“He was wrong to make that rule!”
“Maybe so, but I don’t know what the hell happened between your mom and him. It’s not my place to judge whether he should have done it or not. It’s his money, and this is how he wants it spent.”
“It’s my money,” I say, my voice made imperious with impotent rage.
He huffs his amusement. “Spoken like a true St. Claire.”
“Christopher, I don’t know if you think we’re only in this for billions of dollars. I don’t care about that. We have nothing. She has nothing. All she needs is enough to live off of. You can have the rest.”
He steps back as if I slapped him. “You think I want your inheritance?”
Something wavers inside me. Did I go too far? Christopher is going to let my mother starve because he wants to honor a request that should never have been made. That’s wrong. Not me standing up for her. “Everyone else in that room wanted it. And you were there.”
It’s like watching ice form over a lake in a matter of seconds. The water had seemed deep and unnerving, but now he’s simply impenetrable. “The only reason I went to that damn reading is because the lawyer called me this morning and said I should come. And something in his voice told me it was going to be bad, so I had the car waiting for us and the hotel on standby.”
My throat feels scratchy, like I’m near tears. “I didn’t thank you for that.”
“I don’t want your thanks. I don’t want that fucking yacht, either. And I sure as hell don’t want a single cent from your inheritance.”
“We’ve been living in a motel.” The words burst out of me, ugly and hushed so my mother doesn’t wake up. “Every day Mom takes one of her jewelry pieces to the pawn shop, where they give her a few cents for every dollar that it’s really worth. That’s how we pay the bill so we have a place to sleep that night.”
My words crack the ice around him, at least enough so that I see the old Christopher looking back at me, the one who would have dived into the ocean to save me. “Hell.”
“Daddy paid for my tuition and my private dorm room directly, but that’s it. If I had asked for anything more, he would have had his investigators look into us again.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”
The words spill from me, more careless with our secrets than I’ve ever been. No, not careless. Trusting him to do what’s right. “When I was nine, Mom was between husbands. We had this shitty apartment on the outskirts of LA and ate ramen noodles every night. It sucked, but I didn’t really care. But I cared when Mom said we couldn’t afford to get more paint, so I called Daddy.” Tears sting my eyes, and it’s such a twisted feeling to mourn him right now, to love him and hate him at the same time. “He came down on us like freaking Zeus from Mount Olympus. He took me to New York City until she had enough money to come get me, and that was only when she had found this asshole director who wanted her as his side piece. She did that for me, so that I could come back.”
Christopher stares at me as if testing the words, weighing them the way he must weigh every sentence spoken in his crazy-smart Emerson business classes, the way he must gauge everything around him with that stone-cold confidence. And he must see in me the desperate truth, because he stalks back to the window and curses under his breath.
He’s not even facing me, but I’m utterly and completely exposed. I could strip naked in this suite and still not be as naked as I feel right now. This is something I don’t talk about with anyone, least of all with a man who’s saved me twice. It’s something of a pattern already, and that should be enough for me to make it stop. I can’t depend on anyone, even him.
But I can’t let my mother go back to arguing with the landlord for a few extra days. Not when I’m living like a princess at Smith College in the dorm Daddy paid extra to get. I can’t let her whore herself to some asshole with money when I’m the heiress to a freaking fortune.
If I’ve convinced Christopher, the shame I’m feeling would have been worth it.
Please let it be enough.
He faces me, and he’s so fully Christopher, so much the person standing beside me with his forearms on the railing that I breathe a sigh of relief. This man, I know him. He’s the one I can count on to catch me when I’m falling.
“Harper,” he says. My throat squeezes. He sounds like he’s facing a firing squad. “Maybe it’s wrong to use this against you, but you told me about that husband, the one who owned the job website. The one who climbed into your bed. And that makes me think your dad was right.”
“No,” I whisper, because this isn’t going to end the way I hoped.
“He knew, okay? Your father knew that I’m a man of my word. He knew how much that meant to me… and why it means so much to me.”
“Why?” I whisper, even though I know he isn’t going to tell me. This is a man who hoards secrets the way a dragon keeps gold and jewels in his lair.
I would rather have no money than have a trust fund I can’t use to support my mother… which Daddy probably knew, too. It was a final fuck you to the woman he could never get over. I accepted that weakness from Daddy a long time ago, but having him use Christopher to do it makes my stomach turn over.
I would be pissed, my friend had said once. Like he’s trying to control you with money, even though he has so much. And for the first time I do feel pissed.
“He appointed me as the executor, and not the hundred other men he knows could have done it. Because he knew I would have to do it, if he asked me. And that I would never take a single cent out of the damn trust fund for myself or anyone else.”
“Isn’t there something more important than keeping your word? Isn’t there doing what’s right?”
A dark laugh. “Not to me.”
“Don’t do this.”
He’s made of stone again, any semblance of vulnerability turned hard. “It’s already done, Harper. It was done before today. Before the art studio. It was done when your father sat down and wrote the will, knowing exactly what would happen.”
“You’re giving him all the power.” All the power to ruin whatever was between us. That kiss standing beneath Medusa’s wrathful gaze. Maybe we had been doomed from the beginning.
“It’s not his choice anymore, Harper. Not even yours. It’s mine. And I’m going to do this for you, because he asked me to, and because it’s the only way I can protect you, even from yourself. You’ll give away every cent if you think it will help someone.”
“Protect me? This isn’t the Massachusetts Bay! I’m not sitting on the damn rail.”
“You told me to leave you alone then, too. And I’ll never regret staying on deck so that I could dive in after you. I’ll do it again if I have to.”
What would it take for this man to see me as a woman? As someone that can make her own decisions instead of as a maiden who needs saving. But I don’t think it’s even about me or what I need. He already told me, didn’t he? It’s his choice, and he would rather be a white knight whether it helps me or not.
“Christopher,” I say, my voice low and desperate. “That kiss.”