14. Harley
Harley
Val pivots away from me once he finishes checking the hallway and heads toward his apartment with long uneven strides that make my chest tighten every time his limp becomes more pronounced.
The man is clearly hurting, no matter how hard he tries to hide it, and I’m still trying to figure out why that bothers me so much when I barely know him.
Maybe because I do know what it’s like to have pain written all over you while pretending everything is fine.
Maybe because seeing strength wrapped around obvious damage does something strange to me emotionally.
Or maybe I’m just gone over him already.
The thought should probably concern me more than it does.
I follow him down the hall and finally notice the dark sticky matting in the short hair at the back of his head. Under the brighter hallway lights, it’s unmistakable.
Blood.
Fresh enough to still glisten slightly.
“What the hell happened to you?”
I close the distance before I really think about it, reaching toward the back of his head automatically. Val turns sharply the second my fingers near the lump hidden beneath his hair, and the expression on his face hits me like a slap.
“What happened to me?” he snaps. “What made me this damaged freak of a shifter?”
The last words come out low and vicious, barely more than a hiss, but they still make me flinch. It’s not That I’m afraid of him, it’s because I suddenly understand that somewhere along the line, Val started believing those things about himself.
“Val, that’s not what I—”
He turns away before I can finish and stalks toward his door, limping hard enough now that it’s impossible to ignore. I hurry after him, struggling to keep pace with those ridiculously long legs of his while he digs his keys from his pocket.
“I wasn’t always like this,” he mutters, more to himself than to me.
“I wasn’t damaged. I was a damn good soldier, loyal, followed my Alpha Anax’s orders faithfully, not like tonight.
” His shoulders tense beneath his shirt.
“Maybe I’m messed up on the inside too now.
I promised I wouldn’t pity myself. I don’t. I fucking don’t.”
The words twist painfully inside me because I know that tone. I know what it sounds like when someone is trying to outrun their own shame and failing miserably. I don’t interrupt him again. I just stand there quietly while he unlocks the apartment and pushes the door open.
The place beyond looks exactly like somebody moved in recently and hasn’t settled. Boxes are stacked against walls and half-open near the couch. There’s barely any decoration at all, just practical furniture and clean surfaces that somehow make the apartment feel lonelier instead of tidy.
Val steps inside first and holds the door for me.
“Harley.”
I turn toward him and immediately regret it because now I can see him properly under the apartment lighting.
Fine white lines bracket his mouth. His face has gone too pale beneath the tan of his skin, and there’s exhaustion sitting in the corners of his eye so heavily that I wonder how he’s even still upright.
“Val, your head—”
I move before he can stop me, stepping close enough to reach behind him. I have to go up on my toes slightly to touch the swollen spot hidden beneath his hair. My fingers come away sticky with blood.
“This is what I was talking about,” I say quickly when his expression starts tightening again. “You’re hurt. I didn’t mean anything else.”
For a second Val just stares at me. Then, slowly, color creeps across his cheeks.
“Oh.”
The embarrassed roughness in his voice does something embarrassingly fond to my insides.
“Sorry,” he mutters, glancing downward. “I’m really sorry, Harley. I wasn’t supposed to go anywhere near you, but then you came after me, and I didn’t want to run.” His mouth twists slightly. “It’s been a while since a man looked at me the way you did.”
The honesty in that lands low in my chest. I lift my hand and stroke along the line of his jaw before I can overthink it.
“I’m still looking at you like that,” I tell him quietly. “Even knowing you’re different.”
Val’s breath catches almost silently.
“I’m trying here,” I continue, because I need him to understand this matters. “I’m trying to believe what I saw with Nathan and Marcus is real, that there are good shifters just like there are good humans and bad humans.” I exhale shakily. “I just had some really bad experiences, okay?”
Val goes still beneath my hand.
“With Dobson?”
The name alone makes cold nausea slither through me. I nod once.
“The same man who almost killed me, Harley. I was in the front room when Dobson attacked the place.”
My eyes widen as I gasp in shock and step backward.
Val catches my wrist gently and guides my hand upward toward the scar cutting across his face. “This,” he says softly. “The eye. My leg. Maybe even my wolf. All from that attack.”
For a second I can only stare at him.
Then memory crashes into place so violently it almost knocks the air out of me.
The hospital room. The machines. The swollen hand beneath mine.
The unconscious shifter I couldn’t stop thinking about afterward no matter how guilty and terrified I felt.
“Oh my God,” I whisper. “You were the one in the hospital bed.”
Val pales instantly.
“I saw you,” I continue, words tumbling out now. “Your face was swollen and bandaged but—I touched your hand.” Heat floods my cheeks. “I snuck in to see you and then panicked afterward and hid in my rooms because I didn’t know what was wrong with me.”
“You saw me like that?” Val rasps. “Hooked up to a machine and useless?”
I blink at him, confused by the question until realization dawns. Val means he was helpless and weak, which are things that a man like Val would never want to be, or be seen as.
Something in his expression cracks slightly then, enough that my chest hurts looking at him.
“Not useless, no. You were healing, and I couldn’t stay away.
I was worried about you,” I admit quietly.
“I wanted to ask about you afterward, but I was too scared to tell anybody I’d even left my rooms. So I ran and hid in my room until I was told I could come back here.
You have nothing to be embarrassed about, whereas I acted cowardly. ”
“No, You were scared and traumatized, understandably so in both cases, Harley, “ Val says.
“So were you.”
His fingers brush mine lightly.
Need shoots through me so sharply it almost startles me. It happens every time he touches me now. Not just arousal, though there’s definitely that too. Something deeper. Hungrier. Like my whole body recognizes him before my brain catches up.
“It doesn’t matter, I should have at least found out who you were and how you were doing.” I mutter, because if I think too hard about that feeling I might lose my mind entirely. “I was a jerk, but look at you. You’ve healed so quickly.”
Val huffs out a quiet laugh without humor. Then he tips my chin upward with one finger and kisses me lightly.
“You weren’t being a jerk. Stop calling yourself names.
You’d suffered at least as much trauma as I had, just in a different manner.
And yes, shifters heal fast, but I was in a coma, something that no one had ever heard of.
Our medical knowledge of what we are is limited by our need to stay hidden.
Guess the doc at least learned that there are some injuries we can’t heal from, like having our eye punctured by a chunk of metal or our femur shattered.
I’m lucky to be alive at all, and lucky too that my leg wasn’t amputated.
As for my wolf, well, maybe you won’t hate me as much, considering I’m a flawed shifter who can’t shift. Possibly never.”
Val sounds broken over it and I hear it in his voice even though he’s keeping a neutral expression in place. His gentleness almost undoes me, so I look away first because suddenly my throat burns.
“I’m not that hard-hearted, Val. I’m just not. I have a lot of anger at shifters, yes. Some of the things Dobson did, had done to me, have really messed me up.”
Val goes silent for a second before answering. “Did he rape you?”
The bluntness of the question shocks me hard enough that I actually jerk slightly. Everyone else dances around the word. Nathan. Marcus. Even the doctors. They all soften it somehow, like avoiding the language might protect me from the memory.
“He didn’t penetrate me,” I say automatically.
Then anger flashes through me because I just did exactly what everybody else keeps doing.
“He didn’t rape me,” I force out more clearly, “but he made me touch myself. Made me use my f-fingers while one of his men stood there shifted with his teeth against my throat.” My voice starts shaking badly. “He said if I didn’t put on a good enough show, he’d let them all have me.”
The apartment tilts slightly and my stomach lurches hard.
“Harley.”
I clap a hand over my mouth and stagger away from him before I throw up all over his floor.
“This way,” Val says instantly. His hand settles against my hip gently, guiding instead of pushing, and somehow that tiny distinction matters enough that tears sting unexpectedly behind my eyes.
He points toward an open bathroom door and I barely make it to the toilet before I’m on my knees dry heaving violently.
God. I fucking hate this.
I hate that talking about it still destroys me physically. Hate the burn in my throat and eyes. Hate the humiliating weakness of my body folding in on itself like paper while memories claw upward out of me.
Behind me, Val kneels carefully despite his leg.
“Harley,” he says softly. “I’ve got you.”
His arms come around me loosely, careful not to trap me. One large hand smooths my hair back from my face while the other rubs slowly between my shoulder blades. The motion is steady enough to anchor me without demanding anything from me.
“I’ve got you,” he repeats quietly. “If I could kill him all over again for you, I would.”
Something inside me breaks at the words because it’s pretty clear that he means them.