"YOU'RE AWFULLY QUIET," Harry mumbled into my neck as I brushed my teeth in front of the mirror.
I looked up, meeting his eyes in the reflection in front of me. His arms circled my hips as his head rested against my shoulder. He looked straight at me, searching for the answers that I wasn't giving him. The evening hadn't turned out as I imagined at all and it occupied a lot of my thoughts. Still, I smiled as best as I could with a toothbrush in my mouth. But as I did so, a little bit of drool came out which made the both of us laugh out loud. I had to spit it all out and rinse my mouth so that I wouldn't choke while laughing. And as I heard our laughs mix together, a little bit of the weight I carried on my shoulder was lifted.
These were the moments I lived for. Seeing Harry's dimples pop out and the side of his crinkle in the corners as he laughed.
After getting all of the toothpaste out and rinsing properly, I turned around, facing Harry that was still laughing. Before I could say anything, he engulfed me in his arms and pulled me to him. As I rested my head against his chest, I felt it vibrating as he laughed.
We stayed in that position for a while, enjoying the proximity, and I closed my eyes. My thoughts just seemed clearer when I was in his arms and we calmed down a little, concentrating only on our embrace.
"Talk to me," Harry mumbled against the top of my head.
"I don't know what to say," I admitted truthfully. I didn't even know how to express in words what was going on in my head.
"Something's on our mind," he looked down and reached for my chin so that I would look at him. I sighed, did I really want to tell Harry about this?
"Just tell me how you're feeling," he added once he saw that I wasn't answering.
I pulled my chin out of his hold and put my head back into its previous position, against his chest. This was my safe place. I took a second to listen to his heartbeat and feel the movement of his breathing, matching mine with his.
"I'm feeling... confused, angry, sad and betrayed."
Harry's grip around me tightened. "Uh... those aren't great feelings," he replied nervously, and I knew he immediately thought he had done something wrong, that all these feelings I had were because of him.
"This isn't because of you," I said, hoping that he would believe me. In a way, it really wasn't his fault, even if he was concerned, he didn't have anything to do with the fact that Wendy was falling for him. "If anything, tonight you made me feel happy and loved," I added to make my point.
I looked up to watch him and try to see what he was thinking through his expression. He was smiling gently, his dimples softly showing. "You are loved," he replied before leaning in to kiss me. "Very much so."
"So are you," I replied before laughing in a sarcastic manner, not quite enjoying the irony behind my words, but I couldn't help it.
Harry frowned, clearly not understanding my personal joke. Which only made me laugh harder. He looked at me, completely disarmed by my reaction, but waited for my laughter to die down, knowing that he wouldn't be able to get a straight answer from me when I was in this state.
He must have thought that I was crazy because after barely a minute of laughing, it turned into a sad laugh again before I became completely silent. My cheeks red and my eyes watery.
"If this isn't about me, what is it about? Did you have a fight with Wendy? Is that why you wanted to sleep here?" I looked up, surprised that he had guessed it right away. Harry's eyes widened, he seemed surprised too. "What happened?" He asked worriedly.
I took in a deep breath, getting ready to spill it out. Simply thinking about it made me want to throw up, I still couldn't believe it. "When we went to dance, she told me that," I stopped, believing for a second that I was actually going to vomit. "Ugh, I still can't believe she told me that, but she said that she was falling for you."
Saying it out loud was like admitting that it was real and all that did was anger me even more. And it got even worst when Harry started to laugh. Surprisingly it wasn't a nervous laugh, but a full-on throw your head back kind of laugh. It was as if he thought that I was telling him a joke, that I wasn't being serious.
"Wendy? Liking me?" He asked between laughs as he put a hand on his belly. "Are you f.ucking with me?"
"No, I'm serious, that's what she told me."
As he saw that I wasn't joking around, his laugh subdued. He went to take me back in his arms, an embrace that I welcomed happily. He was shaking his head, the information slowly sinking in.
"She loves me?" He asked, his tone much more serious than it had been only seconds ago.
I shook my head. "Well, I don't know if she loves you, but from what I understand she likes you and she doesn't want to hang with you because she's scared that she might fall for you."
"Uh," he said, apparently taking the time to process it. "Well, what can I say, I'm irresistible."
I pulled away immediately, hitting him on the chest. "Don't joke about this! It's serious!" I scolded him.
Harry laughed a little more, grabbing both of my hands in his and pressing them against his chest softly, stopping me from hitting him. He then leaned in carefully to press a kiss on my lips to apologize although he still seemed to find the situation funny.
"Look, she was drunk and obviously she's confused," he then said in a reassuring tone. "I don't think she's in love with me at all and I don't think she ever will be. She's probably like all these other girls, attracted by the outside, oblivious to what's inside."
Although we were talking about something else completely, I couldn't let this slide. "Hang on a minute," I said as I lifted my hand up. With that gesture, Harry's eyes widened, realizing that this conversation was going to take a different turn. "First, other girls?" The words came out higher than I intended but the jealousy that I felt was just as surprising. I cleared my throat before continuing. "Second, oblivious to what's inside? Are you insinuating what I think that you are?"
Harry sighed, slightly irritated, although his frustration seemed to be oriented towards himself, not towards me. As if he knew that he had screwed himself over. "I'm going to skip on the first one because you're already on edge and we definitely don't need this. But I'm going to say this: All you have to know is that I love you and only you. Other girls, Wendy, they don't matter to me."
He grabbed my face and pulled me to him, kissing my lips softly, repeating that he loved me between each kisses. I melted every time I felt his lips on mine, my frustration diminishing a little.
"And about this whole Wendy situation, don't worry about her, nothing is ever going to happen between us," he reassured me.
I smiled, believing him completely when he said that he loved me and I trusted him to be faithful. That wasn't the problem anymore. "That's not what worries me, well not anymore. What worries me is that I feel like I'm going to lose her over this," I admitted.
"Tomorrow's a new day, she won't be drunk, so you might be able to have a conversation with her and clear things up. But honestly, I'm sure there's nothing to worry about. Maybe she's just attracted to me, just a little crush, it will pass," he said, his lips subtly turning into a smirk.
I raised one eyebrow. "Why do I feel like you get satisfaction out of this?"
He chuckled. "I don't. The only girl I want attention from is you. Don't care about anyone else," he replied, shrugging while saying the last sentence.
This time, it was me that reached for his lips. He made me feel so cherished, as if I was his anchor. My kiss was quick, but meaningful. I then pulled away, but not completely, I still wanted to have his hands on me. So I took them and lowered them to my hips, before taking a small step to be as close as possible to him and rested my hands against his chest. Through the fabric of his shirt I could feel his warmth and the soft beating of his heart.
For a second, I knew that he thought he had got away with his statement, but I wasn't going to let it go so easily.
"What about my second question?" I asked. I stared at him with narrowed eyes, making him understand that I wasn't agreeing. I didn't want him to think that way, I wanted him to know the he was beautiful, inside and out.
He sighed, knowing exactly what I wanted to hear but didn't believe it. "You know how f.ucked up I can be," he replied vaguely.
"You've been more than fine lately," I pointed out.
It was true, it had been a little while since he had gone out with his bad crowd or since we fought about anything serious. To me he had been perfect, sure there were still a lot of things to deal with, but it didn't change the fact that he had seemed a lot happier lately than he had been in the past two years.
"That's because I have you," he countered. "It's easy to escape it all when you're with me. You make me happy, you make me forget about everything that is wrong in my life. You've become my drug."
I wasn't sure what to reply to that statement. Sure, it was flattering, him saying that I made him happy was the best thing I had ever heard, because that was all I wanted for him: happiness. The fact that I was the one bringing him that was even better. But he did compare me to a drug and for a second, I remembered just how much the drugs used to control him, it brought me to a dark place and made me think that there was a possibility that he could easily fall back into this old habit.
He wasn't using too much now because we spent every day together, but there would come a time when we would be apart and he might hang out with Ryan and then we'd be starting it all over again. The thought of it made me sick to my stomach.
Harry didn't seem to notice that I was having dark thoughts and kept going. "You make me feel like I am worth something. You make me believe that I can be a good person."
That caught my attention. It was touching, of course, to be valued in that way. It made my heart skip a beat as I caught his eyes full of love and admiration. But it also confirmed that Harry's perception of himself hadn't changed at all.
This was dangerous, extremely dangerous, because the whole reason why he had turned to drugs in the first place was to feel better about himself after he had learned about his adoption. Knowing that he still felt that way was gut-wrenching.
"Harry," I murmured with a trembling voice. "How could you possibly say that?"
He shook his head. "Because it's the truth. You make me good, simply because I want to be good for you. But there is so much about me that's just complete s.hit."
"You're not a good person because of me. You're just genuinely a good person on your own," I countered. He couldn't think that way, I wouldn't let him.
"That, I don't believe."
"How do you explain the other girls being attracted to you then?" I hated saying that because it generated a strong feeling of jealousy inside of me, but my desire for Harry to build up his self-esteem and be happy overcame that.
"It's just the pretty face," he sighed. "They don't know me."
"I know you," I countered.
He leaned in, pressing his lips against mine. "Again, you make me good and you're the only one I want to be good for."
"What about your family? They know you, it's not about the pretty face and they still love you."
The words came out before I could stop them. I had thought it through and I could tell that I had overstepped when I saw Harry's jaw clenching. We hadn't really been arguing up until that point. Sure we were disagreeing but we had managed to have an adult conversation. But with the mention of his family I knew that I had risked everything.
"Don't talk about them," Harry warned. All the warmth in his eyes had disappeared, he was back to wearing his hard mask, something I hadn't seen in a very long time and that I would have quite frankly wish I had avoided for the rest of my life.
Mentioning his family was a bad move on my part, I could feel him pull away, physically and emotionally. My hands fisted his shirt, keeping him close. Although it did stop him from pulling away physically, it didn't stop the abstract barrier he was putting up.
"I'm sorry," I said, looking at him straight in the eyes, hoping that he would see how sincere I was. "I didn't mean to bring them up, I just wanted to make a point. I know it's a sensitive subject. I shouldn't have, I'm sorry."
And I meant that, strongly, because with each passing seconds I could feel the distance building between the two of us. All I wanted was for Harry to believe that he was worth receiving love. It was already a huge step that he accepted the fact that I loved him, but I didn't believe that it was enough. He needed to understand that he wasn't all that bad, that he was in fact pretty amazing, and I was going to make sure that he knew.
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Things are good between Emily and Harry, but Emily's getting into dangerous territory. How do you think that things will go down?
Did you enjoy this chapter ? Please let me know in the comments ! :)
Lots of love, as always,
Karry xx.
// Second part of a long a.ss author note that you can totally skip if you don't care about me or what I'm thinking hahaha
Told you that you should expect the worst when it came to my updating schedule... Sorry about that, but I didn't write much while I was on vacation and then I went away this weekend with a bunch of friends. But now I'm back, things should be back to normal now. sort of.
While I was in Jamaica, I re-read Anchor and Waves and as much as it made me proud because, I'm sorry but I think my books are pretty d.amn good, but it also made me realize that my writing was so much better in the beginning of Anchor, and that's because I wrote the first few 5 chapters in three months and took time to think and edit the chapters. It isn't the case anymore, I'm producing a chapter a week, taking an hour to edit what I wrote and I think that you can clearly see that in the updates.
Anyway, I already told you that before, but just so you know, I want to improve my writing, so the updates might not always be every week, sometimes it might take 10 days, sometimes 2 weeks, but it's just because I want to be happy with the chapters that I write. Obviously, I'll never be fully happy with them, sometimes I feel like I lack in terms of vocabulary and descriptions, but hey, nobody's perfect.
Hopefully you guys will understand and stick with me :) I can assure you that I will finish this series, that although the updates might be irregular or might take time, there will always be a chapter on its way until you read the words : "THE END".
I love you guys and again, thank you for your support ! It means the world to me <3 //