Invisible to My First Love (Harper and Maddox) novel Chapter 86

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Chapter 86

Harper

Maddox and I left the Aldridge Estate far behind, already halfway to my place but I kept replaying one of the most significant moments according to me. It wasn’t the one where he took me to his old bedroom. Sure, that was special, but it wasn’t what was running through my mind.

It was the warning he’d given Tiffany and her mother in the living room right before we left. Even though it was meant to be the final step in making sure that they both stayed away from me, the way he said it while possessively holding me made me believe him. It was for this reason that I glanced at his body profile a few times during the ride back while pressing my thighs together. I saw him as the guy he’d always been during the times I found myself doing whatever the fuck he wanted me to do.

“So, how long do you want to keep doing this?” he asked, putting down his glass.

Clearing my throat, I said, “I don’t know.”

“We won’t be doing this forever, but Tiffany and her mom got me loud and clear. That’s why for as long as you want to keep going, I’m all in.”

I glanced at his side profile again. “Imagine you find someone you actually like, won’t this get in the way?”

He scoffed. “That night you came to London, I told you that-”

“Right, but still…”

“Scared that once this is over, they’ll come after you?” he teased me.

I rolled my eyes. “Please, I’m not scared of them.”

“I know.” He looked over at me. “You just don’t want to get hurt like last time, because you don’t know what might happen next, even though nothing might be worse than what happened in London.”

I chuckled painfully at how he was spot on. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Manage to live with the fact that you have such people in your family.”

He chuckled, looking away. “I like to think of Tiffany and her mom as non–existent. Yes, I do see them and talk to them, but if I treat them like they don’t matter, and they definitely don’t, they have very little significance in my life.”

“Knowing you, I can picture you saying that to their faces.”

“I’ve said it a lot to Margot’s face.”

“Because you don’t give a shit about her? Oh, hey…”

I trailed off while wiggling my eyebrows and he chuckled softly as he shook his head. He did say he’d tell me why he didn’t give a shit about Margot during the ride home… and that was the ride home.

He leaned back, eyes fixed on the city lights flashing past the window. “Around the time I was born, Margot was pregnant with Tiffany. My dad cheated on my mom when she was heavily pregnant and Margot made sure to use it to her full advantage.” His tone was calm, but he restlessly drummed his fingers against his knee. “After me, my mom had three miscarriages, so he eventually told her about Tiffany and his desire to bring her closer. I was seven at the time.”

He clenched his jaw, just as he clenched his fist with the hand resting on his knee.

“Margot was so shameless that she didn’t just want recognition for her daughter, she wanted it all. When I turned nine, my mom got pregnant again, suddenly got sick, had another miscarriage and died shortly after that. Within a few weeks, Margot started coming to the house more and more and before I knew it, she was living with us like it had always been her home… and they got married.” He forced a laugh. “It turns out that all along, he’d been going behind my mom’s back. I wasn’t the same after that and having to live with Margot and her daughter only made it worse.”

My heart ached for him. “And that’s when you lost that smile I saw in those pictures.”

He nodded lightly. “I didn’t want to be in that house anymore, so Uncle Sebastian took me with him. While I was glad to go with him, a small part of me hoped my dad would ask me to stay, but he didn’t. Margot made sure of that. She was always in his ear. My uncle raised me for so many years and during that time, my father and I barely spoke or spent time together. And we were in the same town. He paid more attention to Tiffany and Margot. I longed for more back then.”