No Control | Holding Me Ransom (Book 2)

93 - Point Of No Return

"Jess?" Harry said softly from beside me, jolting me out of my thoughts as I stared at the doorway through which Callie had just left. "Baby? Are you OK? Are we OK?"

"I...," I began, not knowing how to answer. I didn't know if I was OK. I didn't know if we were OK. 

He took my arm and steered me gently across the room to the sofa tucked away under the slope of the stairs, where we had sat exactly one year ago laughing and flirting, and becoming acquainted. He sat down next to me and peered at my face while I stared blindly at the floor.

"You should have told me," I said eventually. "You shouldn't have kept this from me."

"I did it to protect you," he said quietly. "And a little part of me was afraid she would turn you against me if I put a foot wrong."

"Do you really think my feelings for you are that easily influenced?" I asked, looking directly into his eyes for the first time since these revelations. "Surely the past year has proved where my loyalties lie."

"Yes," he said carefully, "but you also chose to look after Callie over New Year, when you knew how much I wanted you to come away with me. You are fiercely loyal to everyone you love, Jess. I would never presume that was exclusive to me. Callie was right about one thing: she has been there for you through thick and thin. As much as I disliked her for how she was behaving towards me, she was still doing it out of concern for you; albeit a sick and twisted interpretation."

I dropped my face in my hands and sighed. 

"I'm sorry if you feel I've betrayed you too," he said sadly. "I honestly didn't know what to do for the best. I didn't want you to fall out with Callie over me. She's your best friend, and I didn't want you to lose her. But I was also afraid of losing you myself. And in the end, she realised she had been a living nightmare. She gave me all your stuff, retrieved your pictures from your icloud, helped get you here tonight, and tipped me off when she realised you were planning a surprise for me, so that my surprise for you wasn't ruined."

"Yet she managed to ruin tonight anyway," I said bitterly.

"Yeah, well," he muttered. "I did try to stop her from shooting her mouth off, but she wasn't to be silenced. I won't deny I'm pretty pissed off about her timing."

"Would you have ever told me, if she hadn't?" I asked.

"Honestly? Probably not," he admitted. "Unless she'd started playing games again, or holding me to ransom. In which case yes, I would have told you everything myself. I was wary of her at first, when she started helping me. But I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, and in the end she came clean herself. I suspect her own guilt was eating away at her."

I rubbed my face and looked up at Harry. "I'm so, so sorry for what she put you through," I said sincerely. "You didn't deserve any of that. She had no right to control you the way she did, and I can't believe you went along with it for so long."

"I wanted to do this for you," he shrugged, gesturing around us. "The more she made me work for it, the more determined I became. I wasn't trying to be underhand in keeping it from you. I was doing it with the best intentions."

I nodded. "I know."

He smiled softly at me, and I leaned towards him and put my arms around his neck. He hugged me too, his palms caressing my back gently. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "I'm sorry for not telling you, and I'm sorry for taking my frustrations out on you at times, when it all got on top of me. And I'm sorry that our anniversary was spolit by all of this."

I pulled back from him, my arms still draped loosely over his shoulders, and kissed him softly on the lips. "It hasn't been spoilt. I shouldn't have said that. This whole thing is absolutely perfect."