After Harry left the next morning, Michael came fairly soon after to pick me up and drive. "He pissed me off the other night, you know." Michael said with his gaze fixed hard on the road in front of us.
"How so?" I asked.
"It's like he values his own safety over your peace of mind."
"What are you talking about?" I asked, rolling my eyes. Sometimes I thought maybe I was being stupid. Maybe it was a bad idea to be with Harry. Hell, even his own friends would tell me that.
"Well, obviously he cares about you, but the other night it was like he cared about himself more."
"I still don't know what you're talking about. He literally has tried to kill himself so I don't imagine that he cares very much about himself." I mumbled, looking over at Michael who just lifted an eyebrow. "And that doesn't mean that he doesn't care about me very much, ok?"
"When the officers showed up, they said that they wanted to talk to us so they could figure out who had done that to you. As much as I hate cops-"
"You really do. You couldn't just cooperate. You didn't even have any weapons on you and you were still going to put up a fight when they said that they were going to search us."
"Yeah, thanks to you kicking my knife out of my hand. You owe me a new one for that. I was never able to find it. Someone else probably has it now. And besides, if you'd let me finish what I was trying to say..." he glared at me and I held me hands up in defense. "As much as I hate cops, I was willing to go down to the station and talk it out with them. I'm surprised that they'd cut you. They always cut us but that's just because they know that we'd never go to the police. That would be essentially turning ourselves in. But you're not one of us. And besides that, it'd be the perfect way to get them off of our backs for a little while. Anyway, I would have gone. But Harry flipped the fuck out and refused. For a minute, I thought he was going to do something crazy and keep you from going. I want them to pay for what they did to you."
"Why?" I asked, suddenly, snapping my head in his direction. As much as I appreciated it, I didn't want any of them taking the fall for me deciding that I wanted to go to a fight with them.
"Because I care about you?" he said, almost as if it were a question. As if it were obvious and I should have already known that. "And Harry says he does, but he doesn't seem to act like it anymore." he scoffed.
"Yes he does. He just doesn't want any one of you to get thrown in jail. Especially not you. I don't know if you understand this, but you're literally supposed to be sitting in a prison cell right now, waiting until your trial date. You're so lucky that you get to walk around like a free man. You never should have been there in the first place and Harry was just covering your ass. If you went down to the police station with me, you would have been toast. Sometimes one of us has to take the fall to keep the rest of us safe and under the radar."
"And that's my problem, ok? You're not one of us, Charlotte. I don't want you to get hurt because of the stupid shit that I do." he replied. I looked over at him and glared.
"Ok, I get that I'm not one of your little honorary gang members, but I am one of you. You're all my family. And if something happens to any single one of you, it effects me too."
"You don't want that."
"Actually, I do. And even if I didn't, that's how it would be anyway. Besides, it's not a big deal. It's not like anyone tried to kill me. It's fine. I'm fine. It's just a little cut. It's not even as bad as what Niall did to me the night that we met."
"We didn't know you then."
"You don't need to defend him. I'm not attacking him." I said, simply. "It's just not that big of a deal."
