CHAPTER
TWENTY
HARLEY and Mary Jane had taken an earlier flight than Cooper’s redeye after the race. So when he got home he wasn’t exactly surprised to crawl into his empty bed at five a.m. for a few hours of sleep. Not surprised, but disappointed that Harley had chosen to sleep in her room. It didn’t prevent him from crashing immediately, though. He’d come in second at the race. His best finish in eighteen months. Not that he was counting. But seriously. Best finish in eighteen months. Despite being super worried about what legal maneuvering his mother was already engaged in.
When he came downstairs at ten he knew instantly something was wrong. Harley was sitting at the kitchen table, biting her fingernail. She started when she saw him. His gut twisted. He had good instincts. It made him good at his job. And he knew that he was not going to like whatever was going to come out of her mouth in the next five minutes. “Morning,” he said, testing the waters.
“Did you sleep okay?” she asked. “I can make you some coffee.”
“I got it.” He didn’t particularly want her waiting on him. It smacked of guilt at the moment. “Where’s my sister?”
“She’s with her homeschool group at the library.”
“She liking that okay?” Harley had suggested Mary Jane needed friends her own age and he had agreed. What surprised him was that MJ had agreed, but then again, after Daytona he figured she saw this not as an educational opportunity but a chance to meet teen boys. He supposed it was only natural even if it made him sick to his stomach.
“Yes, I think so. She hardly complains at all.”
“That’s saying something.” Cooper bent over the coffeemaker, reading the little icons. He pressed open. “So, uh, everything okay? You look worried about something.”
“Your mother approached me at the race.”
Shit. Cooper rubbed his forehead. “Yeah? What bitchy thing did she say this time? Did she tell you I’m a lousy son?” He had to admit, no matter what he said to MJ, it did still hurt when his mother showed such callous disregard for both of them. He couldn’t help it. He’d spent his whole life wanting her approval, and it was never going to be there. Not in any way that he could appreciate.
“She said she would let you have custody of Mary Jane, no contest, in exchange for one request.”
Elation that she might slink away quietly was gone by the end of Harley’s sentence. It wouldn’t be that easy. It was never that easy with his mother. “What does she want? Money? Or a Tuscan villa?” He’d give her money or a house. It wouldn’t be much more than legal fees would be when all was said and done and it would save him a shit-ton of worry and stress and ease MJ’s mind. Cooper put a mug under the coffee spout and inserted his roast cup into the machine.
“No. She wants me to leave you both.”
Cooper paused in the act of his finger reaching out to push the start button. “Come again?” That made no fucking sense. It was ludicrous.
“She wants me to quit my job here and leave.”
Turning around slowly, Cooper resented the hell out of the fact that his kitchen was so goddamn big. He was fifteen feet away from Harley. But even at that distance he could see her pale face, the nervous shifting of her eyes. Oh, my fucking God. She was going to do it. She was going to leave him.
“Why?” he asked, carefully, holding on to his control. If he was rational and calm, all of this would go away. “Why would she want that?”
“She is essentially afraid that Mary Jane will love me more than her. She doesn’t want to be replaced. Not by someone younger than her, anyway.”
His anger exploded that his mother would have the goddamn nerve. “What does she care? My housekeeper has a more positive influence on MJ than she does. And sees her more. Of course Mary Jane is going to be close to you.”
“It’s selfish. I totally agree.” Harley was speaking quietly, not expressing the outrage he personally felt. “That’s not really the point.”
“What is the point?”
“If I do what she wants, she will sign over all rights to Mary Jane indefinitely. And there is no chance that you’ll lose custody in a heated court battle.”
Hold the fucking phone. “Are you actually considering this?” he asked. Forget the coffee. He strode across the kitchen and got in her space. He leaned over and stared into her eyes, his palms on the table, wanting to read what was there. “You can’t be.”
“I’ve already decided that it’s the right thing to do.” She pushed a pile of papers over to him. “Sign the papers, Cooper. I couldn’t stand it if Mary Jane had to go back to your mom. It would break my heart.”
He couldn’t believe what she was saying. “So you’re just willing to break MJ’s heart instead? And mine?” It made no sense at all. “Fuck that, Harley. Fuck. That.”
There were suddenly tears in her eyes at his harsh words, but Cooper didn’t care. No. This was unacceptable. But she looked away and leaned back in her chair to put more distance between them. He slammed the table with his hands and stepped away. “You have got to be kidding me. This isn’t happening.”
“I don’t have a choice,” she insisted, her voice thin and reedy.
“We always have a choice.” He was just baffled that she thought this was the right thing to do. “You’re going to sacrifice us because my mother is making threatening noises? She can’t win this court case, you know.”
“What if she does? Stranger things happen in court all the time. If Mary Jane has to go live with her, it will be my fault!”
“It won’t happen.” He didn’t believe it for one minute. Sure, they would have to wade through a bunch of bullshit, but it wouldn’t happen.
But Harley shook her head. “That’s because you have had everything go your way. Life hasn’t been as fair to me. I know the odds are fifty-fifty. And that makes the odds too high for me to risk it.”
He was so angry and hurt he almost didn’t trust himself to speak. “That’s lame. Just lame. If you wanted an out to our relationship, you could have just told me.”
“That’s not what I want!”
She was crying now, tears streaming down her cheeks that she impatiently wiped at, but Cooper was unmoved. She was breaking his goddamn heart. She should be crying. He felt a little like crying himself. “Then don’t do this!”
“I have to!”
He just stared at her, still not entirely comprehending that she was serious. “So that’s just it? For real? You’re leaving me?”
She nodded, biting her lip.
Cooper needed to get out of there, away from her, away from the horrible wave of emotion that crashed over him. He wanted to kill his mother. He wanted to throttle Harley. He wanted to throw things.
So instead he would drive. It was what he could do. The one thing he was good at, the one place in the world where he felt in control. He grabbed his keys off the hook by the garage door and shoved his feet into the boots he kept in the closet. He was only wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but he didn’t need a coat. He was flushed with anger.
“Where are you going?”
“Out. If you’re really leaving me, then do it while I’m gone, or I’m going to say ugly and hurtful things.” He paused at the door, looking back at her, giving her a chance to make this stupidity all go away. He waited. And waited. And she did nothing. She sat there, shoulders slumped. Crying.
Cooper swore. As he shoved the door open, it hit the wall of the garage so hard it broke the doorstop. Because it felt good, he slammed it two more times just to make a nice hole in the drywall. It appeased his frustration one thousandth of a percent. His garage had room for six cars. He usually drove the truck or the SUV, but he had several sports cars. He chose the Porsche, hitting the button to open the garage door. He wanted speed.
Harley appeared in the doorway, looking alarmed. “Be careful,” she said. “Maybe you shouldn’t—”
But Cooper cut her off. “You know what, Harley? I don’t need a mother. I had a shitty mother but I had a good grandmother and she took care of me. I don’t need you to take care of me. Mother me. Make decisions that are supposedly best for me. Okay?”
“That’s not what—”
“Yes, it is.” Knowing he was being a little childish on the heels of just declaring he didn’t want her mothering him, he said, “I’m going to drive my Porsche too fast and there is nothing you can do about it. Just like I can’t do anything about you walking out on me.”
As an exclamation point, he got in his car and purposely made the tires screech as he backed out. Or tore out, if you wanted to be technical.
It wasn’t until he was on the road, keeping it under sixty miles an hour, since he wasn’t on the track, that he allowed himself to really comprehend what was happening. Fuck nuts. He was single again. Just like that.
He could argue with Harley until the cows came home, but if she was determined to be noble, then there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot he could do about it. Which sucked. Hard. He couldn’t imagine his house now without her in it. He couldn’t imagine his life now without her in it. It was honestly far worse to have known what happiness could be like and have it yanked away than to never experience it at all. The cliché was true. He’d always thought it was melodramatic, but now he knew it wasn’t.
The morning was crisp and clear, the sun shining and the sky blue. It was a beautiful day and as he turned out of his neighborhood and onto the rural road, the blacktop rose in front of him, mesmerizing him. For as long as he could remember, the roar of an engine, the feel of the stick shift beneath his fingers, the choreography of clutch, gas, brake had soothed him. On the road he could clear his thoughts and find serenity. He’d outdriven the demons his mother had left him with by the time he was in his early twenties. Life had been good for him since.
But this . . . this hurt. This was the first broken heart he’d had since he was fifteen and he had to say that even if he could completely open the engine up, he didn’t think he could outdrive this pain.
* * *
HARLEY drove to Charity’s, crying, worrying about Cooper off in that car. It had been six hours and he hadn’t returned. She had picked up Mary Jane, had a heartwrenching conversation with her where Mary Jane had given her the most scathing look of disgust ever when she explained the situation and tentatively suggested maybe she should leave.
At that moment, knowing that Cooper was off half-cocked, and seeing his sister’s face, Harley had changed her mind. She had decided that she couldn’t hurt them, even if it was the best for them. She had backtracked with Mary Jane, but it was too late. The betrayal had been done, the hurt inflicted. Mary Jane had screamed at her to leave, shoving her out of her bedroom.
So she had.
And now she was sobbing on her way to her sister’s, wondering how everything could have gone so horribly wrong. Despising June Rawlings. Despising herself.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Charity asked as she let herself into the apartment with her key and careened into the living room. “My God, did someone die?”
“No. But I want to.” Harley threw herself down onto the couch and swiped at her face, not even sure where to start. “Cooper’s mom threatened to take Mary Jane and so Cooper freaked out and I freaked out and Mary Jane freaked out and I told her that her face lift was bad and so then she said she would give Cooper custody if I broke up with him and left so I did.”
Charity’s eyes widened, and she shoved at Harley’s feet so she could sit down next to her. “What? You broke up with Cooper? Are you insane?”
Harley nodded. She couldn’t repeat it again. She just couldn’t.
“You broke up with Cooper or you’re insane?”
“Both!” Harley felt like she had a fever. “Then I tried to undo it and I couldn’t and I think Cooper is dead.”
“What the fuck . . .” Charity stared at her. “I don’t understand.”
But she was crying too hard to explain it. She wasn’t even sure what had happened. All she knew was June was evil and she herself had tried to be brave and do the right thing but in the end it felt totally like the wrong thing. Actually, there was no right thing. Because if she had blithely ignored June’s threat and Mary Jane was taken away, she would have never forgiven herself. So either way she had been screwed, only this way the agony came sooner.
“I’m calling Jeff.”
Harley wasn’t sure why but she didn’t care enough to protest. And now that she thought about it . . . “Ask him if he’s heard from Cooper.”
Charity was murmuring into her phone so that Harley couldn’t hear. Her twin kept shooting her nervous looks, her hand over her mouth. Harley was pretty sure that she had never felt as awful as she did right then. Both Cooper and Mary Jane had looked at her like she had taken a knife and stabbed them in the heart. Which in a sense, she had. She’d said she would be there for them, and yet she’d been forced to leave them. It wasn’t fair.
“I’m not brave like you,” Harley told her sister when she hung up the phone. “I always act out of fear.”
“I’m not brave. I’m just a big mouth.” Charity sat next to her again and touched her leg. “Jeff said that Cooper is with his lawyer. Mary Jane is with Rosa. Everything is okay.”
“Everything is not okay.”
“So call Cooper.”
“He’s not answering me.” A fresh torrent of tears started. “Neither is Mary Jane.”
“I’m texting Jeff to text him to text you.”
“What is this, six degrees of Kevin Bacon? Text him, too, while you’re at it. Maybe he can fix the mess I made of my life.” This was what happened when you let Cinderella out of the kitchen. She fell down the stairs at the ball. Lost her shoe. Went up against the evil stepmother and lost. Where the hell was her fairy godmother when she needed one?
“Maybe Cooper would agree to see me,” Charity said. “And you can go instead.”
“Now who is insane? I think we both learned the price of switching identities was a high one to pay.” Harley got off the couch and went to the kitchen. “Please tell me you have ice cream in here or I am going to cry.”
“You’re already crying.”
“Harder.” She went rooting around in the refrigerator. “Do you think I mother the men I date?”
“Yes,” Charity said without hesitation.
Great. “Cooper said he doesn’t want me to do that.”
“It’s a fine line.” Charity followed her. “There is nothing wrong with being nurturing. But you can’t make decisions for people.”
Harley wanted to groan. “That’s not what I was doing. I was trying to avoid losing Mary Jane.”
Her phone rang in her pocket. She pulled it out because it was Cooper’s ring tone. “Oh, my God, he’s calling me.”
“Answer it.”
Right. “Hello?”
“So you left.”
It wasn’t a question. “I talked to Mary Jane and then I wasn’t going to leave but then she asked me to leave.”
“So you just listened to the thirteen-year-old with the hurt feelings and left.”
When he said it like that, it sounded awful. “I . . .”
“You what? Explain to me.”
“I thought I was doing what she wanted. And I thought I was doing the right thing for both of you, to protect you.”
“I think you were just afraid. I think you’re afraid of being with me. You’re afraid to be a driver’s girlfriend. You’re afraid to go a round or two with my mom. You’re afraid to put yourself out there like your sister does.”
What could she say to that? “You’re right. I am. I changed my mind. I wasn’t going to leave.”
“It’s too late, Harley. You did the one thing I asked you not to do—leave. All MJ and I both needed was someone to be there, who cared about us for us. Not for money or fame.”
“Cooper . . .” She really was going to throw up. “But your mother . . .”
The argument was weak, even to her.
“Doesn’t have a chance in hell of winning a court case. We could have faced this together.”
She had nothing to say. Her sister would have turned it around, pointed out Cooper’s flaws as well. She would have stood behind her decision and asked why he wasn’t backing her. But Harley couldn’t do that. When confronted, she retreated. She pulled inside herself and clammed up. Even wanting to, she couldn’t force the words out.
What she wanted to tell him was what she had never said to him. That she was in love with him. That she loved him. More than any man she’d ever met. Not because he was famous or wealthy or did something cool for a living. But because he was still real. He wasn’t arrogant or cocky or demanding. He was confident, sure of who he was. She envied that about him. But the best qualities about him were his kindness, his thoughtfulness, his desire to do the right thing. The way he teased and cared for his sister even though it wasn’t easy and he didn’t know what he was doing. The way he had forgiven her, even though she had lied, and set him up for unintentional humiliation.
He was a deep, deep well of loyalty and integrity.
She loved him.
But none of that came out of her mouth.
What did was simply, “I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t surprising to her when he made a sound of frustration and said, “Good-bye, Harley.”
Still she said nothing, but her throat was closed and her pain was overwhelming.
The phone went dead.
All her dreams died along with it.
Unless she finally got brave and said what needed to be said.