Chapter 52
FIFTY-TWO
Harry
Every thought comes to fruition in the first few seconds of seeing her.
I’ll do everything in my power to protect her. Anything that will mean she never faces a moment of pain. I’ll crawl to the ends of the earth to gift her everything she’s ever wished for.
From this very moment, laying eyes on her, I know. I know I’ll fall to my knees, if only to provide her with an eternity of peace.
She wants me dead? I’ll happily provide her the knife to land the brutal blow.
A distant crack through the memory, the wet sound of blood spraying.
Broken flesh, the echo of bone cracking, my fist lost within the dark red brain matter.
In the years to come, I’ll offer her the world, but it’ll be a poor attempt in my desperation to make her happy. Instead I’ll give her everything I have. And even then, I’ll—
My skin splits open as it connects with bone, shattering it beneath my knuckles. Jamie’s cries were once gurgles, but now … nothing. The hole in his face is nothing but a dark, infinite void, features indistinguishable.
Yet still, I can’t stop.
Something blinds my vision, darker, darker.
Then, suddenly: “Where are you taking me?”
I blink back to the present, time distorting.
Gigi’s voice is distant, but perhaps that’s me. Perhaps I’ve dissociated so far from our excruciating reality that I’m somewhere faraway.
“To the hospital.”
Not Medical – a hospital. Somewhere fucking normal.
So be it if they arrest me for his brutal death. I’m up to my elbows in his blood and bodily matter. It’s smeared into the grain of the steering wheel, dripping down the cracks in the leather as I tear through red lights, barely missing a pedestrian on a corner.
The thought won’t stop screaming through my skull.
“I did it for you.”
I let her walk back to him. He would’ve fucking killed her.
I hiss through my teeth at the memory, feeling myself slip back into that dark, depraved headspace. I have to shake my head to fight it off.
The road ahead is a blur of headlights. I can’t hear the engine; can’t feel my fingers on the steering wheel. All I know is that she’s beside me, her blood soaking through her oversized T-shirt and the towel I pressed against her waist.
Her head lolls to the side, and I glance at her quickly, hair matted to her forehead, bruises climbing the sides of her neck. There’s dried blood at the corner of her mouth. Her wrist … Fuck, her wrist doesn’t look right. Bent too far the wrong way.
I step harder on the gas.
The entrance to A then, like the flick of a switch … nothing. He shut down.
My voice barely holds steady. “I never wanted t-to hurt him.”
“This is his mind trying to process something too big, too painful, all at once,” she says. “When someone we love is hurt, it can trigger something primal. Shock, anger, helplessness. You’ve both been hurt. Different wounds, but they both run deep.”
The machine beeps, the cuff practically cutting the blood circulation off to my arm. Angela apologises, jotting down the number on a piece of purple paper.
I turn to Officer Brady, watching the ways her gaze traces the lines of my face before she takes my good hand in a gentle squeeze. The touch is comforting, bringing tears to my eyes.
“For someone like Harry, who carries the weight of protecting people, it feels like he has a duty to you. When he found out what your husband did to you … it shattered something in him. He just needs time to process his failure, but he’ll come back.”
I realise now, throughout everything, I’ve broken the one thing I was trying to save.
Him.