red herring [h.s.]

50. (*)

Stella.

I told Mike for the fourth time to fucking leave me alone.

My leg was bobbing anxiously as I stared at the blank Word-screen in front of me, my computer open and waiting for me to type. I had been in this position so many times. Feeling the approaching deadline while not having anything to write about, it was something I recognized. But this time, it just had so much riding on it.

After finally managing to leave the bed without Harry kissing me back into it, I had taken my computer downstairs with me. Originally, I wanted the three boys to help me with the column. Of course, Mike and Dominic took a good hour to complain and tease about hearing me and Harry together in the morning, and about seeing us naked. Even though he hadn't even really seen anything besides my back.

We honestly kind of forgot we weren't the only ones in this house for a while.

After they were done with that, I rolled up my sleeves and sat at the kitchen table, them three standing around me as I started typing. Which was fucking impossible with six eyes staring at me and critiquing every single letter I wrote. Apparently, Dominic, Mike and Harry had turned into writers overnight because they knew everything better than I did.

It lasted for about five minutes like that until I yelled at the three of them and grabbed my laptop to head upstairs again. With the chair propped underneath the doorhandle to give me privacy, I desperately tried to write the single most important column of my life.

This was our way out.

We were stuck here. When we first got here, all of us kind of assumed we hardly had to unpack because it would be a short stay. But Matt's plan wasn't fool proof and Kristina was too much of a slippery snake to be easily caught. So days turned into weeks and weeks turned into a month. And here we were.

Everyone counting on me to write a good column, lure her to some place where they'd then wait for her and I didn't want to know the rest. I forced myself not to think about it. Kristina was obviously a terrible, terrible person but I still wasn't convinced she deserved to die. And not because she was my birth mother, but because she was a person. And it just didn't sit well with me. So I ignored it, like I ignored so many other things.

I knew that Harry and I had decided to also have some important talks soon. About Jeremy, about his line of work, about his involvement in the gang and such. But we were in kind of a good place right now. Sex with him was healing, honestly. And hearing him spill his heart to me like that was all I could've ever wished for. Harry had never been an open book, but I did now realize that he was never that talkative because he was afraid to blow his cover.

Which he no longer had to worry about.

"Stell?" I heard his muffled voice from behind the door and sighed, glancing over my shoulder to see the doorhandle rattling a little. I then heard him sighing, "Used the chair, did you? Shouldn't have showed you that."

I smiled slightly to myself before I got up, my desk chair scraping back over the hardwood floors. The closet doors rattled when I took steps towards the door and removed the chair, opening it to Harry.

"I came up with the chair thing in the first place." I softly smiled as we faced one another. Harry had a tinge of amusement in his face, one dimple showing. He leaned against the doorpost, still in his shorts but with a shirt on this time.

So effortlessly attractive that it made my heart beat faster.

He of course noticed my staring. Ever since we had sex, I stopped trying to ignore the fact that I was still madly in love with him and wanted him as close to me as possible. He smirked a little but then cleared his throat, "How's the writing going?"