Devil's Desire [h.s.]

Chapter 6

a/n: idk hey

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Chapter 6

"So, you didn't know?" I asked Morgan, legs outstretched in front of me. "Harry and Zayn didn't tell you?"

Morgan and Zayn had been in France for a few days now and I, alternatively, had been awake from my coma for an official week. When I'd lain in bed this morning—the hospital bed that Angela was still forcing me to sleep in every night so that she could check my vitals, my heart rate, etc.—I'd simply stared at the ceiling for a very long time.

My hand was twitching and shaking, even as it rested beside me, and it had become something I was unable to ignore. The pain had thankfully subsided, but that didn't make it hurt any less in that small space beneath my ribcage where my heart stuttered as I reminded myself of my current situation, of all of our current situations.

The sound of Harry talking lowly in the kitchen to Zayn, Morgan, and laughably as always, my fucking mother, had been enough to almost soothe me when I'd first opened my eyes. It seemed so natural. As it'd been just over a month ago when things had finally begun to look up for the four of us. When there'd been no fighting, no gunshot wounds; only face masks on bathroom floors and accidentally purchasing matching jewelry with your boyfriend.

My hand drifted to the gold bracelet at my wrist as I sat beside Morgan at the edge of yard, overlooking the water. The one I'd woken up wearing and had yet to take off. It soothed me.

"No," Morgan confirmed, tucking her legs to her chest, and resting her chin on her knees. The cigarette between her lips trembled and she swallowed hard. I watched her throat bob, the tattoos on her skin there going taut, as she said, "They didn't tell me."

When I'd woken up from the coma, I'd been extremely fucking confused. And it didn't help that I had been equally as confused going in. Derek, Olivia's dad, had shown up at my studio like some sort of Disney villain that night, deciding to recount his entire evil fucking plan before he followed through in shooting me. While the length of his story may have ultimately saved me in the end, had given Morgan and Harry enough time to get me to the hospital when they'd found me, I still didn't even entirely understand how he had been connected to all of this. How Olivia had been connected to all of this.

As much as I'd begged Harry to tell me, he all but refused. In fact, whenever I asked a question that wasn't to do with my recovery, he would practically shut me down. His mentality was that I didn't need things to stress me out, that none of it mattered anyway, that we were safe, but I could tell in his body language alone that none of that were true.

It was as if I'd been so caught up in finally being awake and having to deal with the brutal blow that I'd been taken to my mother's house to recover, that I hadn't noticed how Harry had been acting until the adrenaline of the situation wore off.

How he'd silently stay at my bedside until I fell asleep, but I would wake up to him in the spare bedroom, hair mussed and sleeves drawn, as he leant over a desk and poured over paperwork that I couldn't understand. How he flinched especially hard when someone entered a room, his legs crossing whatever space we were in in a matter of steps until his body was physically covering mine. How his red-rimmed eyes seemed to glow in the dark; how he just looked completely and utterly exhausted.

Then, on top of all of that, he was trying to tamp it all down and take care of me as if nothing was even the matter.

Even now, as he loomed like an always-present shadow a few feet away leaning against a tree with his arms crossed, studying the interaction between Morgan and I, it was easy to sense that he was moments away from stalking forward and hauling me into his arms—away from her—should my body language shift even in the slightest.