Impulsion: A Station 32 Fire Men Novel (37 page)

Her skin
blushed, her heart thundered in her chest.

“We’re going to break up at this party.”

Wyatt was seeing red. His body was ridged. He felt like a fool. Like he had been played. Like some toy Harley had just put down. She wasn’t going home to tell her father face to face about them, she was going home to end this masquerade or so she said. He didn’t know what to believe at that moment. Rational thought was hopeless.

“You’re flying to your father’s birthday party, with Collin, to break up with Collin in front of him?”
he stated coldly.

He got that she and Collin had led family and friends to believe they were a couple, had almost convinced himself that the act had kept Harley safe, but he thought it was over. He thought surely her father had figured out he and Harley were a couple
. Now nothing was adding up, except for the fact that he now knew why he was not invited.

She wasn’t going home to tell her father she was with him. No, she was going home to end her little deal with Mr. Suit in the Lincoln Town Car—and what did that make Wyatt? Some rebound? Some boy that she hooked up with on the side? He seriously doubted she thought of him or them that way, but the fact that she was going to lead people that didn’t even matter to believe that infuriated him.

“We’re not staging a fight in front of him or anything.”

“
Exactly
what are you doing?” he said as he stepped forward and glared down.

“We’re going to tell them that we had been growing apart spending time away from each other, and in that time apart he fell for Quinn, that he’s going to marry her.” She almost said ‘instead’ at the tail end of that sentence but thought better of it at the last second.

“And this world of yours will think that’s just normal? To be with someone for years, then take a break and say, ‘Never mind, I’m marrying her’?”

“It’s more complicated than that. They don’t know about the break. We never came out and said that, but as soon as we do they’ll figure out that we haven’t been around each other. They will see why we hid that split. Collin is taking a hit with this. It’s a bold move.”

Just hearing his name on her lips boiled his skin, as if this deal was about Collin, him hurting. “Lying to your family and friends
is
a bold move.”

“It’s not like that. He’s protected me. This way, the fact that he did will be kept secret. He gets Quinn, I get to come back here.”

“You
get
to come back here?”

Harley felt her stomach flip. That world she came from would never make sense to him, and she knew that. She wanted out of it, was days away from being out, but she had to leave this way. Had to protect those that had protected her.

“You don’t think your dad is going to find this odd? That it happened months after you came back to this farm? The man may be old, but he’s not a fool.”

“I didn’t say he was. This separation story is more for our moms.”

“And where does your mother think you have been?”

“She didn’t ask
.”

“So I’m some secret?”

“No. Yes. It’s not like that. We’re going to go to this party, say what we have to before the party, then I’m coming here. Everyone wins that way.”

“No one wins when you lie.”
How was that concept lost on her?

Harley sucked in a deep breath, cast her stare to the side, then met his all at once with a firm defiance. “Wyatt, I’m trying to protect my family name. Trying to get Collin out of this without looking like an ass and protect his family name. I swear, it makes sense. When you factor everything in, it makes sense.”

He jerked his glance away. His jaw was clenched, and anger was saturating his visage.

Harley took a breath, then said, “I don’t get why you’re waiting unti
l right now to be mad about Collin. Why it didn’t matter until now.”

“You told me it was your father’s birthday party, that your mother invited Collin. You didn’t say you were going with Collin to do any of this. I thought you were planning to tell your father about us; you wanted to do that alone.”

Shame flooded her then. That was what she should have been doing, needed to do. She was going to tell her father that she was moving in with Wyatt, that she loved him, but the plan was never to let him know she had lied to him this whole time, let everyone believe she and Collin were serious.

“I’m not going with him
, I’m going to break up with him.”

“You’re going to go and fake break up with your fake boyfriend.”

“Yeah.”

Wyatt threw his hands in the air as he moved closer to her. “How does this feel right to you, Harley? You’re all about how much you love your father, how much you want to honor and respect him, but you’re
lying
to the man’s face.”

“I’m ending the lie.”

“Are you? Then why am I not going with you to this party?”

“Wyatt.”

“Don’t ‘Wyatt’ me. I know why. I know I shouldn’t be surprised about this—how fucked up is that? That I’ve played this game with you for so long that I know it. I know it would cause some scandal, some stress, some something that you don’t want to deal with.”

“I’m not hiding you. I’m enduring this so I can come to you, then go to them with you.”

“In a few years, right? Because we have to play our parts, right? We don’t want anyone to know your mother is a conniving
bitch
that drove you to alter your entire life. We don’t want anyone to know how twisted all this is. This move, causing this one, then this one.”

“What do you want me to do, Wyatt? Not go?”

He stepped forward. “I want you to have every moment you want with him while you still have it.” She rocked back as the thought of her father ever dying was crippling, and rightly so. “You want him to believe that you have honored him, respected him.
Fine
. But Harley, listen to me. When he’s gone, you’ll live with this, years down the road, this guilt will eat you. If you think his love has conditions you have an issue. The man deserves honesty from you. Life is too short for bullshit, Harley. How many years did we already waste on this hell?”

“To
o many. I’m going to tell him that I love you. That I always have.”

“But you’re not going to tell him this deal with you and monkey suit was
a joke.”

“Don’t you
dare
talk about him like that. He was there for me when I had no one else.”

“He was there because you let him be. One call
, Harley, one call to me would have ended this all. Instead, you lied to the man that thinks you are the best thing that has ever happened to him—you put both of us in misery. And according to you, you jacked up Collin’s plans with whatever girl is all game to play this crap out with all of you.”

She pulled her shoulders back, glared. “I was seventeen, Wyatt. I was scared. I was protecting you. We’ve had this argument. I know I’m wrong. I’ll fix it, as soon as Collin is clear I’m going to fix it.”

“No you wont. Don’t lie to me or yourself.”

She started to argue but he held his hand up. “If you planned to stop the bullshit you would not be adding more to the pile. More to apologize for. If you planned to make it right
—me and you would have been on a plane months ago.”

“It had to happen on this stage, the timing was not in my control.”

He cussed as he turned away from her then faced her gain. “You are hurting people you love to satisfy those that could not care less about you. Maybe you have more of your mother in you than you thought.”

She stepped back as if he slapped her. “You can call me anything you want, but don’t you
dare
compare me to that
woman
.”

“Then stop
acting
like her. You’re a grown woman. Stop acting like property.”

The fact that he was right made her feel even more sick, more scared of this weekend. Wyatt may have thought her father was
a stand up man, and he was, but Harley didn’t have the same relationship with hers as Wyatt did with Beckett. The thought of letting him down, seeing disappointment in his eyes was painful enough to know that the guilt she would feel down the road when he was gone was worth it.

Wyatt took a deep calm breath. It didn’t settle his anger but it took some tension away. He didn’t want her to leave there scared, make it to where it would be even easier for her mother to get
into her to mind. He wanted her to be invincible, the way she always was in his arms, in his world.

“Harley, if you want to be in my world, then you’re going to be in an honest one. I could not stomach the idea of denying you, even hiding you.”

She started to cry. That killed him. Ripped him apart. He pulled her to his chest, rocked her back and forth. “I’m not hiding, I’m protecting,” she said through her tears.

His hands eased down
her hair, his lips brushed across her forehead. He leaned her back, cupping her face in his hands as his thumbs gently stroked her cheeks.

“I know you are, baby. I know you think you are. I just don’t want you to say or do anything you’re going to regret one day. We only have so many chances to tell the truth before there are no more. You’re safe here. You’re strong. Plotting your plan from here seems simple. Easy. But it’s going to feel different there. In that world. It will drown you. All the things that seem ridiculous here will mean something there; they will make you think that it does. For all you know, some other plan will come up, some other story that has to be told.” He dipped his head so his eyes met hers. “If you promise me that you will think and act for yourself, if you will say and do what you can live with for the rest of your life…then I’m good. I can wait right here for you.”

“You’re not mad?”

“I’m furious,
but that’s my right, Harley.”

Her eyes searched his looking for a solution
, failing to see it through her emotions as she stood at this crossroads in her life, between two worlds.

He felt her weaken in his arms, even tremble. “I respond to you, Harley, in every way. I feel you inside of me. I know this is killing you and that is why it’s pissing me off. This is one party, one charade. It’s nothing compared to what I’ve overcome. I think its stupid and I had a right to tell you. Simple as that.”

“We. We overcame it.”

“We did…” His thumb brushed away another tear, then he pulled her to his lips, gave her the deepest kiss he could. His mind kept flashing back to the last time she’d left this farm, the kiss he had given her then. He told himself it wasn’t the same. She was coming back. No matter what they said or did, she was a grown woman and she was coming back.

He put his arm around her and guided her to the open door of the town car, eased her in. He leaned in, met Collin’s eyes. “Don’t let that woman hurt my Harley.”

Collin looked him dead in the eye. “We are going to make it right.”

“With a lie. All caught up on the plan now,” Wyatt said just before he leaned down and kissed Harley’s lips once more, wiping another tear away as he leaned away then closed the door.

Collin reached for Harley’s hand. She let him hold it, but she stared out her window, never said a word on the entire flight. She kept hearing everything Wyatt had said, lingering words that Camille had said to her, even ones that her father had said in the past.

That sick feeling never left.

“What the hell are you doing?” Camille said to her son when she found him leaning against the fence, staring down at the long driveway.

“Getting ready to help Dad in the hay fields.”

“That’s going to be hard to do when you’re on a flight.”

He jerked his head to the side.

“Harley and her friends might be fine with lying to her father, but I didn’t raise a liar.”

He wasn’t all that sure what his mother knew about this deal, but assumed that she knew more than she had led on, like always. At the very least she knew that Harley was going to this party with Collin
, the boy that all the articles had said she was with.

“It’s not like that,” Wyatt said, finding himself repeating the same words Harley had said. “I haven’t said a word to the man in years; not my lie.”

“And you’re likely to never say another one to him if you don’t man up. You moved his daughter into your house. You’re building a life with her. Don’t you think you need to look the man in the eye?”

“She’s coming back, Mom.”

“No doubt.”

Wyatt was confused, didn’t get what his mother was trying to say, why Memphis and Easton had just turned into his drive.

“Son, I have talked to Garrison every day. At least an hour every morning.”

“About?”

“Life, in most cases. He’s not well, and he knows it. I don’t give a damn about any rumors, any high society, and I’m not sending you there to destroy some house of cards Harley has built in her defense. I’m sending you there because I raised you to be a man. You love this dying man’s only daughter. You’d do anything to protect her. I know that. I’m sure Garrison knows that, too, but a man like him—he needs to hear it. Wants to.”