Paradise Child Book 3 (Imprisoned in my Heart trilogy...Larry)

Chapter 10

“You silly cow!”

“Don’t call me a cow!” Micheline spat. “You worthless –” her voice rose to a strangled shriek as she hissed insults with almost frightening intensity, and Harry blinked in shock as he realized that he’d just walked straight into the middle of a domestic. It frightened him; he’d never fought with Louis like that before and it shocked him to discover that couples could scream at each other like that. Oh, of course heknew that people fought, and bitterly, but he’d never realized that it could become that bad.

“If I’m so worthless, maybe I should leave,” sneered Rupe. “See how you like that. You’d never cope without me. You’ve got no friends around here; nobody likes you. You’ve got no job, no qualifications. You’re useless.”

The words shocked Harry; he could only imagine how they would sting right to the core, how Micheline would inwardly recoil at the nastiness and how something inside of her would wrench away from the rest and start drifting in shock at the pure malice behind the vicious taunts. But she didn’t even flinch. In fact, if anything she seemed excited by the sudden onslaught of cruelty; her voice reached a frightening volume as she started screeching back at him, more words that, from Louis’ tongue, would have destroyed Harry completely. He could hardly imagine how it would feel to see Louis’ beautiful face contorted with such horrible anger, to hear him shouting awful things like that and tainting the air with the harsh sounds of them.

“Yeah, I’m useless. But at least I’ll admit it! You need someone telling you every single day how wonderful you are, how funny and intelligent and hot – you’re nothing without someone to keep constantly inflating your massive ego!” Micheline snarled. “You’re too scared to do anything without me hanging around telling you the sun shines out of your arse!”

Eyes wide, Harry stared helplessly at the wide-open front door he’d just wandered straight in through, wondering whether he should turn around and run straight out. Micheline had texted him and asked him to come for Alice, but either this argument had blown up out of nowhere in the ten minutes it had taken him to walk down the hill, or she’d decided to get him to come blundering right into the middle of it just to annoy Rupe. The latter seemed to be likelier; the man seemed to be reserving a special place in hell for he and Louis, for reasons which were unknown to them but probably something to do with the way that whenever one or the other of them came round, Micheline’s clothes always seemed to be tight enough to cut off her circulation or so loose that she was practically falling out of them. Not that Harry or Louis could control that; in Louis’ case, if he’d had any say in the matter Micheline would be bound into a modesty tent twenty-four hours a day, but Rupert seemed inclined to blame them anyway.

Typically, as if some kind of intuition had tipped him off that Harry was thinking about just that, Rupe exploded “At least I don’t show myself up by stripping off in front of two guys who care about your body even less than every other man in the world!”

Through gritted teeth, Micheline ordered, “Shut up.”

Yes, Harry thought, please do, or else I’m going to end up hating you and you’ll realize I heard every word of this and it’s going to get a bit awkward.

“They won’t fancy you no matter how many items of clothing you take off, you do realize that? They’re far too busy getting loved up with each other to notice that you’re parading around in your knickers. What part of them being gay do you not seem to understand? Oh, and that camp one with the stupid jumpers hates your guts. You only have to give him one quick glance to see how much he hates you.”

Whoops, Harry thought. Looks like someone noticed, then. He resolved to warn Louis to stop glowering so viciously at the blue-haired girl next time they both paid her a visit – not that he could really blame him. He often felt tempted to glare at Micheline himself.