Page 352 of The Doctors Will See You Now

I looked past her to the couch. Bill and my mom sat there, hand in hand.

The last thing I wanted was to have to face my mom right now.

“Jesus Christ, Harlow!” I scrubbed a hand down my face and sighed in exasperation. I was fucking done. Part of me believed everything she was saying, but another part, the part that had literally been through the emotional ringer, didn’t have its usual ability to align important things like fault and consequences. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”

She jerked like I’d struck her, and my mom jumped to her feet. “Enough, Scott. Come sit down and hear her out. We did, and that’s why we’re here. We all know you didn’t do this.” She moved closer, around the couch to right in front of me and took my hand. “All of us,” she stressed.

I pulled her into my arms and buried my face in her neck, a few tears pooling in my eyes. Sometimes, even at thirty-five years old, you just needed your mom.

She let me hold her for several minutes before she spoke again. “Come on, now. Let’s sit down.”

I nodded and moved with her, around the couch and the coffee table, and took a seat on a chair. I didn’t have it in me to sit next to someone right now.

“Harlow, honey,” my mom prompted. “Why don’t you tell Scott what you told us?”

Harlow nodded and took a seat on the couch. She looked like it killed her to do it, but she knew I was trying to put space between us, and by some miracle, chose to respect that.

“Okay. Well, you know I’d been struggling to come up with an article for this week.”

I nodded.

“And you know I told you last night that I’d finally come up with something.”

I nodded again.

“And you know that I asked you not to be mad?”

“Yes, Low. I know all of these things. What I didn’t know was that you were accusing me of being a rapist!”

“Scott, calm down, son,” Bill advised, taking a stand and putting a hand to my shoulder.

Harlow’s face lost all of its careful calm though. She charged, grabbing me by the jaws and ignoring all of the carefully constructed space I’d erected.

“I. Didn’t. Write. That.”

I stared back at her, a goddamn mess, fighting to let her words sink in.

“Scott, I fucking promise you. I didn’t. Those were not my words,” she whispered, and tears started to drip from her lids and down her cheeks.

God, she looked desperate.

And Harlow Paige never looked desperate, not for anyone or anything.

There were sad lines around her normally bright eyes, and her small shoulders, sagging forward noticeably, appeared to be carrying the weight of the world. But mostly, it was her determination and the way she refused to break eye contact with me that made my heart start talking some sense into my stubborn head. The anger, the honesty, the affection in her eyes. It finally all sank in. I nodded and took a shaky breath.

“Scott, I didn’t write that,” she whispered again, more tears rolling down her cheeks.

I nodded again, and she repeated herself. “I didn’t. I wrote an article about what an amazing doctor you are. I even did interviews with a few of the pediatric patients we’d taken care of in the emergency room. It was sweet and adorable, and it definitely wasn’t what they published,” she explained on a shaky breath. “That awful fucking article they published wasn’t mine. I’d never do something like that. Not to anyone and especially not to you. I love you, Scott.”

Realization turned into conviction. She didn’t write that article. Harlow might’ve been a gossip columnist, but she had morals and strong convictions and she’d never write something to intentionally destroy someone’s life. She might have held her heart pretty fucking close to the vest, but that heart of hers was huge.

I tried to focus on what she had to be going through, feeling like she was responsible for so much turmoil in my life when she actually wasn’t, but I had a whole litany of my own problems, despite her innocence.

I nodded, her lips sinking closer to mine, more tears spilling from her eyes. “I’m so, so sorry.”

The salt of her tears stung on my tortured lips. I’d been chewing on them for hours.

“I believe you.”