her hand over her chest as if she could ease the hammering of her heart. He'd come back to her, just like Clare had predicted.

"Not for long," he said quietly. "Don't worry."

"You're leaving again?" Disappointment flooded her, anguish beyond what was reasonable. "Another mission?" She was going to have to wait for him to die again? Suddenly, it just felt like too much. She couldn’t do that again—

"Not for a while." He shifted, and a flash of pain shot across his face. "I'm sidelined for a bit."

Her heart jumped, and she instinctively reached out to help him. "You're hurt."

"I'm fine. Just my hip. It's better now." He blocked her hand, redirecting it away from him, rejecting her touch.

Embarrassment flooded her, and Emma hugged herself. "Sorry."

"No, it's fine." Something flickered across his face. Not pain. Something else. But then he raised his gaze to hers, gripping her with the intensity of his stare. "Emma, I came back for one reason."

Her mouth went dry, and suddenly she couldn't speak as hope leapt through her. Hope and terror. Was this it? Was this when he said he wanted more than a paper marriage? That he wanted
her?
"Why?" she whispered. "Why did you come back?"

He met her gaze. "To get a divorce."

She was more than he'd remembered. More than he'd hoped. More than he could handle.

Harlan hadn't been prepared for the shock of seeing Emma again. He'd convinced himself that his memory of their deep, intense connection had been a fabrication, or at best, an aberration that was a result of a dark night, death, and a whole host of other shit.

He had not been prepared to feel like he'd been sucker-punched in the gut when she'd walked through that door, her hair up in an adorably innocent ponytail, her forehead scrunched in thought, her light blue tank top revealing skin so soft he wanted to trail his lips over it.

The moment he'd seen her, every thought had been swept from his head except for a raw, burning need for her. To touch her. To hold her. To kiss her. To claim her as his wife. He'd gone utterly still, like a predator, every fiber of his being screaming for her. It had taken every last ounce of willpower to speak the words he'd come there to say.

At his announcement, Emma's eyes widened in shock. The pain that flashed over her face was so brutal that he felt as if she'd jammed a knife into his chest. "What? You want a divorce?"

He had to close his eyes for a split second to cut himself off from the betrayal in her eyes. Why the hell was she looking at him like that? He was freeing her, not betraying her. "Yeah," he said, opening his eyes again, unable to cut himself off from the sight of her.

She had retreated to the far side of the room now, her arms folded over her chest, and her chin raised as she stood beside the picture window that looked out onto the lake. Gone was the look of vulnerability in her eyes, the stark anguish on her face. She was cool and collected, and he fucking hated seeing her like that. He liked her soft and vulnerable. He liked her raw and real, not throwing up shields against him.

"Why?" she asked, her voice trembling ever so slightly, her voice barely audible over the roar of a Jet Ski passing by the cottage.

Damned if he didn't like the shakiness of her voice. He didn't want her to let him go. He didn't want her to not care. Which made him an even bigger shit than he already knew he was. With a sigh, he ran his hand through his hair, trying to remember the arguments he'd been primed to make. "Because it was crap." Poetic? Not so much. He didn't know how to say it nicely, because he could barely grit out the words he didn't mean. Every thought he had of Emma and their night together was magical. Connection. A life worth living for. But he couldn’t say that. He couldn't trap her like that. He had to set her free. He leveraged himself to his feet, but he had to grab the edge of the couch when his hip tried to buckle.

"Crap?" she echoed in disbelief. "Our marriage? Or the lovemaking? Or the promises? What was 'crap' exactly, Harlan, because I actually meant everything I said to you, including my promise to be married to you until death do us part."

He swore under his breath, searching for words. He owed her. This woman who had married him and agreed to cry for him when he died. She deserved the truth, not superficial sentiments that didn't matter. He was too old and too damn tired for superficiality anyway. "I was lying there in the rain," he said. "I thought I was going to die. I thought it was over." He grimaced, trying to articulate shit he had no words for.

"I wrote you emails," she said softly. "Every day."

He blinked, distracted by her words. "What?"

"Emails. To the address you left on my phone. To the email address Astrid had. I started writing them after that woman called and said you were missing. I didn't forget you. You weren't alone. Did you see them?"

"No, I didn't. But…thank you for that." Weirdly, his throat tightened and he had to look away. He'd shut down that email address after he'd sent the information to himself, but it didn't matter. The thought that she'd actually been sending him emails while he'd been lying on that cliff. That she'd been thinking of him? It was too much to deal with. Almost overwhelming. She'd really been thinking of him?

He flexed his jaw, and looked back at her. She looked small again, vulnerable, not tough like the façade she'd put on a few minutes ago. "I'm a stranger to you, Emma, and I asked you to cry for me. What kind of bastard does that?"

She sighed, and her face softened. "The kind who doesn't want to die alone."

Shit. How was she not judging him for what he'd done? "No, Em." He walked over to her, needing her to understand. "The kind of supreme bastard who thinks it's okay to manipulate others just so he can get off."

Her eyes widened, and she started to laugh, a tension-relieving kind of laughter. "I had no idea you thought so highly of yourself, Harlan."

He was startled by her laughter. He didn't understand it. There was no humor in his life. In his choices. In their choices. "I need to free you," he said softly, barely resisting the urge to grasp one of the stray locks dangling around her face and slide it through his hand. He knew how soft her hair was, and he still wanted it as badly as he ever had. "I'm not a man that anyone should marry, especially you."

She cocked her head, and he had a sense that she was seeing right into his soul, stripping all his secrets bare and raw. It made him uncomfortable, but at the same time, it felt good. He liked it. He liked knowing that she wanted to learn the things about him that he didn't show to anyone. "Why me, especially?" she asked.