Devil's Due [h.s.]

Chapter 74

Chapter 74

For the next week or so, Harry was walking on eggshells around me. He was careful only to speak in soft, muted tones and refused to talk about what had happened. Whenever Zayn popped up, or even Morgan, the three of them disappeared to another room to discuss things and I didn't have it in me to fight otherwise.

I was too drained, too exhausted, to want to be kept in the loop. Especially given that my mind was preoccupied with other things – my studio, how I was going to get it cleaned up, if I even had it in me to want to return for the showing I had at the end of the month, a day which was now fast approaching.

Harry had assured me that everything would be taken care of, promised me as much repeatedly. He'd held to that promise thus far, having deleted any of the security footage from my phone so that I didn't have to see it, softly urged me day in and day out to give him more details on what I needed to prepare for in regards to the showing so that he could help me and even shown me pictures of the new windows he'd gotten installed – bulletproof, a fact I had asked about and he had sheepishly admitted to.

Part of me felt guilty about missing work and lying to Olivia and her dad about it, claiming that I'd closed down in full preparation of the showing at the end of the month, but at the same time, it was better to keep them as far as possible from the studio until everything had properly been cleaned up and dealt with. Their safety was a huge priority of mine and given that a lot of the angry, whispered arguments I'd caught pieces of between Harry and Zayn had to do with the fact that they weren't sure how much else the man who'd broken into the studio knew about my life, I had a feeling it was for them as well.

Yet even still, Harry assured me day in and day out, that I was safe. So long as I was with him.

Again, I kept to myself that it wasn't my own safety I was concerned about. It hardly ever was anymore.

It was around the beginning of the following weekend that I'd begun to get fed up with it. The tentative, slow-going, nurtured façade Harry had put on. He'd just arrived back home, coming from yet another endless meeting with Zayn or Morgan or whoever the hell else he met with to discuss his work, and had found me sitting on the couch with Meatloaf, watching New Moon.

"Oh, God," he muttered, glancing once between the screen and I as he approached. His shoulders were dropped low, eyes red-rimmed, and the skin beneath them dark. He lit up at the sight of me, his mouth twisting to the side with a grin. "Are you watching Twilight?"

I'd barely been given the chance to move over before he dropped himself down on the couch, tossing his jacket onto the floor. He quietly shooed Meatloaf out of my lap, ignoring her annoyed protests, and let his head rest in her place. She scampered over to his outstretched legs.

"Technically, I'm watching–"

Harry didn't let me finish. He reached up and cupped my face, pulling me down for a kiss. "Mm," he hummed, pulling away once and kissing me again. And then again and again. "What were you sayin'?"

"I'm watching New Moon," I grinned, threading my fingers through his hair. Harry's eyes fluttered shut and he turned his head, burying it deeper in my lap. From the back of his throat, he hummed something incomprehensible in response that vibrated against pajama bottoms. After a beat, I quietly said, "You were gone awhile."

He'd been out nearly the whole day. And as much as I knew he couldn't really help it, as much as I knew how much he hated leaving – thanks to the abundance of affection he'd give me every morning, coupled with soft words of Italian and English telling me how much he'd miss me and that it killed him, absolutely killed him to leave his girl this often, he promised everything would be sorted out soon and he would be back more often.