Getaway Car [HS]

Chapter Forty-Three

Harley avoided him as much as she could for the rest of the night without setting off any alarms inside his head that may have told him she was pulling away. 

What made it particularly difficult was the fact that he came home with the brightest smile on his face and crawled right into bed with her for the rest of the night. While she'd usually be elated to receive constant affection from him after weeks of trying to inch him close and closer to being comfortable around her, she couldn't sleep last night. Her eyes were taped open to stare through the windows of their bedroom, and she could scarcely breathe whenever the arms wrapped around her would shift to allow him to touch her stomach.

Whenever she felt his arm or bare hands brush up against her lower abdomen, she fought the urge to flinch away from the touch. All she could think of was the results of the test she took after they got home.

She asked him to stop by a convenience store under the guise of her wanting to grab a snack and bottle of soda for the ride home. The test was hidden under the passenger's seat, and she somehow managed to hide it in the bag with the chips and cherry soda without him seeing it by the time they reached the apartment. He was fixing himself a late-night snack while she ran off to the bathroom to pee on the stick and pray it wasn't going to show the result she thought it would.

But, of course, it did. That was what kept her up all night, staring out at the city with dread and anxiety taking turns beating her bloody until the sun began to rise and fill the room with a faint light.

Why did it have to happen now? Why did she have to find out the day before they were due to risk their lives for a chance at escaping Leo's clutches? It's as if the universe watched her have one of the happiest days of her life with Harry and decided she needed to be knocked back down a few pegs by the general shitty nature of life.

It isn't that she doesn't want a child with him. That's not the case at all. She wants everything that a relationship has to offer as long as it's him she's doing with it—marriage, children, a house in a rural area where said children, and perhaps a few dogs, can run free to play as long as they'd like—but she just got him to open up to her. If hearing that she loves him didn't push him back into his shell, she's sure that being told she's pregnant with his child could manage to do it.

She had to pretend to be asleep when he woke up and left the bed to shower or else she wouldn't have been able to look at him without blurting out the truth and ruining everything. Her plan was to continue fake-sleeping for as long as she could before it got too suspicious and she was forced to get out of bed, but the sound of someone pounding on the front door shatters her hopes of executing that.

In all the time she's spent here, they've never gotten any visitors, let alone first thing in the morning. As far as she knows, Harry hasn't told any of their coworkers where he lives, so the conclusion she jumps to of who could be behind the door isn't a pleasant one.

"Harry!" she shouts to be heard over the sound of the running water, tossing the sheets off of her as she jumps out of bed. "Someone's banging on the front door, what do I do?"

The shower turns off in less than a second after the words are spoken.

When he appears in the doorway to the en suite a moment later with a towel wrapped around his hips and water dripping from his hair onto the floor, his face is hardened into an expression that promises death. Her Harry is nowhere in sight this morning. In his place, she finds the monster everyone believes him to be, on alert and prepared to do what he does best should he find it necessary. His eyes move down her body until they land on the gun from her bedside table squeezed in her fist, her pointer finger flat against the barrel in case she needs to move it to the trigger soon.