Page 40 of Silver Fox's Secret Baby

Harley steps through, the lights automatically turning on. I close the door behind us and resist locking it. I don’t want to give her the wrong impression.

I’m not going to lie to myself: if the opportunity presented itself, I’d have her again here and now. But I’m not going to force it. In fact, I’m going to actively resist it as long as I can.

Until my body can’t take it anymore.

“What would you like to talk about, Grant?” Harley asks. She’s leaning up against the makeup table, the vanity lights casting her in a warm, intoxicating light.

“I…” I sigh heavily.Don’t beat around the bush. You’ve been inside her, for god’s sake. No use holding anything back now. “I feel like I owe you an apology for our conversation on your show.”

Harley frowns.

“I shouldn’t have mentioned your age. It was…disrespectful.” I’m trying to maintain eye contact with her but it’s too hard when I know what her eyes do to me. “I don’t know what your experiences have been. Other than…well–“

“Grant, it’s okay,” she says. “You hit a nerve. That’s all. I shouldn’t have been so dramatic. I don’t know what got into me, honestly.” Harley looks down at the tips of her gold pumps. “Maybe because we…there’s history there, I think I was just feeling raw.”

History. Lots of it. Eighteen years of her life and then one night to turn it all upside down.

“I should have known that inviting you to the studio would make me feel…” Harley stops and then shakes her head. “Anyway, it’s water under the bridge.”

“I hope that you weren’t hurt by what happened on the Fourth of July.”

Her eyes widen. “Hurt? Oh no. No, that’s not what I meant, not at all.”

“Okay, good. I wouldn’t want you to have walked away from that feeling like I’d taken advantage of you or made you feel uncomfortable, or…” I’m talking too much. “Yeah.”

Harley half-laughs. “No, it was the exact opposite. It was…I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”

Harley’s brave. Braver than me. She just came right out and said what I’ve been thinking for over a month now. “Me too,” I say, voice slight and strained.

In most circumstances, the revelation of mutual attraction would be cause for celebration. For us, it’s painful. I can see as much as Harley furrows her brow and groans. “Fuck.”

“Yeah. Fuck,” I say, chuckling.

“You weren’t supposed to say that.”

“What was I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know!” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “We were just supposed to ignore it and move on. Because it never should have happened.”

I nod. “You’re right. Never should have happened.”

“Because–”

“Yep.”

Our eyes meet. “My dad.”

I didn’t need her to say it to know that’s what she was referring to. But maybe bringing him into the conversation makes this more real. Maybe then we can’t get away with pretending we don’t know better. “I never mean to make it hard on you, by–”

“I know. Me either. For you.”

Silence. I can’t ignore her beauty. I’m a monster.

“I feel so guilty.”

“Me too.”

Harley lets out a long, frustrated sigh. “It’s even worse because I know I’d do it again if I could.”

---