“Harlow,” he whispered. The raw pain and fear in his voice shattered me, but I couldn’t do this.
“Thank you for this phone. This stupid, dangerous phone,” I said, and laughed lamely. “I will find a place to hide it for when Collin is home, and when I can, I will let you know that I am okay. But, Knox . . .” I trailed off and worried my lip as I tried to figure out how to word what I needed to say. “Unless the day comes where I’m ready for you to take me away, I won’t tell you what goes on in this house.”
“Low—”
“Trust me, I am doing this for you!” I sobbed, cutting him off.
There was a long, heavy silence, interrupted only by my hushed cries. “Okay. Okay, then I’ll wait for that day.”
“Thank you.”
The sound of a loud firehouse bell filled the phone, and Knox swore. “I need to go. I love you, Harlow. I always have.”
The call ended before I could respond, but I wasn’t sure what my response would have been anyway. The I love you that had slipped out the night of the fund-raiser came out so easily—as if my soul had said it for me. Now I was afraid to let my soul free. If I did, I wasn’t sure I would be able to keep myself safe in this house anymore, because my heart, my soul . . . my everything was reaching for the man I could never have again.
I slid down to the floor with the secret phone still in my hand, and cried for the love I’d thrown away, as I had every day for the last two and a half years.
When my tears had run dry, I slowly looked over to the clock on the stove, and scrambled to get up. Collin was going to be home in an hour, and I still needed to shower, figure out dinner, and get rid of everything that was currently sitting on the kitchen island.
I made a quick call to a restaurant to place an order, then took off through the house, glad that I’d cleaned everything obsessively all week, since I didn’t have time for it now, and ran to take a shower. Once I was clean and dried, I threw my hair up, put on a little bit of makeup and clean clothes so Collin wouldn’t think I’d been in the same thing all day, then ran back to the kitchen to grab up everything on the counter before leaving the house.
I drove to the restaurant to pick up the food, ditched the box that the secret phone had been delivered in in the dumpsters behind the building, and headed back home with just minutes to spare. Once there, I grabbed a couple of Ziploc bags and went into the backyard—the only place I thought Collin wouldn’t think of—and looked around for a spot to hide what now suddenly seemed like my most valuable possession.
I hated gardening, probably because I was horrible at it, and Collin laughed if anyone ever mentioned plants and flowers around me. I killed everything I tried to grow here because I’d grown up with so much rain and wasn’t used to all the sunshine, so we had a landscaping crew to make it look as amazing as it did. And as far as I knew, whenever Collin went tearing through the house and cars looking for birth control, “hidden” credit cards, or whatever else he thought I was hiding from him, he’d never once looked in the garden.
Choosing one of the large, potted plants up on the porch, I pushed aside the annoying amount of greenery coming out of it and played with the soil inside, judging where and how deep I needed the phone to go. After making a little hole, I sent Knox a message, powered down the phone, double-bagged and buried it, then went inside to get any remaining soil off my hands.
I looked over at the clock as I finished drying my hands, and exhaled in relief. Collin would be home in two minutes . . . I’d done it. I had all the food set out and had just finished putting drinks on the table when I heard the key in the lock and Collin walked in.
“Harlow?” he called out in excitement.
“In here,” I answered, and held back an eye roll. Of course I was in the kitchen. I was always in the kitchen when he came home from work. I was just caught off guard by his tone.
Collin rounded the corner and stopped short when he saw the takeout on the table. “Chinese?”
“Um, I fell asleep. I just . . . I got tired, and I crashed. The next thing I knew it was too late to make dinner, and I’m sorry.”
He closed the distance between us and wrapped his arms tightly around me. “Hey, it’s okay! It’s okay. I’m sure you’re tired, and you haven’t been feeling well. This is great. Chinese sounds perfect.”
Collin couldn’t stop smiling, and it was scaring me so much that I was shaking. Collin only smiled like this on Saturday mornings before I took the test, when we were out with other people, or after he’d finished giving me a punishment and was trying to make up for it. He’d been extremely gentle and somewhat caring all week, but he hadn’t been like this.
“H-how was work?”
“Fine,” he responded offhandedly. “I decided I don’t want to wait. What do you say?”
My eyebrows rose in confusion. “What? What aren’t we waiting for?”
“Tomorrow morning!” He said the words like I should have already known what we were talking about. “This is all I think about at work, and it’s driving me crazy to wait. I have to know.”
My face and stomach fell. “Um, but—”
“What difference is a night going to make?”
“B-but it is evening, and . . . and . . . and you shouldn’t take the tests in the evening. They say on the box to take them first thing in the morning, right? Didn’t you tell me that? That’s why I take them after I wake up.” I was going to be sick. I hadn’t eaten once today, but it felt like I was going to lose the imaginary contents of my stomach.
Collin’s smile vanished just as suddenly as he stepped away from me. “Why are you trying to put this off, Harlow?” he asked darkly.
“I’m not!” I tried to assure him, but judging by the way his breaths were slowly getting rougher, I wasn’t succeeding. I scrambled to think of anything to say, and thought back to what I’d said to him while we were dancing at the fund-raiser for the firehouse. “I’m just scared! I’ve thought that this was it, but what if it’s not? What if I’ve gotten both our hopes up? I told you that I was worried about that. This test has been looming over my head and terrifying me, because what if I let you down again? I hate letting you down, Collin!” I choked out.
I didn’t have to fake the fear, the shaking, or the tears. All of it was very real. Letting Collin down was the last thing I wanted to do, just not for the reasons he thought.