Okay, maybe two people. Jenna hadn’t gone untouched by Devlin’s anger. Few people didn’t blame her for what had happened. She had brought Tessa into Harris’s life. She had gotten into the drug scene. She had kept Tessa around even after getting herself clean.
Seeing how well my dad had taken everything in had confused me. I was still unable to find an even footing about my own feelings, but he’d shrugged it all off like it was nothing. Maybe I would be able to do that too.
One day.
Until then I would be haunted by those videos. I would be forced to relive every groan and sigh he’d breathed as he’d done things to someone who wasn’t me. It was cheating, yet it wasn’t pure and simple. What had been perfectly black and white now had varying shades of gray that had me twisted up to the point of madness.
I still loved him. I didn’t think I could stop even if I’d seen him in a video with a hundred different chicks. I understood he hadn’t been able to say no, that what had happened really wasn’t his fault.
But I still felt cheated on. I still had a broken heart even though I was trying to put myself back together. It was hard, though. I wasn’t as strong as I had thought I was.
In my tennis shoes my toe throbbed and I welcomed the physical pain from the cut I’d given myself the night of my birthday. The cut wasn’t healing because I kept twisting my toes to reopen the deep slice I’d made with the razor blade. I needed that pain to help me through the emotions that were consuming me.
Slowly, Harris lowered the hand that was still holding my phone. He was still as a rock, his face just as hard. His eyes were blank and his skin paler than it had been the first night I had seen him lying in that hospital bed.
“Go,” he bit out in a voice devoid of all emotion.
My heart turned to ice. “What?”
He turned his head away, blocking me out as I had him earlier. “Go. I don’t want you here.”
“Harris…” I reached for his hand, unable to just leave him. He pulled his hand away before I could touch him.
I wouldn’t leave him—I couldn’t. I loved him. The thought of him not wanting me with him killed me. Tears burned my eyes as I glanced from him to his stepmom, her eyes full of both pity and determination, then to Aunt Emmie. Her green eyes were full of concern for me but I didn’t want her concern.
I wanted her to fix this like she had fixed every other problem I’d ever faced in the past.
Shaking my head, I turned back to Harris. I touched his face, begging him with my touch to look at me. “We can get through this. I don’t care what happened. I love you.”
“Just go, Lucy.”
The defeat in his voice had my knees threatening to buckle. “I can’t,” I whispered around a sob. “Don’t make me.”
“Nat,” he gritted out. “Get rid of her.”
Without questioning him, Natalie moved around the bed and put her hand on my shoulder. The look in her eyes was full of reluctance, but the grip she had on me told me she meant business. Tears blinded me as I let her guide me to the door. Opening it she turned and walked away while Aunt Emmie pushed me through the door. My heart broke all over again as I left him there.
No. Please no.
I started to crumble but Aunt Emmie caught me. The sob that left me echoed off the corridor walls and down to the waiting room. People appeared behind me but I was too broken to notice them or care if they saw me falling apart. Emmie only tightened her arms around me and let me cry until my throat was raw and aching.
Once the horrible noises stopped, a different set of arms wrapped around me and I felt a fresh flood of tears blind me as my dad tucked me against his chest and carried me away from the hospital room door. Away from Harris.
Away from the guy I’d thought would be my future.
Chapter 21
Kin
Lucy had left the day before, but the tortured sounds that had come from her were still echoing in my head. I couldn’t get the sight of her so destroyed out of my mind. I didn’t know what had happened in Harris’s room, but whatever had gone on had left my friend a ghost of herself.
Jace hadn’t left the hospital since Harris had been brought in, so I stayed with him. I was surprised Jillian hadn’t called to demand I come back to the house, or worse—shown up to play up to the media that had been parked outside in the hospital parking lot since they had gotten wind that Harris Cutter had been brought in with a possible overdose. She hadn’t done either, but Carolina had texted me three times, asking if I was okay.
I’d texted her back, letting her know that I would be staying with Jace as long as he was at the hospital with our friend. She had promised to tell her mother after that first text, but the two other times she’d messaged me she had only been concerned about me. Wanting to know if I was okay. If I was getting any sleep. If she could bring me anything.
I’d felt conflicted about her. It was weird, to say the least, that I’d gotten Carolina wrong. I wasn’t wrong about people very often, so it confused the hell out of me. I hated that I’d put her in the same boat with her mother and ol
der sister, that I’d misjudged her. She was really a nice girl—sweet even.