Devil's Due [h.s.]

Chapter 75

Chapter 75

Harry woke me up a few mornings later with words I thought I'd never hear him say.

"Do you want to see if your friends are free to have lunch with us today?"

I'd barely even opened my eyes but already, I was convinced I was still dreaming. "Hm?" Blinking a few times at the man I was currently laid in bed with, I made an effort to rally my thoughts at the notion. "You want to go have lunch today? With my friends?"

Harry shrugged a single shoulder – all that he was able to do, given his arms were wrapped around me, his knuckles strumming gently up and down my back. Shivering, I snuggled closer to him, trying to hide my grin when he leaned down to kiss my forehead. And then the tip of my nose. All of which was followed swiftly by a deep kiss to my mouth, a gesture he let linger for longer than necessary.

"Dunno," he mumbled against my lips. "You haven't seen them in a while." A slight moment's hesitation. "And... you haven't left the house in a few days."

It was true. The last time we'd been out, or rather, I'd been out alongside him was last week when we went to pick up some litter for Meatloaf. An outing which had promptly turned into a two-hour drive where we ended up parked at some lookout spot in the middle of a forest, having fallen asleep with our seats leaned all the way back, staring at the stars through Harry's sunroof and coming up with absurd names for each constellation.

"Do you actually want to meet my friends?" I asked, toying with a strand of his hair that had fallen over his eye. "Or do you just not want me going anywhere alone?"

I could tell that Harry was worried about me. It wasn't that I hadn't wanted to leave recently, just that causing any unnecessary stress for him was the last thing on my priority list. He'd let it slip a few days after the attack at the studio that, along with the normal security he had to tail me, anywhere I went in the foreseeable future – he'd be as well.

No part of me wanted to fight him on this. Especially given how unnerved he was that I'd been targeted after he'd left me alone. I knew he was blaming himself, something that cracked my heart in two whenever I thought about it, but I didn't have the right words in me to console him about it.

How do you tell your murderous, drug-cartel owning boyfriend that it wasn't his fault you were almost killed in your art studio? That, whether he'd been there or not, someone would have found a way to get at me?

Everything I wanted to say seemed wrong. It was new territory for me. For the both of us, I assumed. And while he spent his days running around, in and out of the house, trying to get sorted a multitude of things that I'd only ever understand a small bit of, the last thing I was going to do was stress him out more by saying I wanted to go out and do something, knowing he'd have to shuffle all his plans around to accompany me.

"First of all, gioia mia," Harry flashed me a half-grin, "I have met your friends–"

"Right, but I don't exactly think you've been your ideal self either of those times," I rolled my eyes, placing my hands flat on his chest to create some distance between us.

Harry laughed, all the while I was working to suppress a cringe at the memory of him being an asshole to them at Devil's Due, kissing me in front of Raven just to prove something, and showing up at my apartment drunk off his ass looking beat to shit.

"Which is why," Harry went on, pinning my arms between our chests as he yanked me closer to him, nudging his nose against my own, "I'd like to make a better impression." He rolled the two of us over until he was hovering over top of me. "Plus... I'd like to see you doing something that will make you happy–"