Chapter 53
FIFTY-THREE
Harry
I’m slipping. There’s a cold place in my head I recognise. It’s where I go when the outside becomes unbearable.
I press my palms into my eyes and breathe, just to feel the pressure.
I can feel my psychosis slipping in. My thoughts feel like they’re being controlled by something outside of me. But I’m sane enough to know what I’m feeling is wrong. Anger towards the woman I would give everything for.
The closest explanation is utter devastation. Why?
I’d have done anything.
I can’t stop replaying it, every snippet of memory. I should have known. The screams. The loss of weight. How when I fucked her she looked like she hadn’t felt pleasure in so long, only pain.
She lied to protect me, but who was protecting her?
Me. It was supposed to be me.
I can feel her gaze when she thinks I’m not watching; hear her soft voice when she thinks I’m not listening. She needs me, but what if I fail her again?
What may look like silence to her feels like screaming inside me.
I lean against the wall, legs stretched out, the tile cold against my thighs. My T-shirt smells like old coffee and hospital soap.
There are very few staff working the night shift.
I hear the distant shuffle of shoes and the clack of a computer keyboard.
As a nurse slips from her station, I glance down the hall.
I know this routine – she’ll be at least three minutes.
I pull myself to my feet and reach over the desk, taking Gigi’s notes from the top of the pile.
My eyes burn, and I blink hard.
Precautionary antibiotics today for her jaw. A follow-up CT scan tomorrow to rule out long-term effects from the lack of oxygen. Changing the wound dressing on Wednesday. An open referral to a domestic violence hotline.
I flick through the pages, pretending I know what any of the doctor’s terminology means. I lift my chin slightly towards her open doorway. There’s a darkness inside that contrasts the hall.
I can’t see her, but I can feel her watching.
I hear the steady beep of machinery echoing from her room. The notes said she’s stable with minor injuries. Minor. What a useless word when someone looks like that.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, but I ignore it, still encapsulated by the darkness in the hospital room.
A nurse walks past, slowing when she sees me, looking over my dark eyes, messy, tousled hair, and the dried blood still ingrained on my skin. But it’s the notes in my hands that make her pause. I smile politely, returning them to the desk with a gentle tap.
She sighs but says nothing.
My phone buzzes again. This time I check it.
Jack’s private line.
I glance back at Gigi’s room before slipping down the corridor, pressing the phone to my ear. His voice comes through without argument.
“I’ve been trying to get through to you for days. Hugo and his men are dead. We intercepted them at their hotel, but I need to know what was said. What. The fuck. Happened? Why did you bail—?”
“No. I didn’t bail. I walked. I want to make that perfectly fucking clear,” I bite out. “Gigi’s in the hospital.”
Silence. Then, “How bad?”
“Bad enough,” I hiss. “You should be here.”
His voice is low with exhaustion. “I can’t risk everything I’ve built here.”
“You’re her fucking brother. You don’t have to do anything except show up when it matters. It fucking matters.”
“You know what happens if I show my face.”
Jack turns quiet again, Richard’s wrath lingering in the silence like a bad omen.
“You know what? You’re right.” I clench the phone so hard I swear I feel the glass threaten to shatter beneath my grip. “I don’t care about the fortress you’ve built and your defences, nor the fact you were once my best friend. If you even think of coming here, I’ll kill you myself.”
The pause stretches.
“I’ll find a way to help from here,” he says finally.
“Don’t bother.”
The continued silence on his end of the line compels me to speak again.
“I didn’t expect anything less from Richard, but from you?” I tsk. “The only reason you’re still breathing right now is because you mean something to Gigi. You try to contact her again, I’ll end everything you’ve tried so desperately to build.”
I don’t care how obscene or bitter I sound. Jack will pay if he crosses those boundaries. Mark my fucking words.
“I need to know what happened—”
I hang up.
It’s been a week, maybe longer. They’re keeping Gigi in for observation – or perhaps out of fear I might up my weapons and cause a riot if they don’t see her treatment through.
I jolt back in my chair, the plastic groaning against the wall. My body has succumbed to such extreme tiredness that my heart is skipping beats and I’m breathless. That’s new.
I scrub my hand down my face, forcing myself to my feet. There’s a set of vending machines at the end of the corridor, and I need coffee. As I approach, I lean my forehead against the buzzing screen, breathing through my teeth.
“You look like hell,” a familiar voice says.
I don’t turn right away. I know it’s Poppy.
I’ve played out this interaction a million times in my head, most of which ended with my hands round her throat. Don’t tell me you knew too, I shout. Don’t fucking tell me that.
But I’ve come to realise everyone knew. Fucking everyone – except for me. I was so blinded by finding the trafficking ring and my failure to those I was meant to protect that I couldn’t even see through the truth standing right in front of me.
I turn to Poppy slowly. Her bright hair is pulled back in a ponytail – the only sign of her disarray with the few fallen strands either side of her head.
“You knew.”
Her voice is maddeningly calm. “I did what I had to do.”
“You knew.” I say it again, letting the words sink in. “You knew everything.”
“I did.”
“You knew Jamie was hurting her. You knew why she married him.” I can feel my muscles coiling, the stiffness of my jaw making it shake. “And yet you said nothing?”
“I kept you alive.”
“You think that’s a fair trade?” I snap, “Watching her waste away to protect me—”
“And if I gave you the truth – what then?” She cuts in, her voice sharp. “You’d go after Jamie and potentially kill you both? She begged me not to tell you, Harry. Not because she doesn’t love you. Because she does. Enough to disappear into that hell for you.”
I press my thumb and my forefinger to my temple, sucking in a bitter breath that barely satisfies the tightness closing itself around my ribs. “I don’t think I can ever forgive you.”
Poppy nods slowly, like she knew that was coming. “It’s okay,” she says. “I don’t expect you to.”
My eyes narrow. “Was it worth it?”
“For the sake of your life, it was.”
I stare at her as if I don’t know her anymore. Because maybe I don’t.
“I didn’t come for forgiveness.”
“Then why are you here?” Even I can hear the bitterness in my voice.
She looks straight at me. “Because someone had to stand beside you when it all broke apart.”
A woman in red scrubs slips out of Gigi’s room, glancing at the clock above the nurse’s station, which reads 1:20 a.m.
I push myself to stand, stretching the ache out of my spine. The door to her room is cracked. The nurses keep closing it, but somehow, it always ends up half-open.
“She loves you that much,” Poppy said before she left. “More than her own life.”
The words bring my hand to the door handle, and I push it open the rest of the way.
The room is dim, the bed small, and Gigi looks even smaller inside of it. Wires hang in her arms, a bandage wrapped tight round her side. Her skin looks pale against the white sheets. Her throat … Christ, her throat is still mottled with finger-shaped bruises, though they’ve faded in my absence.
Her head is tilted back on the pillow, dark circles underneath her eyes as she drills them into the ceiling. One hand is resting on her stomach, fingers twitching.
I sit down on the plastic chair at her bedside. Her other hand hangs loose. I move without thinking, leaning forward on my elbows and taking her hand in mine.
I wonder if she hates me now. I wonder if she thinks I abandoned her.
I want to yell. I want to ask why she didn’t trust me to protect her. But above all else, I want to know why she didn’t think her life was as worthy as mine.
Closing my eyes, I press my lips to her knuckles, breathing her in. I want to hate her, but I don’t – not when she thought it was her only choice. I hate Jamie Callahan. I hate myself for not seeing it coming.
I tilt my head up, meeting her eye. My hands are shaking by the time I’ve brought her knuckles to my chin, running my thumb over the back of her hand.
“Why?” My voice cracks. “Why did you do it?”
I know even if she can’t say it. Her mum sacrificed her peace at the price of protecting the ones she loved. This is no different in Gigi’s eyes.
“Why don’t you think you’re capable of experiencing happiness?
Because you made a few mistakes before? Your bad decisions don’t define you.
Don’t think for one minute that you deserved this, I swear to fucking God, Gigi—” I catch my breath then almost choke.
“You still went back there after Paris. Fucking hell, I let you go.”
My shakiness betrays my guilt, and her palm slips from my fingers as I bring a quaking hand to my jaw.
“I’d have rather died. I’d rather die than know you withstood everything.”
Her voice is weak, catching on a tremble. “Harry—”
“You will never do anything for me again – do you understand?”
“Harry …”
“Anything, Gigi.”
That defiance lingers in her eyes, tears leaking from the corners as I push.
“Swear to me. I need you to swear you’ll never do anything like that again.”
“I-I swear.”
A quiet sob rocks her body until she’s shaking, the sound muffled behind her palm. I bite my lip and turn my head away, trying to keep my emotions at bay, but the attempt is as useless as my inability to love her.
I take her hand again. Her fingers wrap round my forearm, pulling me closer. She pulls me halfway, her cries muffled into my shoulder as she just … breaks. The sobs pour out of her like a girl who’s lost everything clinging to the only thing she has left.
I hold her delicately, and with strength. I’ll be her anchor, if that’s what she needs. I’ll be here for her, always. The beacon of light in this dark world – and her in mine.
I sit on the edge of her bed, and her hands curl into fists on the front of my T-shirt.
“I will never let them touch you again, baby girl. I-I swear with everything in me that they’ll pay. I’ll do better.” My lips brush her temple with more wordless promises that I’ll tear this world apart and make every man pay for wronging her. “This is just the universe catching up, remember?”
She sniffles, clutching me tighter as I vow, “I’m never letting you go.”
That night, I fall asleep with my head resting loosely in her lap, her soft fingertips running through the strands of my hair. Delicate and gentle. Finally at her mercy. Though it’s far from the reality I ever wanted us to face.
And for the first time in a long time, I sleep peacefully despite the world crumbling round us.