Page 163 of Darling Obsession

“If you want the honest answer?—”

“Yes, please.”

“Then, no.” He frowns worriedly. “Probably not.”

I sigh. “Well, the cat’s out of the bag now, right? Can I please have the explanation that I’ve been waiting for? I am not going to be patient on this. And you’re killing me here.”

He sits down on the sofa, takes a deep breath, and says basically the last thing I’m prepared to hear.

“I thought I was having a baby once before.”

“Oh. Uh…”

“But I was wrong,” he adds quickly. “The woman’s name was Chelsea. She was my most serious girlfriend. I mean, maybe she was my only serious girlfriend. This was years ago. She became pregnant, but within twenty-four hours of me finding out, someone tipped off my brother Graysen that she was sleeping with her golf instructor. It turns out the baby was his.”

“Oh, god. Harlan. That’s awful.”

“I mean, it wasn’t fun. It didn’t really sell me on the idea of falling in love and living happily-ever-after. Chelsea and her golf instructor ended up there, but I ended up kind of shutting down. More than I already was. I don’t think I really loved her like she wanted me to. I didn’t want to fall in love.”

He pauses, looking at me almost guiltily, like he’s worried how I’ll take this. But I’m just so glad he’s letting me into something from his past. Something that feelstrue.

“And then,” he goes on, “things just got worse after she left me for that other guy. My family made such a giant deal out of the whole mess, wanting to talk about it all the time. They wantedmeto talk about it, but I didn’t want to. I just wanted to move on.”

“I guess that’s understandable…” I’m trying to be supportive. And I can understand not wanting to dwell on such a thing, for sure. “But you have to talk about it sometime, with someone, right?”

He stares at me for a beat. “You sound just like Savannah.”

“She must be a wise woman.”

He kind of grumbles in agreement. At least, I think it’s agreement.

“Either way,” he continues, “my siblings definitely didn’t let the topic of my love life rest. They became nosy as hell, like I now needed their help or something. I guess their idea of supporting me in moving on was asking me at regular intervals if I was seeing anyone. Over and fucking over again. For a while, I just said no, whether I was or not. I just decided that I was never going to tell them yes. Because then they’d pry for more details. But after a few years, they weren’t really taking no for an answer anymore. They knew I was lying. And that just made them poke at me more.”

“I hate to say it,” I interject gently, “but I think they were just doing that because they care about you.”

“Incessantly prying into my personal business is caring?”

“I mean…” I blink at him. “Isn’t that what you do to me because you care, more or less?”

He glares at me. “Hardly,” he mutters, but I know he can see my point.

“Look. If I treated my girlfriends and my mom the way you just said you treated your siblings, whenever they asked if I was seeing anyone… I can tell you, they’d pry. They’d be concerned about me. And, as people who love me, they’d feel a right to know who I was dating.”

Harlan’s nostrils flare as he takes that in. I know he doesn’t like it.

But how can he argue my logic on this?

“This is what relationships are, Harlan. Sharing. Transparency. Building trust.”

His jaw does that crackling thing that tells me he doesn’t love what he’s hearing.

Too bad.

“So, what happened? After they figured out you were lying to them about not seeing anyone for like, years?” I prompt.

I watch his chest rise and fall as maybe he digs deep for what he’s about to say.

“I lied to them again.”

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