Emmie? Why was she with Emmie. I was so confused.
“What exactly do you know then, Lucy?”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now, Kin. What hospital are you at?” She sounded odd, but when I told her which hospital she told me she would see me soon.
Putting my phone away, I noticed Jace and Natalie had come back from seeing Harris. Jace had his arm wrapped around her shoulders as she sobbed against his chest. The sounds coming from her made it impossible for my heart not to break for her.
Getting to my feet, I crossed the room to them. “How is he?” I murmured.
Jace shook his head. “He’s out, babe. The doctor said he probably won’t wake up until tomorrow with all the drugs he has in him right now. With the antidote the EMT gave him to bring him back, it could be a while before he opens his eyes.”
I bit the inside of my bottom lip as I worried about Harris. Fuck, had Tessa really tried to kill him? I’d only seen Jenna’s girlfriend—ex-girlfriend now, I supposed—a few times but I’d never liked her. She was why Jenna had gotten into drugs in the first place. She had gotten Jenna hooked and then threw a fit when Jenna had left to get herself clean. Harris had tried to keep it all a secret, but after Lucy and I had found Jenna high out of her mind at First Bass that first night, Lucy had pretty much blackmailed them into getting Jenna help.
She’d wanted Jenna to go to rehab or she was going to tell Jenna’s sister and brothers. Jenna had left the next day for Phoenix and Lucy had kept her mouth shut. But Tessa had still been around.
Until now.
Chapter 20
Harris
The feel of soft hands on my arm and the stream of bright light coming from a nearby window were pulling me out of a deep fog. I groaned, fighting the fog, wanting to get closer to those soft hands yet wanting to hide from the light all at the same time.
My head was killing me and the rest of my body didn’t feel much better. I was one big ache and my stomach was tossing and turning in a way that told me I was going to have to face the light a hell of a lot sooner than I wanted to.
Moaning, I turned onto my side, away from those soft hands, and emptied my stomach onto the floor. I heard the wet contents as they splashed onto tile and groaned again as another wave of nausea hit me hard, making my gut cramp from it.
Soft fingers stroked over my forehead, soothing me. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Let it happen. Don’t fight it.”
I gave up the fight to hold back the next wave of vomit and emptied it onto the floor over and over again. By the time I was done I felt drained and fell back against an uncomfortable mattress and a pathetic excuse for a pillow. “Where am I?” I whispered, my throat hurting like a sonofabitch.
“Hospital,” came that sweet voice I loved so fucking much. “You’ve been here for three days.”
Three days?
I cracked open an eye, testing the brightness of the room. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I had feared, but my eyes still felt like they were going to pop out of my head. “What happened?”
Lucy’s beautiful face appeared in front of me and I nearly grabbed for her, some inner instinct telling me to hold on to her now and never let her go.
“We’re still trying to figure that out,” she told me with a tight smile, tears making her dark brown eyes brighter than normal. “We’re just thankful that you’re alive.”
“Was there an accident? Is that why I feel like I’ve been run over by a Mac truck?” I tried to tease, but her face just tightened.
“No, Harris. No truck.” She exhaled long and hard. “Tessa drugged you. You OD’d. If Jace hadn’t been there you might have died.”
I froze at her words as one memory flooded back to me. The tea. The tea in the fridge had tasted bitter, but I’d thought it was just because Jenna had messed up one of her batches of iced tea. Now I realized that it had been something else entirely.
Fucking hell.
This was her revenge for Jenna breaking up with her, but had she really hated me so much she had tried to kill me? I hadn’t gotten a ‘killer’ vibe from her in all the months I’d lived under the same roof with her and Jenna, but then again I didn’t know Tessa very well at all.
“Is Jenna okay?” Did Tessa do something to her too? Was she okay? Was she still clean?
“Jenna is fine,” Lucy assured me, but the hesitation in her voice had me taking another look at her. Seeing the question in my eyes, Lucy grimaced. “Everyone knows about Jenna now, Harris. They are blaming her for what happened—not that I can honestly blame them, but that doesn’t matter right now. Natalie wants her to go back to Ohio to live with their mother and father. Drake wants to try and help her. Shane is still on the fence about what he wants to do, so until he makes his decision Jenna has been condemned to her room in your apartment.”
I tried to sit up in the bed, but my stomach and head both protested and I fell helplessly back against the mattress. “This wasn’t Jenna’s fault, Lu. She had nothing to do with what Tessa did. Fuck, she broke up with Tessa, was going to put as much distance between the two of them as humanly possible.”
Those soft hands pushed at my chest, keeping me on my back. “Calm down. I didn’t say I blamed her, I’m just saying I can understand why everyone else would. Don’t worry about her right now. Just focus on getting back to your old self. Okay?”
I sucked in a deep breath. “Yeah. Okay.” I covered one of her hands on my chest and gave it a squeeze. “Thanks for being here, sweetness.”
If I hadn’t been holding on to her, I might have missed the way she flinched and jerked away when I called her ‘sweetness’. But it only lasted a second before her hand relaxed against my chest. When she smiled down at me I could see how forced it was. That earlier instinct to hold on to her and never let go filled me again and I tightened my hold on her hand.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded, taking a closer look at her eyes. Her lashes were damp, her eyes swollen and bloodshot. There were twin trails down her cheeks that told me she must have been crying for a long time. “What happened while I was out, Lu?”
“It’s nothing,” she told me with another tight smile, but didn’t meet my gaze and I knew she was lying.
“Don’t.” I threaded my fingers through hers and watched as her eyes dropped to watch our hands. “Tell me what happened. Please.”
She swallowed hard and shook her head. “No. Not yet. You should rest. I promised your dad I would sit with you while he and Natalie got some coffee.”
My dread only escalated. “Tell me. Now.”
“No.” She stubbornly shook her head, but the look in her dark eyes made it hard to suck in my next breath. “I took care of it. There’s nothing for you to worry about now.”
“What was there to worry about in the first place?” I demanded. “Stop this, Lu. Tell me what the fuck I missed. I can’t fix that damn haunted look in your eyes if you don’t tell me.”
Instead of answering me she turned her head away, blocking me out. Fuck no. I couldn’t deal with this shit. Something had happened and I knew it was bad from the way she was acting. She was there, but she wasn’t. She was my loving Lucy, yet she was a cold robotic version of her too. I wanted—needed—to fix whatever Tessa had fucked up because it felt like I was losing the only person I couldn’t live without.
Desperation clutched at me and I glanced around, hoping there was someone else who could tell me what was going on. I needed answers. The room was empty though and I was desperate to know.
“Sweetness,” I started, but she jerked in my hold again, making my stomach hollow out. “Fuck this. Tell me. Now.”
The door opened behind her and I turned my eyes reluctantly away from her to see who it was. Seeing Emmie and Natalie standing in the doorway, I breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. You’re here. Tell me what the fuck I missed, Nat.”
Natalie gave me a grim smile as she crossed the room to stand on the opposite side of Lucy. Emmie came to stand beside her niece and wrapped an arm
around her waist, as if offering Lucy her support.
“You missed a bunch of things, kid.” Natalie tapped a finger to the back of my hand that had an IV sticking out of it. “Nothing you need to worry about right now, though.”
“I want fucking answers,” I bit out.
“Okay. Tessa has been arrested. She’s being charged with attempted murder…among other things. With Emmie’s help we were able to find that bitch and make her talk. The DA has promised to keep the details out of the media as much as he possibly can.”
I was glad Tessa was going to have to face what she had done, but I couldn’t help but focus on something Natalie had said. “Among other things? What other things?”
Emmie produced a phone—Lucy’s phone—and tried to hand it over to me. Natalie reached for it, trying to snatch it away. “No. Stop it, Emmie. He isn’t ready.”
“He’s got to find out sooner or later, Nat. Better now with you here than from some other source,” Emmie told her, exhaling tiredly through her nose and tightening her hold on Lucy.
Clenching her jaw, Natalie glared at Emmie over my head for a long moment before reluctantly nodding. I took the phone from Em.
Lucy
I didn’t know what to expect when Harris took the phone from Aunt Emmie. He opened the text message I’d gotten the night of my birthday party and watched with eyes that went instantly emotionless. He played every video Tessa had sent me.
Inside I was breaking. I had seen every one of those videos, had watched with my heart cracking as the guy I loved fucked someone else. I’d thought things were over between us. That I would never be able to see Harris Cutter the same way ever again.
Then Kin had called and had turned all those thoughts upside down. I’d come to terms with what had happened. Tessa had drugged him. He wasn’t responsible for what had happened when he wasn’t himself. It wasn’t his fault.
My head knew that, but my heart still didn’t completely understand. It couldn’t turn back the hands of time and make me un-see what I’d seen. I couldn’t un-feel what I’d felt as I’d watched Harris touch Tessa the way I’d been aching to be touched by him.
I’d been sitting in his hospital room since the night he’d been brought in. I hadn’t left his side for anything more than to use the bathroom. My father wasn’t happy. Emmie wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy.
Our families knew every detail now. His father. My father. Not one of them were blind to the truth, except for Harris, until right at that moment.
Things had been tense at the hospital. My dad had dealt with everything a lot more easily than Devlin Cutter had. Jesse Thornton had gone from wanting to kill Harris to full-on understanding in the blink of an eye once he knew what Tessa had done. While Devlin understood, he wasn’t taking things quite the same way Jesse was. He was pissed, but I could tell it wasn’t at Harris. All his rage was focused on one person.
Tessa.
Okay, maybe two people. Jenna hadn’t gone untouched by Devlin’s anger. Few people didn’t blame her for what had happened. She had brought Tessa into Harris’s life. She had gotten into the drug scene. She had kept Tessa around even after getting herself clean.
Seeing how well my dad had taken everything in had confused me. I was still unable to find an even footing about my own feelings, but he’d shrugged it all off like it was nothing. Maybe I would be able to do that too.
One day.
Until then I would be haunted by those videos. I would be forced to relive every groan and sigh he’d breathed as he’d done things to someone who wasn’t me. It was cheating, yet it wasn’t pure and simple. What had been perfectly black and white now had varying shades of gray that had me twisted up to the point of madness.
I still loved him. I didn’t think I could stop even if I’d seen him in a video with a hundred different chicks. I understood he hadn’t been able to say no, that what had happened really wasn’t his fault.
But I still felt cheated on. I still had a broken heart even though I was trying to put myself back together. It was hard, though. I wasn’t as strong as I had thought I was.
In my tennis shoes my toe throbbed and I welcomed the physical pain from the cut I’d given myself the night of my birthday. The cut wasn’t healing because I kept twisting my toes to reopen the deep slice I’d made with the razor blade. I needed that pain to help me through the emotions that were consuming me.
Slowly, Harris lowered the hand that was still holding my phone. He was still as a rock, his face just as hard. His eyes were blank and his skin paler than it had been the first night I had seen him lying in that hospital bed.
“Go,” he bit out in a voice devoid of all emotion.
My heart turned to ice. “What?”
He turned his head away, blocking me out as I had him earlier. “Go. I don’t want you here.”
“Harris…” I reached for his hand, unable to just leave him. He pulled his hand away before I could touch him.
I wouldn’t leave him—I couldn’t. I loved him. The thought of him not wanting me with him killed me. Tears burned my eyes as I glanced from him to his stepmom, her eyes full of both pity and determination, then to Aunt Emmie. Her green eyes were full of concern for me but I didn’t want her concern.
I wanted her to fix this like she had fixed every other problem I’d ever faced in the past.
Shaking my head, I turned back to Harris. I touched his face, begging him with my touch to look at me. “We can get through this. I don’t care what happened. I love you.”
“Just go, Lucy.”
The defeat in his voice had my knees threatening to buckle. “I can’t,” I whispered around a sob. “Don’t make me.”
“Nat,” he gritted out. “Get rid of her.”
Without questioning him, Natalie moved around the bed and put her hand on my shoulder. The look in her eyes was full of reluctance, but the grip she had on me told me she meant business. Tears blinded me as I let her guide me to the door. Opening it she turned and walked away while Aunt Emmie pushed me through the door. My heart broke all over again as I left him there.
No. Please no.
I started to crumble but Aunt Emmie caught me. The sob that left me echoed off the corridor walls and down to the waiting room. People appeared behind me but I was too broken to notice them or care if they saw me falling apart. Emmie only tightened her arms around me and let me cry until my throat was raw and aching.
Once the horrible noises stopped, a different set of arms wrapped around me and I felt a fresh flood of tears blind me as my dad tucked me against his chest and carried me away from the hospital room door. Away from Harris.
Away from the guy I’d thought would be my future.
Chapter 21
Kin
Lucy had left the day before, but the tortured sounds that had come from her were still echoing in my head. I couldn’t get the sight of her so destroyed out of my mind. I didn’t know what had happened in Harris’s room, but whatever had gone on had left my friend a ghost of herself.
Jace hadn’t left the hospital since Harris had been brought in, so I stayed with him. I was surprised Jillian hadn’t called to demand I come back to the house, or worse—shown up to play up to the media that had been parked outside in the hospital parking lot since they had gotten wind that Harris Cutter had been brought in with a possible overdose. She hadn’t done either, but Carolina had texted me three times, asking if I was okay.
I’d texted her back, letting her know that I would be staying with Jace as long as he was at the hospital with our friend. She had promised to tell her mother after that first text, but the two other times she’d messaged me she had only been concerned about me. Wanting to know if I was okay. If I was getting any sleep. If she could bring me anything.
I’d felt conflicted about her. It was weird, to say the least, that I’d gotten Carolina wrong. I wasn’t wrong about people very often, so it confused the hell out of me. I hated that I’d put her in the same boat with her mother and ol
der sister, that I’d misjudged her. She was really a nice girl—sweet even.
The doctor was going to release Harris the next day now that they were sure all the narcotics he’d been drugged with were out of his system and he didn’t seem to have any side effects from them. I’d only seen him once since Lucy had left, but I couldn’t agree with the doctor on his assessment that Harris was going to be okay.
He wasn’t even close to being okay. His eyes were dead, his face hard and pale. There was a new anger in the usual carefree Harris Cutter that concerned me just as much as Lucy’s breakdown had. I didn’t know everything, Lucy hadn’t told me much about what had happened on her end the night everything had gone to hell and back. I knew that she’d gotten some text messages from Harris’s phone from Tessa, but that was all she would say.
Whatever it was, it had been enough to destroy two people’s lives. No, not just two. More. Harris and Lucy weren’t the only ones wrecked after what Tessa had done. Jenna, who was caught in a tug-of-war between her three siblings. Devlin and Natalie Cutter, who couldn’t wrap their minds around the fact that their son had nearly died. Jesse and Layla, who couldn’t make their daughter’s pain go away. Jace, who was still haunted by imagines of nearly losing his best friend as he watched him OD. I hurt for all of them.
With Harris being released, Jace was finally ready to go back to his place. I was ready to go with him, wanting to sleep in his bed snuggled up against him for a few hours before I had to face anyone at my father’s house.
That plan was quickly changed, however, when I started to leave with Jace. Out of nowhere Lana Stevenson appeared in front of me. Her pregnant belly was huge, near to busting it looked like. She was carrying her fourth daughter and only weeks away from giving birth, but the look on her face right then made me wonder if the newest little Demon family addition was going to be joining us sooner than expected.
“Kin, thank God you’re still here. I need your help. Will you come with me to Malibu? It’s Lucy. She needs us.”