At Gunpoint

Chapter 7

My head was telling me to get up and brush the shame off my clothes, but I appeared stapled to the floor.

"I was gonna ask you if I could crash here."

"Looks like you already have."

-

After a pack of ice on my head and me flopping down on his bed I was in shape to fill in the blanks in Harry's puzzled expression.

"So, you have no idea how her aunt found out?"

"Not the slightest. Wish I did, so I could've avoided this bump on my head. Plus a black eye. I look like I've been in a bar fight."

"The black eye isn't too bad, but your living situation is." Laughing he pulled a t-shirt over his head and join me on the bed. Pants he had somehow managed to put on while I was facing the other way fumbling with the ice pack in hand.

"You don't have a room mate?"

Harry shook his head, not realizing he was splashing me with water from his not-so-dry-yet-curls.

"Congratulations."

"Well, I do now."

"It's not permanent." I buffed him on the arm. "I have to make up with Stacy. As soon as she stops throwing hard things at my face." I nodded determined.

I could sense Harry was amused. Not least by the stupid smirk on his face and the way he was blowing up his cheeks, trying to make sure a laugh didn't slip out. He resembled a hamster I had when I was five, who I'd lost once when I had him out in the living room. Three days later, mom heard an alarming sound in the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner.

"Fine, but you sleep on the floor."

I didn't mind.

My eyes landed on a photo frame on his drawer. A family of four was smiling back at me, sunshine in their hair and two of them with the same shade of green in their eyes.

"Family?"

"Mhm." He hummed, a repellent tone in his voice. Not anything I didn't recognize.

"What happened?"

Harry seemed taken off guard by my forward way, but must've decided to trust me enough to start sharing his story. Even though I was the one who'd taken initiative, I was surprised he let me in so easily. When I had acted the absolute, complete opposite way.

"This man," He pointed to the guy in the photo, with his arm wrapped around who I assumed was Harry's mom, based on the major resemblence in their smiles and their eyes. Pretty much identical. "Is Satan's half brother."

"After my mom had me, he found it too stressful with two kids to handle and started drinking. He was angry with my mom for having me, because I wasn't planned and he saw me as nothing but a burden. He developed a drinking problem and became really abusive. Especially towards my mom. If it wasn't for the fact that he co-owned the apartment complex we lived in he'd be long gone before things got really bad. Unfornutaly, he threathened my mom to throw us out on the street if she didn't keep me and my sister, Gemma by the way, in check, while not being anything but a lovely housewife herself. Let's just say we don't talk about him anymore."

"How did you get out of it?"

Harry stared into the wall for a good minute. I guessed he was okay with sharing a clean cut version of his story with me, but not the whole thing. I decided to do the same.

"I don't have contact with either of my parents anymore."

This seemed to catch Harry's attention, as he seemed to return to planet Earth and turned to me with sad eyes.

"My mom was quite popular in her teenage years, and had a lot going on with the boys. She never told anyone, but this once she was hitting it off with two guys around the same time. Just about six months ago, somehow it came out and my dad demanded my mom to do a paternity test. The test came back negative for my dad and soon life as we knew it quickly turnt upside down. My little brother wasn't my brother, but my half brother. Dad went insane, he's always had a temper, and was quick to get a divorce and to top it off, sue my mom in the process. Mom got in a car crash on the way to court and died immidiately, or so I was told. I snuck a peak in the charts and they said she was burnt alive trapped inside the car. Dad looked unaffected by the news, only sad to have lost his money. Of course he offered to take my brother - I mean half brother, considering he was actually his son. But me, no. He refused and I was forced to move in with my aunt and her husband and two kids until I was off to college. Which wasn't for long but you know, enough to make me want to leave without as much as look back even through the car window."

Harry wiped a shocked look of his face and relapsed into serious mode. I guessed he didn't really know what to say about the whole thing. Frankly, neither did I. We sat quiet for a moment, but it wasn't an uncomfortable silence. More of a consoling-with-touches kind of silence. Long, slender fingers slowly caressed the back of my hand. I smiled wryly, still looking down at my feet like they had just become the most fascinating thing in the world. Which they really were not, but I seemed unable to move my glance elsewhere.

"You don't have to sleep on the floor."

I sensed a shed of well hidden pity due to my sob story, but I decided to gratefully take his offer and avoid the scenario of waking up with a killing neck.