Page 15 of Fall

“I’m tired,” I respond.

“You can avoid this all you like, but I’m asking you to talk to me. I won’t judge you, and I won’t stop you from walking away. Anything you tell me, I will never tell anyone else,” he tells me gently.

“You will judge me, Harley,” I whisper as he moves closer and gently runs his hand down my arm.

“How about I tell you something about me that people judge, and then you can tell me about this?” he asks as he places his hand on my stomach, where there is a slight, hard bump.

“You know anyway.”

“Tilly,” he says gently, and I nod, knowing that some part of me wants to talk to him, and a bigger part of me already trusts him.

I haven’t spoken to anyone about what is going on, and I don’t know why, but I kind of trust him. He takes my hand and leads me down to the other set of stairs at the end of the corridor. They lead up to another door, and he opens it before flicking on the light.

The room is a massive, attic conversion, which has a desk, two sofas, three bookcases, and several old boxes around the room. It’s a cosy room and well-used from the looks of the all the things lying around on the desk.

“This is my office, well, office space that I like to be in. I sleep up here some nights,” he tells me as he shuts the door behind us, and I walk over to the sofa.

“It’s a lovely room,” I comment, but he doesn’t reply to me.

I sit down, and he comes and sits right next to me, his body pushed against mine. It surprises me when I don’t attempt to move.

“How far along are you?” he asks me straight away.

“I thought you were going to tell me something about you first,” I say, with a small, awkward laugh.

“Okay . . . fair enough,” he says and then clears his throat. “I fight in a place called The Cage, and I have done so since I was a teenager,” he says, watching for how I react as he looks down at me.

“Do you win?” I ask. I want to be shocked, but some part of me isn’t shocked at all. I knew he had secrets, it’s written all over his face. I’m glad it’s this, in a way, and not a secret wife and kids he hides in another town or something.

“Every time,” he says, but there’s a hint of sadness in his voice which makes me wonder if he likes to win at all.

“Do you hate it?” I ask him, and he runs his hand through his hair, which he left down at Sebastian’s when Jake pulled the hairband out.

“Yes,” he tells me, and I put my hand on his knee, squeezing gently before I start talking.

“I’m five months pregnant and please don’t ask why I don’t look pregnant or have much of a bump, it just seems to be that way,” I tell him, almost not wanting to tell him this about me. I know most guys would run the other way.

“You can kick me out or run away from me. I get that. I’m a pregnant person you don’t know, who moved into your house and kissed you.” I mentally cringe as I blurt that out. He looks down at me, shaking his head ever so slightly, but I catch it.

“One time, when I was seventeen, I fought and nearly lost. The fight was bad, and I ended up killing the man to survive. Afterward, I was sitting at the bar and a woman came up to me. She was a lot older than me, and I’d never seen her before, but I will never forget her words.”

“What did she say?” I ask him.

“That you fight for the best things in life, you fight to survive, and you don’t give up. That anything simple and straightforward isn’t going to be worth it. It’s the hard things–the complicated things–that challenge you but give you the best rewards. She told me that and then walked away, but the words stuck around. I have a feeling you’re one of the best things in life, and I’m not going to walk away.” He says each word with emotion, an emotion that I’m feeling too as I feel my heart pounding inside my chest. A silence fills the room as I don’t know how to reply to him. We just stare at each other, our faces inches apart.

“I’ve killed people in my fights, does that not make you want to run from me? Most women would,” he asks me gently.

I’m a little shocked by that, but there’s something about him that makes me think he wouldn’t have done it on purpose. It’s just the way he says it, and the way he took Izzy into his home and accepted her as his sister straight away. No questions asked. He looked after her, a heartless killer wouldn’t have done that. It’s other things too, like the way his family is around him, how they respect him, and it’s not out of fear. No, it’s respect that is brought on by doing good things and earning it.

“No, it doesn’t make me want to run. My family is complicated, but I know that even if someone has been forced to do bad things to survive, it doesn’t make them a bad person,” I say, thinking of my father for only a second. He was in jail for a year for something he did, but he isn’t a bad person. Not one bit of him is.

“Why are you running, Tilly?” he asks. My name is spoken so softly that I almost miss him saying it. I almost want to beg him to whisper my name once more. I keep my eyes locked on his green ones as I answer him.

“I’m running from my ex-boyfriend, the baby’s father,” I say quietly, watching as he nods, his eyes blazing.

“What did he do?” Harley asks, but even thinking of that night has me tensing up.

Harley notices and pulls me closer to his side, wrapping his arm around my waist. I rest my head on his shoulder. I don’t even think I can move away if I wanted to, my body just wants to relax against him. I love how he smells when I am this close, like mint.

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