Apply Some Pressure [Book Two]

Chapter 19 - Only Love Can Hurt Like This

Harry didn’t think his nose was broken. Will’s punch had thankfully been too weak to cause any real damage, but it had connected just right that it took a while for the bleeding to stop. I tried to convince him that maybe we should go to the hospital to get it checked out, just to be on the safe side, but he flat-out refused. Instead, we sat by the kitchen table - which I had dressed for the romantic meal I was planning on cooking - carefully cleaning the blood off his face and hands.

“Well, this wasn’t quite how I’d planned tonight going,” I sighed, dipping a fresh cotton wool pad into a bowl of warm water. He snorted harshly in agreement, and groaned when it made his nose hurt. “Baby, be careful!”

"What was he even doing here?" Harry asked tersely, still trembling with what I figured was no longer anger but shock. He kept shifting in his seat, and his knee bounced up and down rapidly as the adrenaline coursed through him.

"I told you, he only brought some paperwork for me to sign. The divorce is nearly final."

“Already?”

“Well, up until now everything’s been friendly and easy, so it's moved quickly,” I shrugged. “He must have gotten up on the wrong side of bed, because it seemed like he’d been spoiling for a fight since before you got here. I’m so sorry that it was you who ended up in the firing line.”

I bit the inside of my cheek and debated whether to tell him about the rumours. Would that anger him further or would he just shrug it off? Perhaps before the fight, he may have brushed it off as nothing, but I had a horrible feeling that Harry was now counting down the minutes to get away from me. Our relationship already felt like the bus at the end of ‘The Italian Job’ - balancing on a precipice, waiting for one little thing to send it back to being safe so we could drive into the sunset. Or - which felt more likely - send us over the edge of the cliff, hurtling to the bottom and crash landing in a pile of rubble and twisted metal.

Either way, I tried to sound casual as I continued, "Also, he mentioned some, uh, rumours about us. That someone he knew had phoned him to say they'd seen us leaving that party together."

Expecting him to give a much bigger reaction, I was pleased but surprised to see him shrug it off as no big deal.

"I've been asked about that by people I know too," he said as he waved his hand dismissively, "I told them I didn't know what party they were talking about and changed the subject. I'm not worried."

Reaching for a clean tea-towel to dry my hands, I mulled over his answer and how it stung. I already felt like a dirty little secret, and  being seen in public with the actress was fine, but he shuddered at the thought of that happening with me. And now he'd added salt to the barely healed wound by not even defending me as just being a friend! I was nothing, just a reason to change the subject.

"Lil?"

"Hmm?"

"Can we talk about what Will said? About your mum?" There was very little warmth in Harry's voice, and it made me want to retreat rather than confess my darkest secret.