𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋! | harry styles

𝐗𝐗𝐕𝐈

TWO days after Harry leaves, the bruises on my throat begin to bloom, turning from a bright red to a deep, purple blue.

One week after that, the cut on my lip finally heals over, and the pillow on my bed looses the lingering smell of aftershave and shaving cream.

Two weeks after, I have to pull Cody out of preschool.

I spend hours in line at the financial aid office, trying to talk to someone about further assistance with only mild results. With my dwindling shifts at the diner, the meager stipend just about covers my rent and food, never mind the maxed out credit cards and the unpaid bills in my kitchen.

Through it all it's like there's a film over my eyes. I could almost believe it's happening to someone else.

With Evan it was different. When he left I felt nothing. He left me empty, hollow but for my love for Cody. In the years that followed, after the death of my father and after Evan went to jail, I used that void, that empty feeling he left me, as a shield. Everything bounced off of me, hit my walls and never got much further.

But this, this is different.

My insides feel scarred. Ripped up and shredded, raw and vulnerable, open and bloody for the world to see. My skin feels bruised all over, like I've gone ten rounds with a heavyweight. Even breathing hurts.

Because you don't love like that without it leaving a mark.

But as much as I want to crawl into this black hole of self-pity and hurt, I have a little one who needs me. A little one who feels the loss of Harry almost as much as I do. So I move.

I take one step and then another, followed by another.

I wash my hair, I brush my teeth, I clean my apartment.

For weeks I hold onto hope that I'll open the door one day and there he'll be—coming out of his apartment, those eyes of his gazing at me from beneath a dark hood.

But he doesn't.

His phone goes straight to message bank. His apartment remains empty. I don't hear the rumble of his car, and my bones ache from missing him.

I spend the mornings scouring the wanted ads, looking for something stable. The club out on highway 98 is looking for dancers—it's mostly frequented by truckers and drunks and I happen to know that they're happy to charge extra for a quick blowjob in one of the back rooms.

Ignoring that ad, I make a few calls to some of the other clubs in town, and a few restaurants and cafes also looking for staff. The response is underwhelming.

The city is already in the midst of an unemployment epidemic, and with an entire club full of girls now looking for work the better clubs in town simply don't have room on their roster for new staff.

Things at Blush fell apart the moment he left. The police turned up, but the place was such a mess, with people everywhere and two dead bodies, that it was easy enough for me to slip away.

The club closed down immediately, pending an investigation. I watched as news footage rolled, the bodies being carted out of the building by coroner staff, Nick's apartment cordoned off by the FBI. But, as it does in a city like this, the investigation went nowhere. It only took a week or so for the story to disappear, for it to be swept under the rug like everything else in this diseased place.

A week after it falls from the news, three weeks after it all went down, the police finally turn up at my door.

"Scarlet Reynolds?" the woman asks, showing me her badge.