full throttle || h.s. ||

thirty-six || coffee mugs and quiet company

the song for this chapter is "Holy Smoke," by Palace, and I highly suggest that you listen to it hehe :) 

***********

Harry

   Even though she tried to believe me that she did, I knew for a fact that Finley did not fall back asleep while we laid there together in one of the many beds that inhabited the mansion that Leonardo somehow called home, or at least one of his homes.

   I could have sat up immediately and said that it was time to go, I could have ignored the way she held her hands in front of her face, writhing around in the sheets as she begged whoever was haunting her mind to stop. As she begged them to not hit her.

   I could have done a lot of things, but I had no choice but to follow my gut.

   She woke me up first when she started to squirm around in the sheets, her feet kicking against my legs. When I turned around to see if she was awake, I saw that she wasn't, but that goosebumps were covering her skin. I figured that she was cold, as the fire had almost completely burned out at that point, and a house as large as this one was bound to be a bit drafty. And so, I simply pulled the covers up further over her, and rolled over, trying to go back to sleep as we took our power nap.

   I had no intention of spending the entire night here. Caspian was waiting for me back at the house, and I really would rather Leonardo not be the first thing I had to deal with upon waking up in the morning. I had already found him while Finley was in the shower and given him the watch that contained the microchip, and luckily, he was too immersed in conversation and whatever contents were left in his champagne glass to ask any further questions.

   When I came back upstairs to get Finley and leave, I found her already buried underneath the covers, the top of her head barely visible from where I stood and from the mounds of blankets piled up on top of her.

   I considered just shaking her awake and telling her that it was time to go, but when I walked up to her, she looked so peaceful, so sound asleep, that I found myself getting tired as well.

   And so, I decided that there was no harm in hopping under the sheets with her, this time solely for the purpose of sleeping. It was still early in the evening in terms of how these parties usually tended to go, and from the way that things were looking when I ran downstairs to give Leonardo the watch, there was no way that the chaos would be stopping anytime soon.

   The second time that Finley woke me up was when she started talking in her sleep. She kept mumbling what sounded like a name, but her words were too muffled to decipher any specific one.

   I figured that sleep talking was just a habit of hers that I hadn't picked up on before now, and so, once again, I rolled over on my side, trying to find sleep again.

   But then she mumbled something that I could hear very clearly. Something that made my eyes snap open and my heart skip a beat.

   "Stop, please," her small voice begged in the darkness. I could have sworn I heard a name at the beginning of her sentence, but it was the latter part of it that made my body instantly turn around to face her.

   As my eyes went through the process of adjusting to the lack of light in the room, I began to make out her very tense and distressed facial expressions.