Page 38 of Your Heart & Mine

Harper straightened her spine bracing herself for what was to come. "Let's talk upstairs." She unlocked the door and led the way up the steep steps, the wood now burnished and clean. Wyck fell into step behind her.

Leading the way into one of the empty apartments, Wyck looked around as the silent tension continued to ratchet up. Finally, Harper spoke. "Explain. All of it."

Taking a deep breath, Wyck began. "After your father found out we lost the baby, he gave me a choice - leave town immediately and never contact you again, or he'd fire my mom and dad and blackball them. They'd have lost everything."

His hand riffled through his hair. "I told myself you'd be okay. You'd be better off without me anyway." He swallowed hard. "You've always been stronger than anyone I've ever known, Angel," Wyck told her. "I was always in awe of everything you did."

"So much awe you couldn't bear to see it anymore? Is that the reason you left me when I needed you most? The minute my vulnerability showed, you hightailed it out of town? Do you know how hard that was? To bear all that grief on my own while you were gone somewhere where I could only assume you were living it up?"

"I was not 'living it up' somewhere, Harper. I was grieving! She was my daughter, too, and I not only lost her, I lost you as well!" Wyck's voice cracked at the admission. He took a deep breath, pacing in front of the windows, running his hands through his hair in frustration.

Harper stood with her arms crossed, holding herself, her eyes never leaving his form as he paced back and forth. She realized tears were silently running down her cheeks as she watched him, thrown back into that horrible night fifteen years ago.

Finally, he stopped pacing and went to his knees in front of her. His vision blurred with his own tears. "I got her a stone with an Angel watching over her. Did you know that? Olivia Catherine Crockett – beloved daughter. I go visit her several times a year. I take her pink roses. I like to think she would have been a girlie girl, like you. I say a little prayer that she can forgive me for leaving her mama."

Harper's hands covered her mouth at the admission, trying to hold in the sobs she was fighting. "Daddy wouldn't let us have a service. He said it would be easier to move on that way. It was so early."

"I don't know that I can ever make it up to you, Angel. I was a stupid kid. After Jonah's threat against my family, I had convinced myself that if you didn't have to look at me anymore, you could move on more easily. You wouldn't have to imagine us as a family if I wasn't there. I had to fight every day not to call you; not to get in the car and come back and beg you to let me back in your life."

He tried reaching out to her, but Harper held up a hand, stopping him in his tracks. He raked a hand through his hair again in agony. "My only defense is that I was young and scared for my parents. Taking his money and trying to make something of myself seemed the only way."

Glancing at her pleadingly, he added, "It ripped my heart out, Harper. Leaving you after we lost Olivia."

Harper could only stand like a statue and listen silently as Wyck continued talking, describing his hopelessness during those first months alone, and the obsessive need for revenge that followed; the building of his company and the slow taking down of Jonah's empire.

"I was so focused on revenge, I had pushed the rest of you out of my mind. Out of the equation. Once I figured out exactly what I'd done, it was too late. Hurting you was never my intention, Harper," he finished heavily. "But intentions don't change what I did."

Halting, Harper turned to him for the first time. "But why didn't you ever even try to contact me. Why disappear completely? I thought I meant more to you than that."

Wyck met her eyes wretchedly. "At first, I thought a clean break would help you move on. It would be easier to get over us if you hated me. By the time I couldn't stand it any longer and took the chance of trying to sneak letters to you, you never responded."

Harper looked at him in confusion. "What letters? I never got any letters from you."

Shock registered on Wyck's face. "I wrote you letters for months. I drove for hours to make sure they were sent from different locations so your dad wouldn't know they were from me. You never wrote back, so I thought you wanted nothing to do with me."

Harper shook her head slowly. "I never saw any letters. If you sent them, they must have gotten lost, or…" Her hands fisted at her mouth. She didn't want to think that her father might have been the one to intercept the letters and kept them from her. Her heart broke a little more. All these years, she had thought Wyck didn't care enough to contact her at all.

Wyck's voice was ravaged. "Leaving was unforgivable. I'll regret it until my dying day."

He tentatively reached for her hand. After a moment's hesitation, Harper let him enfold her now ice-cold fingers between his own.

"Your father hurt us both," Wyck said. "I became so obsessed with revenge, I lost sight of what mattered - you, us. Can you ever forgive me?"

A tempest of emotions warred within Harper. She ached to grant him the absolution he so clearly craved. To believe he truly regretted the choice that had shattered her world. But fear held her back. She had trusted him completely once. Let him become her entire world. And when tragedy struck, he abandoned her.

Could she open herself to that kind of hurt again? Wisps of the anguished girl she had been twisted through her mind - numbed with grief over losing their child, utterly alone when her love disappeared without a trace. She couldn't ever go back to that dark place. The weak, naive girl she had been died the day Wyck walked away.

Yet now, gazing into his tormented grey eyes, Harper felt flickers of that naive hope reawakening. Hope that the sweet boy who had won her heart still lived inside this complex man. That perhaps they could rediscover the magic that lived between them once.

She searched Wyck's rugged, weary features, yearning to believe redemption could rise from the ashes of their past. But fear held her back, the impulse to protect the battered remnants of her heart winning out.

"I want to forgive you," she managed finally, giving his hand a tug to stand him up. "But I don't know if I can fully trust you again." Her voice cracked. "You broke me, Wyck."

Wyck's eyes beseeched her to open herself to him once more. "Just give me a chance, Angel. I'll spend forever proving myself to you if I have to." He brought her icy fingers to his lips in supplication.

Harper swallowed hard, a war raging within and without. Tell him it was too late, that the damage was permanent and walk away wise but alone? Or take the leap of faith his heartfelt remorse warranted, even if it might end in fresh wounds? Wisdom or hope? Her mind spun with impossible choices.

Harper gently extricated herself from his grasp. She took a long tremulous breath and wiped away the last of her tears. "Let's just see where things go."

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