Devil's Due [h.s.]

Chapter 25

***This was a triple update! Please make sure you read Chapter 24 first. :)***

Chapter 25

Harry didn't come back for two fucking days.

The first night after he left, I was basically a zombie. I barely moved from the couch – didn't dare try to go anywhere that wasn't the living room, the kitchen or the upstairs bedroom. I waited for him for hours, wondering if maybe he'd show up in the middle of the night or be back fast enough that I could just go straight to my apartment and didn't have to sleep here at all.

Waking up the next morning at dawn with drool running down my cheek, a kink in my neck and on the same spot of the couch I'd stayed for hours the night before told me that none of that had happened.

Fine. Okay. No big deal. I managed to make my way upstairs to the room I'd stayed in the last time that I was here to shower, get myself a little composed and wandered back down to scrounge up some breakfast – thinking I'd be able to take Moira to the studio and come back afterwards to see if Harry had returned so that I could pick him up to grab his car.

Only that plan had come to a dwindling halt the minute I tried to leave the small elevator foyer. I guess when Harry and I had arrived the night before, him unlocking the parking garage had unlocked everything and I'd been able to walk right through the door. Only him leaving meant that it had been locked back up.

I'd walked right up to the door only to be met with a small keypad speaker that yelled at me as I tried to leave. Not even to enter – to fucking leave.

"Identification required."

And of course, when I'd leaned forward and squinted at the screen, I realized that it needed a fucking fingerprint. A Harry Styles fingerprint, to be exact, considering when I tried to scan mine – like the dumbass that I am – the screen glowed red and angrily hissed, "Access Denied."

I was locked in. Literally and metaphorically trapped in every sense. Trapped in Harry's goddamn house.

At first, I'd refused to let myself panic. I had just taken a breath and gone back inside to sit on that God-awful couch again to contemplate every single choice that I'd made in life that had led me up to that very moment. After the first hour rolled around, I panicked.

This had led to a series of calls and text messages to Harry that had only gone unanswered. I probably sent him around 30 texts, informing him of the dilemma and that I needed to go to work, only to receive a resounding nothing in response.

After around the fourth or fifth hour, I forced myself to think rationally. I made food, rescheduled a few art viewings that I'd had planned at the studio, texted Raven that I needed her to feed Meatloaf — thanking God that I'd given her and the rest of my friends a key when I'd gotten my locks changed — and spammed Harry again.

Harry still hadn't answered when I fell asleep for the second night in a fucking row on his bloody couch, curled into a ball and worried that he was dead somewhere and I'd be trapped in his house forever – forgotten about until they exhumed my body years after my death thanks to the Government acquiring the property due to unpaid taxes.

By that point, I was just outright exhausted. Exhausted with letting my mind run rampant, exhausted at this whole situation, exhausted that he still hadn't answered me, but I couldn't even keep trying to contact him because my phone was almost dead – exhausted that I was literally comparable to trapped prey.

The next morning, I was just mad. That's all I felt. A red, hot burning anger searing through my entire body that forced any last rational thought into hiding.