“When she leaves for school in a week, I want her to try to enjoy it.”

“Of course,” I immediately agreed.

Mr. Evans shook his head. “Knox, the wife and I like you. Not many young men would treat our daughter with the respect you have, and that quickly earned our respect. However, we’re worried that her mind is so focused on you that she will miss out on life, which is why we pushed her to go away to school instead of staying in Seattle. If all she thinks about is making it to her eighteenth birthday, then she won’t try to enjoy her time when she is away from you—do you understand?”

“I’m not sure,” I said slowly, but I was worried I did.

“You’ve always given her space, but not the kind of space I think she should have when she leaves. You’ve let her be her own person, but she needs to decide who she is now, and she can’t do that with you always there beside her. She sees her future as Harlow and Knox; I need her to see what it could be as just Harlow. Like I said, the wife and I like you, and I would be glad to have Harlow marry you . . . but I want her to be sure this is what she wants once she finally gets to be on her own and makes her own decisions. I don’t want my daughter to ever look back on her life and regret it. You look confused,” he grumbled, and searched for the words to explain himself.

I didn’t need him to explain more. I got it . . . I just didn’t like it.

“Now, I’m not asking you to push her into dating other guys. Just make sure she enjoys her time there, and lives a normal college student life. The constant phone calls, the flowers—they should be scaled back. Way back. I would ask you not to call her at all, but I don’t think you’d respect that wish, and my daughter may never forgive me for it. And you may not have been dating my daughter the last couple of years, but to everyone else that is what it has looked like, and, son, I don’t want her to go away to school with a boyfriend. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

My heart sank as I realized exactly how far he wanted me to take this. “I can’t . . . I can’t break up with her.”

“I’m just asking you not to be the boyfriend you technically aren’t yet, okay?”

I nodded hesitantly, and he tried to give me a reassuring smile.

“Even though those few months don’t seem like much, those first few months away from home are everything, as I’m sure you remember. So, if you are what she wants once they’re over . . . then you may ask my daughter to marry you. And, Knox, I have no doubt that you will be asking my daughter to marry you.”

I nodded once and shook his hand. I also had no doubt that come Harlow’s eighteenth birthday, I would be doing just that.

But now none of that mattered. Graham and Deacon had been right. All of the waiting, and all of the time spent getting ready for this day, had been a game for Harlow. And now the game was over.

Present Day—Richland

THE SHAKING IN my arms and legs abruptly stopped when the call to Harlow went straight to voice mail. Ending the call, I waited a couple of seconds before tapping on her name again, and held my breath until I got the same result.

“Shit,” I hissed, and dropped my phone onto the table I was sitting at. She’s okay, I chanted to myself over and over again. Give her another thirty minutes.

But after ten minutes and another phone call with the same result, I was running out of the coffee shop and to my truck. I knew I was risking a lot, but I had to know she was okay. After looking up her address, which I’d stored in my phone, and putting it in my GPS, I took off for her house, but slowed to a stop a couple of houses away when I saw two cars parked in the driveway.

My tense grip on the steering wheel loosened, and I blew out a ragged breath. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I groaned, and ran my hands over my face.

I was paranoid. I was turning into a psychotic ex who always thought the worst because of what had happened before. As much as I hated the situation she was in, and as much as I wanted to get her away from her husband, I knew I couldn’t do this to Harlow. And as I gripped my chest, I realized I couldn’t do it to myself. It felt like I was going to make myself have a heart attack with how bad I was stressing over all of this.

She told me she was fine, and would be fine. She probably couldn’t meet me because her plans changed too fast for her to be able to even warn me. And I’d somehow turned that into her needing me to save her. I was beginning to worry about my sanity.

After another look at her house, I turned my car around and headed back to Thatch.

“WHY IS IT we always find you pacing when we’ve come home the last couple of weeks?” Deacon asked distractedly when he came home hours later.

Because Harlow’s husband is home by now. Because she will have hidden the phone I bought her by now. Because now I don’t know what she needed to tell me in person, and I’m back to worrying about her safety when I probably don’t have a reason to. And because now I’m pissed-off that she never warned me she wouldn’t make it to the coffee shop or turned the phone back on to at least let me know she was okay. A laugh that sounded more like a sneer burst from my chest when I remembered: She’s married; she doesn’t have to tell me anything.

I never once stopped pacing during my inner rant, or looked at Deacon, since he usually didn’t stop on the way to his room to wait for an answer, but after a few seconds I realized he was standing there watching me with a worried expression, his phone now forgotten.

The door opened again to Graham, and I sighed in relief when Grey didn’t follow him in. She seemed to only show up recently when I’d seen or talked to Harlow, like she knew I’d done something she’d warned me against, and it was impossible for me to hide things from her.

“Why are we staring at each other?” Graham asked, but before either of us could answer, his eyes narrowed. “Are you murdering the carpet again? Jesus, what is going on?”

I wanted to tell them. Despite how everything had gone down in college, neither of them had gloated or been happy when Harlow had ended things, or when I’d finally gotten on board with what our plan had been all along for college. They’d both been more worried about me than they had in the years leading up to that point, and had even asked if I’d heard from Harlow or if she’d changed her mind a few times before they’d understood not to ever bring her up again.