Where Do Broken Hearts Go? | Unexpected Series Book One

Chapter 20: Hot Chocolates and Tingly Lips

A/N: thank you, thank you, thank you for all the reads, votes and comments! It means the world to me and I love that you all do it! We've hit over 2000 reads...that's insane! I never thought anyone would actually read this so it's pretty awesome! Here's Harry's POV, I hope it's not too repetitive, I do stress about that a lot but sometimes the dialogue has to be repeated or it won't make any sense...I'm glad you all bear with me doing that! x

Harry's POV

I'm stunned.

Absolutely stunned.

I just...I never imagined...

I mean, I knew there had to be a husband somewhere in all this.

But I just look at her and I had no idea.

I don't know what to say to her, I mean fuck, what the hell do you say to something like that?

My hand slips from Beth's back as I run my hand through my hair a couple of times as I quietly contemplate what I should say.

I'm just...

Fuck.

I see her shoulders slump and for the first time she literally does look broken.  I know she's so much stronger than that but she really does look so tiny and fragile.

She takes a breath in and her whole body shudders and it makes my heart break.

I don't know what to say to her so I decide to wrap my arms around her and just hold her, as my head rests next to her head, and hope that it's a start, that she knows I'm here for her.

And I'm not going anywhere.

She lets out another shaky breath so I hold her tighter to me and I hope it comforts her.

Then she starts to talk and it's like someone has opened the flood gates within her because it all comes out as fast as she can get it out.

I forget that it's actually Summer when they have Christmas but they still cooked a roast lunch.  I'm actually surprised to find out it was at Nick's request and not Jamie's though I'm sure there were no complaints from him about it.

Beth almost looks like she's in a trance so I decide to give her a question that's out of the ordinary to keep her from totally regressing back to the day.

"Was it a good lunch?" I ask her.

And it does seem to take her by surprise as she stops and thinks about it.

"Yeah," she says, "everyone raved about the turkey, even Chloe, and that kid is so fussy she could pick the fly shit out of pepper!"

I can't help but silently laugh as that doesn't surprise me. 

To then find out her husband was a volunteer firefighter is pretty amazing.

But to hear it was what took his life left me feeling quite gutted for Beth and the kids to be honest.

How do you process something like that and move on?

"That's a pretty selfless thing to do," I tell her, and it is, to put your life on the line for others.

And it's not even your actual occupation either.

"It is," Beth agrees, before she stops and takes another deep breath and I can see she's trying hard to calm herself.

She won't go into details and for that I'm actually thankful.  It's probably sounds selfish of me but I don't know if I could stand to hear it.

It's then that Beth tries to put into words how she coped with losing her husband.