Devil's Due [h.s.]

Chapter 55

Chapter 55

For the next two days, Harry and I barely spoke.

The first night after he'd come back, I'd woken up in a dead panic twice in the middle of the night dreaming about something to do with Damien shooting another person in the head. Only in my dream, that person was Harry. I'd had to stand there and watch while Harry got shot right in front of me.

Both times, Harry hadn't said much after I'd woken up. Only held me tighter, whispering in my ear that I was fine and that he was there, stroking my back and burying his head in the crook of my neck, kissing a gentle path up towards my jaw. I think it freaked him out the first time that it happened because despite him telling me to go back to sleep and that everything would be okay, I could feel the way he did the very opposite. He'd just laid there, awake, tracing his fingers up and down my arm, watching me sleep. Well, watching me pretend to sleep until I finally did calm down enough to doze back off.

I hadn't woken up that next day until around noon. Harry had come in and out of the room a few times, leaving tea and food on the nightstand, all of which had ultimately gone cold when I finally did rouse myself out of bed. By the time I'd wandered downstairs to go see him, I'd been wearing only his shirt, and Harry took one look at me – his eyes drifting to the scrapes on my hands and knees – only to glance away and mutter something about how he had to leave for a bit. He hadn't returned until it was nearly night time. Still, he'd crept into his room that evening and slid into bed at my side, holding me so gently against his chest that one would've sworn he hadn't been a distant shell of a person that whole day. He'd murmured sweet nothings into my ear and trailed his hands softly over my shoulders, my arms, my waist until I'd fallen asleep.

The next day followed suit, with him telling me in the morning that I should probably stay home from work to rest only to roll his eyes when I suggested he do the same, slipping out of the house before an argument ensued. My only saving grace had been Meatloaf, who puttered around the house at my side for the next few hours until Harry returned – early, around lunchtime – lugging in a bag which he dropped on the kitchen counter and told me was filled with things he'd brought from my apartment before fleeing again.

I hadn't even checked what was in the bag before he was back in the elevator, making his way down toward the parking garage. Probably a good thing, too, considering I wouldn't have known what to say or how to properly thank him when I opened it up to reveal a few canvases, easels, a set of paint and brushes that I'd lugged home from the studio the week prior. The stuff I'd originally brought home to distract myself from the fact that Harry and I hadn't spoken.

Harry hadn't uttered so much as a single word when he'd pulled back into his parking garage hours later to find me tucked away in one of the corners painting. Only stopped to inspect what I'd done, reached over to wipe off a bit of paint that had ended up on my neck, and quietly asked why I wasn't doing it inside. He'd, once again, rolled his eyes at my response that I didn't want to get paint on anything and said he wouldn't have brought home the paint in the first place if he was worried about getting it on things inside the house. He'd clarified that he knew what he was getting himself into, considering the state of how I always looked covered in paint on my way out of the studio, and ultimately helped to drag everything back inside where we'd set it all up in the guest bedroom.

On a tarp, might I add, that I requested. One that he begrudgingly set down on the floor after moving the bed over to the corner of the room. He might not have cared about getting paint everywhere, but I did. I also had to bite back a comment about how quickly he'd been able to just pull a tarp out of nowhere, figuring that murder jokes weren't to be had yet. Not when this was the most that he'd talked to me since coming home on Saturday. And it seemed I'd done the right thing in not pushing it because he'd left again only minutes later, saying he needed to shower, but kept well out of my way until it was time to go to bed.