Harden My Hart Read online

  The words are sharp between us. There’s sympathy in her eyes, such sympathy that I want to punch something. I have known this sympathy before and I resent it as much now as I did then.

  ‘Don’t.’ The word is a warning.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Don’t look at me like I’m a kid whose balloon just got popped. It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s just one of those things.’

  More sympathy. Fucking great. ‘I’m serious, Cora.’

  ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you’re fine. You’re obviously not fine; only a sociopath would be.’ She stands up, stands right in front of me, hands on her hips, naked and beautiful and like some kind of defiant angel. ‘To think you’re one thing all your life and then find out you’re not? You must feel an incredible sense of betrayal.’

  ‘Must I?’ The words are sharper than I intended. I regret that. Cora’s completely right, and none of this is her fault. Nonetheless, I hold my pose, rigid and determined.

  ‘Yeah.’ She answers my challenge directly. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Feel a sense of betrayal? I couldn’t tell you.’ I drag a hand through my hair. ‘I feel a sense of anger. Blind, all-consuming anger. Like I could strangle Ryan if he wasn’t already dead. I feel angry at everyone and everything, all the time. I hate my brothers—I hate them. I hate that they keep wanting me to stop being mad, like one day I’ll wake up and be “normal” again, like they don’t realise I’ve never felt normal a day in my life.’

  Tears fill her eyes. Just a little—enough to dampen them and make my gut twist. But it feels good. Hurting her, pushing her away, it’s the one thing I know I do well, and I do it to everyone who’s ever been in my life, to anyone who looks in danger of caring about me.

  ‘Even as a kid I was angry. Different. I was never one of them. At least now I know why.’

  ‘Feeling like you belong is important.’ Her voice is quiet, raw, as though she can ever understand what this feels like. I try to tell myself I’m not angry at Cora, except, shit, I’m angry at everyone right now. Everyone.

  ‘Speaking from experience?’

  She understands. I’m taking it out on her and her look speaks of annoyance, but also patience. It’s such a contradiction, but then that’s Cora. Complex, contradictory, beautiful Cora.

  ‘Well, yeah. I guess so. As a kid, I was always different. I didn’t have a mum, and my dad was half-loaded most of my life. My clothes often weren’t clean, my tummy rumbled in class, my hair was like a bird’s nest. I learned how to do a lot of stuff really young. I had to, to take care of him and myself. But those early years, when I was little, six or seven, I got teased mercilessly. I had no friends. I still remember that feeling, hiding under a bush at school so no one would see me and call me names.’

  My desire to punch something increases. Cora going through that makes me feel enraged.

  ‘I hate that.’ It’s honest. It feels good to be honest.

  ‘It’s not the same thing, though,’ she murmurs, putting her hand on my shoulder, her fingertips somehow breathing into my heart, slowing it down, calming it. ‘Your mom turned her back on you. You grew up with that sense of being unwanted, and all the worse because you’d known your mother, you loved her, and so her turning her back on you was an actual choice not to have you in her life.’

  She’s pressed her finger to the crux of what hurt so damned bad.

  ‘You must have missed her,’ she continues, like she has a hotline to my soul.

  ‘I wasn’t allowed to miss her. Ryan didn’t approve of that.’

  She opens her mouth to say something, closes it again, then, after a second, ‘Maybe he thought that was better for you. It’s misguided, but perhaps he thought it would be easier if you just...forgot your mother.’

  ‘I told you, Ryan wasn’t guided by affection for me. I became his possession and he wanted to control me absolutely. I have no idea why, but that motivated everything he did.’

  She mulls this over. ‘He still chose to raise you, to treat you as his own.’

  My spine straightens. ‘Yes.’ I can’t argue with her there. I was raised a Hart in every way—he left a third of the business to me in his will; there was no indication I wasn’t one of his children.

  ‘Why did you and Jagger fight today?’

  My heart thumps; her eyes narrow. ‘I don’t even know.’

  ‘You said they want you to be “normal”. Have you talked to them? Really talked? Told them all this?’

  I jerk my face away, looking towards the windows. ‘I’ve told them I need time.’ The words are defensive.

  ‘It sounds like they’ve given you time.’

  I bristle. Cora taking their side? Hell, no.

  ‘And what have you been doing since you found out?’ She’s relentless.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Look at me.’ A soft challenge. I ignore it at first but slowly lift my head and then stand, so I’m at least several inches taller than her. I don’t know what’s in her eyes. Sympathy. Sorrow. Affection. Fear? Of me?

  She sucks in a deep breath and expels it slowly. ‘Are you using alcohol to deal with this, Holden?’

  I stare at her, no idea how to answer such a direct question. ‘God, Cora. Are you kidding me?’

  ‘Listen to me.’ There’s urgency in her voice. ‘I know about this. I know. My dad—he was a genius. I mean a proper, bona fide genius. His IQ was off the charts; he got taken over to Yale on a scholarship when he was fifteen. But the pressure burned him out. The constant activity in his brain was horrifying. He could only silence his thoughts, his intellect, by drinking and smoking weed, and so he did both, and he got so addicted to the blunting of his mind that he couldn’t function without alcohol any more. I get it. Alcohol anaesthetises you to the pain you’re feeling but it’s not a real solution. It might help right now, but you have to get proper help. You need to speak to someone. Me. Your brothers. A therapist. Someone who can help you unpack your emotions, who can make you see that, despite what your mother did, and your biological father’s absence from your life, you are a worthy person, completely deserving of love, and that needs to start with loving yourself.’

  Her voice cracks a little in the last sentence and her words bring me to the edge of reason; they stoke all the fears inside of me, and all the anger too.

  ‘I don’t need you to psychoanalyse me, Cora.’ I say her name heavily.

  ‘Well, someone needs to. I doubt you ever recovered after your mom left you, and now you have all this to deal with and how can that not take a toll? How could you possibly be a normal guy, looking for normal things in relationships?’

  ‘I don’t want a relationship; I told you.’

  ‘So what do you want? What do you need from me?’

  ‘I need you for sex.’ The words surprise me. They sure as hell surprise her. Even as I throw them at her, I feel like a fire is being lit in my gut. I’m burning alive and I need to put the fire out but I can’t. I can only fan the flames, make it worse.

  She stands her ground. But I need her to go. This was a mistake. There’s a reason I ‘fuck and forget’. I let her get to know me, to know too much about me, and I don’t want anyone close to me right now. I need her to go and for this to be over. I wish I’d never met her.

  ‘Like that’s all this is?’ she challenges, her eyes showing both hurt and scorn.

  ‘What else do you want it to be?’

  She frowns, her own uncertainties obviously pulling at her. ‘I don’t know. But it’s more than just sex. Maybe that’s what we both thought this would be, going into it, but it’s different now. I’m different, and you’re different.’

  Even if that were true, it wouldn’t matter. I have only the ability to hurt Cora, and the sooner she realises that the better. ‘I’m the same man I wa
s the day we met and I want the same things from you.’

  ‘And that’s sex?’

  ‘Yes.’ I’m exasperated. It shows in my voice. ‘Damned sex. And soon I’ll go back to the States and forget you exist. Because that’s what I do.’

  She recoils a little but doesn’t otherwise move. ‘That sounds like a great way to live your life.’

  I grind my teeth together.

  ‘And ignoring everyone who cares about you?’

  Something in the tone of her voice digs inside of me. ‘Are you saying you care about me?’

  Her eyes flash and it’s not until a moment later I realise I’ve taunted her, the question mocking.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ Her skin is pale. God, I’m hurting her and I need her to leave just so I stop. I hate this—I’m too good at ruining things and I don’t want to ruin this, to hurt her. I don’t want her memories of me to include this night, this argument.

  ‘I was talking about your brothers.’

  ‘So you’re saying you don’t care about me?’

  She frowns. ‘Why would I be standing here going through this if I didn’t care? I care, Holden. I hate seeing you like this. I hate seeing—’ She stops and her eyes are suspiciously moist but she blinks quickly and her tears are gone again. ‘I hate seeing anyone turn to alcohol as a cure-all, because it’s not. You think it’s helping? It’s destroying you, destroying your life, and if you don’t get a hold of yourself you’re going to wind up completely alone, or dead. I don’t want that for you.’

  I don’t know how to respond to that. ‘I’m not an alcoholic.’ The need to reassure her comes out of nowhere. ‘I’m not your father.’

  ‘When was the last day you didn’t drink?’

  I close my eyes for a moment. ‘You see everything as so black and white. Haven’t you ever done something that was bad for you?’

  ‘Plenty of things! And, what’s more, I’ve had a front row seat to watching someone I love destroy themselves so I know a train crash in motion when I see it.’

  ‘I’m not your father.’ The words roar out of me, repeating them important in some way.

  She’s unflinching, that defiant angel all over again. ‘His demons were different to yours, but you’re dodging them in the same ways.’ And then she puts a hand on my cheek, the gentle touch completely unexpected in the midst of the words we’re throwing at each other. ‘Don’t you think I wanted to put my head in the sand, after the baby?’

  I force myself to meet her eyes because she’s showing such courage and strength and it feels like the least I can do.

  ‘I would have done anything to help me forget.’ Her eyes close for a moment and her face carries the burden of remembering, torment in her features. ‘I felt my son move inside me, flipping and flopping, I nourished him and had him measured through my belly at each of my prenatal appointments. I readied a room for him, I chose his name, I imagined him into every picture of my future, and then he died and there was no time to prepare. I delivered my baby but never heard him cry.’

  Jesus. Something big clogs my throat. Her words are like acid and electricity. Shocking and sharp, eroding everything inside me, making me feel like I don’t know a thing about pain.

  ‘I understand the desire to escape. I left home. I ran away in a sense because everything there reminded me of him, of what I’d lost, and I couldn’t face it. I haven’t stopped travelling for eight years. I barely stood still because, if I did, the memories were there, filling my dreams, making me catch my breath and remember all over again. Only now, eight years later, do I feel ready to pick up the threads of my life again, to start doing what I’ve always loved, to settle down and face the fact that those memories will always be a part of me, that what I went through isn’t going anywhere.’

  She’s brave and maybe she’s right. But she’s also wrong. ‘It took you eight years,’ I say, when there’s so much more I want to add. ‘Don’t I get more time too?’

  Her throat moves as she swallows. ‘The difference is, you’re destroying yourself in the process. The worst I did was fly away. You’re annihilating the relationships in your life, and you’re destroying yourself.’

  ‘Should relationships be so easy to annihilate?’

  She drops her hand, frowning, a line between her brows. She’s quiet for a long time, and I find myself staring at her, wondering at the way we’re arguing, wondering how I can stop this, fix it—but fixing is way outside my realm of experience.

  ‘No.’ There’s been such a lengthy pause it takes me a second to recall what I asked.

  ‘But isn’t that your problem? You’re trying to push your brothers away and they refuse to budge. That’s why you’re so angry, right? You just want everyone to go away and leave you in peace? So you can drink yourself into a hole?’

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘You want me to go away too, right? When you said this is just sex, your implication was that you could have sex with anyone you want, that I’m nothing special. That I don’t mean anything to you.’

  The ground tilts under my feet because I feel the exact opposite of everything she’s said and that terrifies me and catches me completely off-guard. And I know I have to push through the haze of this anger to say the right thing: that this really matters.

  ‘Sex is sex.’ Great. That’s perfect, jackass. ‘We agreed to that.’

  Her eyes are rebuking me, but she nods slowly. ‘We agreed to a week. I don’t know if we said it would just be sex.’

  Did we? Didn’t we? I don’t know. I can’t remember any more. My own thoughts were loud enough that perhaps I only thought I spoke them. ‘It’s what I meant.’ The words come out gruff, defensive. ‘I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear, but sex is all I’ve ever been offering, Cora. One week, and this.’ I gesture to the bed.

  She blanches visibly but a moment later regains her composure, turning to look at me with steel in her eyes. ‘I know what you were offering. I thought I was okay with that. To be honest, I had my own reasons for wanting to keep this simple. But it’s not and I don’t want it to be. You’re hurting and I want to help you.’ She moves closer and presses her hand to my heart, her palm flat on my chest. ‘I don’t want you to leave in four days. I don’t want you to leave at all.’

  It’s my turn to blanch. The idea of what she’s offering hurts too much to contemplate. It’s a normality and reality that’s so completely removed from what I’m capable of. Doesn’t she see that?

  ‘You’re right.’ I force myself to speak with detached coolness. ‘I’ve become obsessed with you. When I’m with you everything feels better somehow. You make me forget, but that’s not about you. It has nothing to do with you. It’s how you make me feel, that’s all.’

  ‘And that’s nothing to do with me?’ she repeats with obvious disbelief.

  My temper is growing. I try to control it. ‘What do you want me to say, Cora? Do you want me to say you made your way into my heart? I’m afraid to tell you I don’t think I have one.’

  She flinches. ‘You’re wrong. No one without a heart would hurt this bad.’

  Her words hurt because of the faith she’s showing in me, even now.

  ‘I have spent the last eight years completely on my own.’ Her voice is a whisper. ‘I’ve made friends, but I let no one get to know me beyond a surface level, no one I trusted. I know what casual feels like, and that’s not this. You and I mean something to each other, something different to normal. God, Holden, I don’t want to watch you destroy your life, but nor can I just walk away from you. I need you to listen to me. Stop fighting me and let me care about you, let me help you...’

  But that’s the last thing I can do. I know what she went through with her father. Like she needs my basket case issues to deal with now. ‘No.’ The word is firm, unyielding. I take a breath, standing on the edge of a cliff with a fire raging at my back. There’
s no option but to jump.

  ‘The day I met you, I’d woken up beside some woman whose name I don’t even know. I guess I’d picked her up the night before. I honestly can’t remember. Maybe it was the day before that.’

  I pause a moment, letting those words sink in. ‘I like sex. Sex makes me feel good, and yeah, it makes me forget. And sex with you is better than anything I’ve ever known, but it’s still just sex. Nothing more.’

  Her face is pale. I flinch inwardly.

  ‘I want you to be happy, Cora. You’re an incredible woman, and you deserve to find someone who makes you smile, all the time. But I’m not a part of that—I’m not a part of your life, and you’re not a part of mine.’

  ‘You’re—’

  I lift a hand to silence her. ‘I don’t want this. We had sex. It was fun. But that’s all.’

  I didn’t want to hurt her but I have. I can see it in the way her face shifts and contorts, even in the way she draws her features back into a mask of cool, but her eyes are vibrant, awash with feeling.

  I have to cut the cord. For both of our sakes, I need to end this. I should never have let it get this far.

  ‘You should go.’ I move away from her, towards the bedroom door. ‘I’ll have my driver take you home when you’re ready.’

  I feel her eyes on me but I don’t look at her. I stand just outside the door, waiting. I hear her moving around the bedroom, the rustle of fabric as she dresses, a small sniff that almost slices through me, but I harden my heart to it because ultimately this is the best course of action.

  No, scratch that, the best course of action would be going back in time and not letting this get off the plane. We screwed once; I should have left it at that. Why did I go to her place? Why did I let us get involved in this?

  She walks across the room and I catch her fragrance. It assaults me, so sweet and familiar, that my gut pulls and every instinct I possess screams at me not to let her go. To tell her I’ve changed my mind. Instead, I walk to the front door and pull it open quietly.