Chapter 5 #2
The door swung open to reveal Harper, her face twisted into a hard mug, clearly pissed off at being woken up. The scarf on her head and the silk pajama set she had on told him she had been deep in sleep. It was two in the morning, but Hassan didn’t give a fuck.
"Hassan, what the fuck—" she started, but he pushed past her into the house without waiting for an invite, making her sigh heavily as she shut the door behind him.
"What are you doing here, San? It’s late as fuck." Her irritation was clear, but he ignored it.
"What was that shit you pulled earlier?" His voice was low, calm, but there was an edge to it, sharp with frustration.
Harper gave him a confused look, her brows pulling together. "Nigga, what are you talking about?"
"You and your fucking friend."
He was trying to keep his anger at bay, trying not to spazz on her, but the more she played dumb, the more it boiled.
Harper stared at him for a second, blinking, still looking genuinely confused, which only pissed him off more.
"Harper, don’t piss me off." His voice remained calm, but his eyes? They were storming.
Harper knew that look—had seen it before. She could tell he was holding back, and now she was wondering what the hell Sevyn had told him to get him this riled up.
Her plan hadn’t worked—she knew that much. But seeing this much emotion from Hassan, even though his eyes still carried their usual cold detachment, made her wonder what the hell had actually gone down between him and Sevyn.
But she had to keep playing stupid—to protect herself and Sevyn.
"I really don’t know what the fuck you talking about, San.
I just needed you to deliver something for me.
" Harper’s voice was steady, her face unreadable, but Hassan wasn’t buying it.
He rubbed his hands down his face, inhaling deeply, frustration clawing at his chest. Harper wasn’t cracking, wasn’t slipping, and the longer she held firm, the more he started to question himself.
Maybe he was tripping. Maybe this really was just an errand.
But then why the fuck was Sevyn still in his head?
No woman had ever pulled this much from him.
No one had ever left an imprint strong enough to linger.
Women came and went, their faces blurring into the background of his life, never important enough to remember.
But her? She had said only three fucking words, and they had buried themselves inside him like a bullet that refused to exit.
"You’re not broken."
It wasn’t what she said, it was how she said it.
Like she meant it. Like she saw something inside him that even he didn’t recognize.
Like she believed it, even when she didn’t know a damn thing about him.
It moved something in him, and nothing—no one—moved anything in Hassan.
That’s what pissed him off the most. That’s why he was here, pushing up on Harper in the middle of the damn night, looking for a reason, a sign, anything that explained why the fuck he couldn’t shake her.
"Forget it, mane." His voice was low, edged in irritation as he turned toward the door, ready to leave this shit alone.
But Harper stopped him, stepping into his space, her sharp gaze locked onto his like she was trying to read his thoughts. "What the fuck did she say to you?"
Hassan tensed, his expression darkening. He wouldn’t let her see it, wouldn’t let her dig into whatever the hell was going on inside him. Thinking about Sevyn’s words brought something close to emotion, and emotions made him vulnerable. Vulnerability made him weak, and weakness wasn’t in his DNA.
"Nun… I’m trippin’."
He moved past her, pushing out the door before she could press further. He needed to get the fuck out of here, needed air, space, something to get his head right. But even as he slid into his car and gripped the wheel, his body tense, his jaw locked, he knew what the problem was.
No amount of business, no amount of sex, no amount of confrontation was gonna pull her out of his head.
And that? That was the real problem. Because Hassan Gaines didn’t do attachment.
He didn’t do obsession. He didn’t do feelings.
He needed to smoke. So, he hoped his strong, potent weed did the trick.
The second he walked into his large, quiet home, the silence wrapped around him like a heavy cloak, but it did nothing to quiet his mind.
He moved upstairs, stripping out of his clothes, stepping under the scorching spray of the shower, letting the heat sear into his skin, but not even that burned away the thoughts that were clawing at him.
He dried off quickly, pulling on a pair of sweats before heading out onto his balcony, his usual escape, the place where the city lights stret ched out before him and the smoke from his blunts carried his demons away.
But the second he fired up the blunt and took a slow, deep pull, her voice whispered through his mind. "You’re not broken." His grip on the blunt tightened as he exhaled a thick cloud of smoke into the night air.
Then her face flashed in his mind. The way she had looked at him in her office, leaning against her desk with that soft, knowing expression, like she saw everything inside of him that no one else could.
Fuck. His jaw clenched as something hot and unwanted stirred inside him.
His dick hardened at the thought of her, and the realization made his irritation spike.
"Get the fuck out of my head." The words left his mouth in a low growl, as if saying them out loud would force her away. But it didn’t.
He closed his eyes, but the moment he did, he wasn’t standing on his balcony anymore—he was back in her office.
He could still see the way she had watched him, not with fear, not with judgment, but with something that felt too damn close to understanding.
She wasn’t supposed to look at him like that.
No one was. People feared him. People stayed the fuck out of his way.
But she didn’t. She had sat there, meeting his gaze head-on, her voice steady when she said, "You’re not broken. "
He took another slow drag, the smoke curling around him like a haze, but even through the fog, she was still there. Still in his head, still in his chest, still making his body react in ways it had no fucking business reacting. He needed to shake this shit. He needed to get her out of his system.
But nothing worked. And the worst part?
Somewhere deep inside him, where he kept all the shit he refused to deal with, he knew he didn’t really want to. Sevyn Love had cracked into his mind. And once something got in, Hassan never let it go.
???
Sevyn drove through the morning streets, gripping the wheel a little tighter as Harper’s voice blared through her car speakers.
"Girl, what the hell did you tell Hassan?"
The urgency in her tone made Sevyn’s stomach tighten, and she instantly felt on edge. Just hearing his name sent an involuntary shiver down her spine, but the anxiousness in Harper’s voice made her even more nervous.
"Umm… nothing really. Why? Is he trying to kill me?!" Her voice shot up in panic as she maneuvered through traffic.
Harper snorted, unable to hold back her laughter, which only pisse d Sevyn off more.
"No, girl! But whatever you told him had him banging on my door at two in the morning, thinking we set him up. I’ve never seen so much emotion in his eyes." Harper’s tone sobered toward the end, and Sevyn sucked in a slow breath.
"Well, technically, we did try to set him up," Sevyn muttered, sounding as defeated as she felt.
Because despite how much Hassan had left an unshakable effect on her, how his presence lingered in her mind far longer than it should have, she still wanted to help him.
He carried a heavy weight, and she saw it, even if he refused to acknowledge it.
The way he held himself, the way his eyes burned but stayed so damn cold at the same time—it was too much for one person to carry alone.
"What did you tell him?" Harper pressed again, this time sounding even more anxious, like she was bracing for whatever came next.
Sevyn chuckled softly at her friend’s nervousness before answering.
"The truth."
She shrugged like Harper could see her, her voice holding that same certainty it had the day before.
"He's not broken."
She said it with conviction, the same way she had told him in her office.
Harper went silent for a moment before she finally responded. "So… you lied to him?"
Sevyn mugged the phone like Harper could see her through it. "No. I told him the truth. He's not a broken man." Sevyn's tone came out more defensive than she intended, but she didn’t care. She meant it.
She heard Harper sigh through the phone.
"Look, Sev, Hassan been through some shit. I'm not gonna tell his business, but a man who can kill someone with his bare hands and not feel a damn thing about it? That’s scary. A man who don’t show emotion, even to his own family?
That’s dangerous. And never letting anyone—even the people who love him—get the slightest bit close to him emotionally? That’s broken."
Sevyn’s grip on the steering wheel tightened as an unexpected wave of irritation rolled through her.
She didn’t know why, but she felt defensive—for him.
Which was crazy because she didn’t know Hassan—at all.
But she felt him. She saw something beyond the coldness, the ruthlessness, beyond the version Harper was describing.
"But… I know for a fact that he wasn’t always like that," Sevyn said, her voice softer but firm. "Experiences, trauma, life—that’s what made him into the man you see today. But that doesn’t make him broke n, Harp. "
Harper was quiet for a moment, her silence heavy. "Then what do you call it, Sevyn?"
"He’s exhausted, Harper. And once you—and whoever else who keeps looking at him like he’s shattered—once y’all finally see that, maybe he will too."