Devil's Due [h.s.]

Chapter 48

Chapter 48

HARRY'S P.O.V.:

River and I hadn't spoken since the day of her birthday.

She'd called me three times. Once very late on Monday, when I knew she'd gotten back from the restaurant with her friends thanks to the update I'd gotten from Niall, again on Tuesday morning and then a final time in the evening. Every single time I'd simply stared at my phone, not once even entertaining the idea of picking it up before the ringing subsided and the screen went dark again.

River's outburst, what she'd said to me at the studio, was all I could think of while it rang. While I'd stared at the gray contact icon for her. It had been so unlike her, so out of character – or so I'd thought. It wasn't until I mulled over her words, played over and over in my fucking head what she'd said to me in the days that followed, that I realized I wouldn't even really know if it was out of character for her to begin with, would I?

The two of us had been forced together involuntarily. And I'd made sure to let her know that every possible fucking opportunity. I hadn't once tried to get to know her beyond what she'd somehow managed to wriggle into my head nor had I ever even voiced that maybe this obligatory proximity of ours had brought to the surface more attachment than I was willing to admit. Her reaction was completed warranted. In her head, I did hate her. We weren't friends. I just hated that she'd been harbouring these thoughts for much longer than she probably cared to admit. Granted, I hadn't exactly labelled myself as one to be able to so easily communicate things like this. I had said nasty things to her, even up until very recently. I'd be holding the same grudge.

I think that was why it bugged me so much that she hadn't told me her birthday – something I should have known anyway considering I'd done a thorough search of her government file a few months back. I hadn't thought to make note of it at the time. Mainly because I didn't think it would ever become anything important to me. I'd been so sure River and I were on the same page about everything, that she understood in some unspoken way that I'd begun to see her as more than just someone who I was trying to keep alive. Maybe as a friend, if that was the word she wanted to use. And when I finally came to terms with that terrifying thought, I only spiralled further. This wasn't like me. I'd been the one who'd enforced the parameters of our relationship over and over, had made damn sure she knew that we'd be able to part ways once this whole thing was sorted, only to be the one who had somehow severed that entire notion in one go.

"I need to start getting my life back to normal. And that includes distancing myself from you."

She'd been right. What had I fucking expected in yelling at her about her birthday anyway? An apology? A promise that we'd spend it together next fucking year? I hadn't expected anything, I realized hours later, I shouldn't have expected anything. Least of all for her to fucking tell me.

And yet even after I'd resolved to leave it, to take her words – what had been my own words up until a few weeks ago – into consideration, I'd still wound up hours later at her apartment dropping off that stupid, fucking drawing that I was sure she was probably going to trash the moment she saw it anyway. I deserved it. It was what she'd apparently thought I was going to do with her own work. That was how she saw me, it seemed. Cruel, unforgiving, terrible. It was how she'd probably always see me.

And what had I done to ever prove her otherwise? Repeatedly yell at and berate her? Smother and destroy that part of her that looked at life like it wasn't something to hate? Refuse to even voice, to even fucking consider, that maybe I'd been hurt she hadn't told me about her birthday because some small, broken, hidden kernel of me actually cared about her?

That same kernel that had been squashed when I realized how absolutely maddening that very notion was, to begin with. When I forced myself to remember how my life compared to hers, how the last thing I wanted to do anyway was have her anywhere near it. How she'd been right in saying we needed to distance ourselves and get back to whatever norm life had been before I met her, back when the days were dull and I didn't find myself lying in bed at night wondering if a certain hairless fucking cat had been bathed that week.