Chapter Fourteen
Carter
“Fuck,” I muttered, staring at the ceiling in the soft morning light. My muscles hurt like I ran fifty miles the day before and didn’t have a drop of water.
I was bone tiered, but I knew no amount of rest would help. Only Harley could.
But she was avoiding me.
I didn’t get a wink of sleep again last night.
I tossed and turned well into the night until I heard it.
I froze and barely dared to breathe in fear that I would somehow chase it away.
Soft sounds coming from Harley’s room assaulted my ears.
A melody so raw, I had to fight the urge to get up, go to her, and take her in my arms to soothe the hurt she was pouring out of her.
If she screamed them in my ear, they wouldn’t have the same strength.
No, it was that soft humming and singing the words I couldn’t understand because they were muffled by the walls that separated us, but I felt them in my gut, that almost did me in.
The hollow and painful feeling they held took hold of me, and tried to choke me.
Listening to it, I gripped the edge of the mattress to not move, to stay still. I wanted to tear down the walls and beg her to forgive me and to give me a chance.
No matter how much I wanted her, I still laid perfectly still. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t take that chance.
I rubbed my palms over my face, trying to push the memories of the night away.
It was useless.
I got up, and hurried to my bathroom. I was anxious to see her, to get a good look at her. After yesterday morning, I knew she was hurting. And I was responsible for her pain.
Something I never wanted to be.
As I finished in the bathroom, I crossed over to my door, and slowly, quietly opened them.
I checked the hallway and listened to any sounds of Harley moving around, but there was nothing.
Everything was still.
As I came to the kitchen, disappointment coursed through me. It was empty.
There was no wild brown mane that called my hands to tangle in their strands, no grey blue eyes that whispered their secrets to me, and no body that had me reciting the statistics of every major sport just so I had a chance in hell to fight off the hard on.
Harley was still asleep.
I busied myself by making coffee just so I would have something to do. My phone went off, and I reached for it quickly to stop its ringing so it wouldn't wake her.
“Yeah,” I muttered into it.
“Good morning, Mister Sunshine,” Chace quipped in my ear. “How're things in Wonderland?”
“I'm in no mood for your shit this morning,” I sighed.
Chace was a lot on a normal day. For a man who spent years working undercover, bringing the worst that humanity had to offer to justice, you wouldn't think that he had this level of goofiness in him. Since he met Alina, that level went up.
“Oh,” he gasped. I could almost see him taking the affronted stance in my mind's eye. “What’s this? What's troubling my young, baby brother?”
“Stop,” I barked.
Chace sighed, “Okay, man. What's going on? You're being surly more than your usual.”
I blinked, Harley’s melody from last night whispering in my head. “Nothing. Just didn't get much sleep.”
“If you would listen to reason and Max, I know that would change.”
Of course Max told him what happened when he was last here.
I should have known better than to ask Max to take on that task and come up every ten days. I could only thank my lucky stars that Cahce had a case of his own that had his attention. I didn’t even want to think what mayhem would ensue if he came up here, and got a good look at the state I was in.
Thank fuck we were going away in a few days and there was no need for anyone coming up here with provisions and groceries.
“Like you did?” I asked, knowing full well how long and how hard Chace fought Alina’s pull.
“Under the belt, man,” Chace muttered.
“Is everything ready?” I asked, trying to get us to the real reason for Chace's call.
We were going back on tour in a few days. Everything in me screamed that it was the wrong move, but it was Harley’s decision, and when I gave her a way out she didn't take it.
“Yep,” Chace popped the P. “Five of your guys are currently occupying one of Max’s rentals waiting for your orders.”
“I'll text the details of where and when they should be, once we start coming down.”
I didn’t want anyone to know where she's gonna be until it was necessary.
I even changed the places and hotels that she would be staying in, asking Alina to take care of it, and Chace and Max to scoop out the hotels and venues to see what was needed in terms of security.
Not even Tim or Sloan knew. Max didn't find anything that would raise suspicion with those two, and was currently running other names on the team.
Still, I wanted some details under wrap.
“You sure it's the right move for her to go back?”
“Fuck no,” I blew out a breath. “But, it's what she wants. What she says she needs, so we're gonna give it to her.”
Chace hummed in my ear.
“Fuck off.”
“I didn’t say anything,” he said.
“I understood your hum,” I quipped.
“Man, you really are wound up tight.”
Understatement of the year.
“Is there something else?” I asked drily.
“No, that's it.”
I took the cup from under the coffee maker and took a sip, “Then leave me the hell alone. Fuck off, and give my love to Alina.”
I hung up without waiting for goodbye from my brother.
Tossing the phone on my counter, I pinched the bridge of my nose and then rubbed my eyes, trying to push the ache that was building behind them back.
Turning around, I leaned against the counter, mentally going over everything that needed to be done and put in place before we headed down, and back to civilization.
That's when I saw them.
Journals and papers on the coffee table.
Harley’s journals and papers.
The ones that held her lyrics. Her most inner thoughts.
I glanced down to the mouth of the hall, listening if there were any sounds coming from her room.
Nothing.
She was still asleep.
I walked over to the table, and looked down.
Would I do this?
Would I peek inside and see Harley in a whole new light?
A burn lit in my chest so strong I was sure it would swallow me whole.
I glanced at the hall again, and then sat down and put the mug on the far corner of the table to avoid getting the brown liquid on the paper.
I reached over and hesitated for a heartbeat. I knew I shouldn’t do it, knew it was wrong, but I wanted her so badly, needed her so much, I couldn’t resist. This was the only way I could have her, the real her.
And I took my chance.
Tenderly, I opened the pages.
What awaited me on them, blew my battered and empty heart to smithereens.
Words after words of pain were bled on them.
Pages of insecurity, of loneliness.
Whole chapters of Harley saying in a lyric way that there was something wrong with her and she knew she was unlovable.
“Baby,” I croaked, my voice breaking, my eyes drinking in the pain streaked words written in Harley’s handwriting.
How was it possible that after everything she's been through, after demonstrating her strength time after time. After having millions of people chanting her name, she still thought she was unlovable?
Couldn’t she see she was the only light in my life? Couldn’t she feel the love that flowed her way?
“What are you doing?”
I froze. The words were whispered, but I could hear her heart breaking in those three words.
I put everything back where it was and stood slowly.
I turned and looked at her. She stood at the mouth of the hall, her brown hair going in every direction.
Her face was soft from sleep, but her gray blue eyes held a disappointment and ache she didn't even try to hide. An ache and disappointment I put there. I looked down to her oversized hoodie she always slept in. She looked fragile. Lost. I fisted my hands to stop from reaching out and grabbing her. I wanted to take her in my arms and promise her she was safe. To tell her she got it all wrong. She wasn’t unlovable, it was impossible not to love her.
But the one tear that gilded slowly down her face, kept me locked in place.
“I-” I didn’t know what to say. Didn't know how to justify my actions.
“You what?” She pushed, her grey blue eyes flashing. “You thought you would see what lay in there. How much it's all worth. How much you can get out of my words.”
That familiar fist squeezed my lungs and my heart, “I'm sorry.”
The words felt inadequate for the feeling of regret in me.
Harley walked over to the coffee table and picked up her books. “Don’t worry about it.”
Her words were flat, cold. There was no emotion in them. No trace of my Dynamo.
She went to the kitchen, put them down on the counter and filled her mug with coffee.
I turned in place as she moved through my home, not taking my eyes off her.
“Dynamo, I really am sorry. I had no right, but I couldn’t help myself. I heard you play last night and couldn't get the melody from my mind. I was desperate to figure out the words that belonged to it.”
She turned then, a smile on her face. It was the wrong smile, the one she reserved for the stage, and I knew I was being shut out. “Those are not in there,” she pointed to her songs. “These are for recording, and for other artists.”
She tilted her head before continuing, “See there's a long list of people waiting for me to write the songs for them to record. And that's what you're protecting. Not the Harley Thorne, the person. Not even Harley Thorne, the singer. You're protecting H.T., the prolific song writer.”
Anger surged in me. How could she even think that? How could she believe that I would reduce her to a moneymaking machine?
“No, I’m protecting you,” I argued. “I know I fucked up-”
She moved then, and slammed the cup on the kitchen island sloshing the hot liquid over her hand, but she didn’t even flinch. She was too far gone to feel anything.
“Do you? Do you know how incredibly invasive that was? Do you understand how little that makes me feel? All everyone wants from me is music, songs, melodies, lyrics. No one wants me. No one sees me. Except you. Or so I thought. You were supposed to be the only person who was here for me. You were supposed to be the one person who didn’t use me. ”
Harley scoffed to herself, “How stupid of me to think that.”
No one wants me.
No one sees me.
Except you.
The words played over and over in my head.
I moved before I was even aware I was doing it. In three strides I came to Harley. My arms lifted and my fingers tangled in her silky, wild hair and I pulled her to me.
In the next moment, my lips crashed on hers, hunger coursed through me and spilled into her mouth.
Every wall I have built up, crumbled to dust, and every line I drew was erased.
At that moment I knew I just made the biggest mistake of my life.
There was no turning away from Harley. And I didn’t give a fuck about it.