Devil's Due [h.s.]

Chapter 61

TW //

Mentions of descriptive violence and drug use/abuse. Please let me know if you need a chapter summary! <3

Love you so very much.

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Chapter 61

Time. A funny, finicky little thing.

A long-standing concept of self-evident numbers meant to make up minutes, hours, days, years. On most occasions, time made sense. Or relatively enough sense anyway. Today, time did not make sense.

I could have sworn we'd just left Devil's Due, that it had taken a total of ten minutes from the moment we'd begun getting shot at to the point where I'd somehow ended up on the couch in the living room of my apartment. But no, according to Harry, it had been hours.

Hours in which I said nothing, simply letting Harry usher me from the remains of Moira into a black SUV that had arrived out of nowhere to pick us up. Hours in which we drove around while he spoke, low and hushed, to the men in the front seat, careful to keep one hand drawing up and down the length of my back the entire duration of the drive. Hours in which we walked side-by-side up the stairwell of my apartment building, my brain pointedly ignoring the duffel bag full of weapons slung over Harry's shoulder that he'd been given before we entered.

The first thing I spoke after this slew of hours that I'd somehow convinced myself had been no more than 10 minutes was a weak, "My car."

Harry hadn't said much himself. Not since we'd arrived back at the apartment. But he'd quickly dropped the pan he'd been cooking in, one that was filled with an assortment of rice and vegetables that I most definitely hadn't had in my fridge before today and rushed over to where I was sitting. He'd dropped to his knees before me, placing his hands on either of my thighs where he gave them a squeeze, urging me to repeat myself.

"My car," I'd repeated sadly, confused as to why my brain had decided that was what I was going to fixate on. Shock was a funny thing, truly. "My poor car."

A breath of relief had fallen from Harry's lips and he'd only reached up to grip the back of my head with his hand, gently pulling me toward him so that he could place a kiss on my forehead. "We'll get you a new car," he'd murmured, trailing his lips down to my cheek. "A Moira 2.0."

And that had been the last of that. The last of any sort of sincerity or comfort that Harry had seemingly tried to force for my sake. Because now, in these wretched hours that passed, my brain had slowly unfrogged. Things got a bit clearer. It got easier to breathe, knowing we were both alive and safe, but Harry... he'd gone and done the opposite.

After having tried and failed to force me to eat, he'd shoved away the entirety of what he'd made into the fridge and then proceeded to take an assortment of phone calls that started almost right after we'd gotten situated in the apartment and didn't end until well into the night. Most of them had been outside of my room, which I'd migrated to at some point, and I didn't even have the energy to try and eavesdrop. Not when I knew that whatever he was talking about would probably only do more harm to my unending hammering of thoughts than good.

It was a good half-hour past midnight when the soft hum of his voice finally ceased beyond my door. I noticed it only once I'd gone and paused the episode of The Great British Bake Off I'd been watching, something mind-numbing that I'd let play basically in the background while I sat with my knees hugged to my chest in bed, wondering what in the fuck had gone on tonight.

I sat on the bed like that for almost a full ten minutes, listening only to the soft rhythm of my breathing while I waited for Harry to come into the bedroom. While I waited and assumed that he would do just that, only to find a part of my chest aching when I made the ultimate decision to lay down on my side, yanking my laptop shut and shoving it off to the corner of the bed, trying to cease the thought in my head that maybe he just wouldn't come in at all.