[harry’s pov]
But where would I go? I could probably borrow some money from Aria, though I absolutely hated the thought. I would pay her back - for everything. When my father would finally let me have the money after my mother, which I was the rightful owner to. I would pay Aria back - and Jenny too for letting me stay here basically on her account. And Louis for the guitar even though it was a used one. Where would I go? Just away from here. There was no room for me here in the states anymore, it felt suffocating and I started to wonder how I had even been able to handle it before Amber came into my life?
Maybe I could try to make contact with my mother’s part of the family in England?
My father had always made sure I’d get as little as possible to know about them - I wasn’t even sure my grandparents knew their daughter had gotten a son. My father had made my mum cut the connection, convinced her it was for the better. And yeah maybe she had come here to America in a desperate try to start a new life on her own, but I had never really fully understood what could make her do that? How she could just take off from her family like that? What had happened to her?
Some part of me had always believed it had just been because of a mistunderstanding. I couldn't stop imagining her part of the family as the good part. As the warm and welcoming part. So what had made her run?
And then of course she had met my father - who was charming, silver-tongued, and with his bone structure and the messy brown hair, which was clear sign that I was his son - she had fallen for him. She had been heartbroken, young, British and beautiful. And he had probably seemed so fucking confident and intriguing, with his fancy new Harvard degree in law, the gentleman manners, and his wealthy family background.
I didn’t blame her for falling for him, I could only imagine that he must have been different at some point. Have been a different person with other goals. Maybe even goals of love and to get a happy family? Or maybe he had just thought that was what one was supposed to aim after in life? And he had realized it wasn’t anything special to have a son, and a loving wife? That he always had wanted something more, craved for the power? Maybe that was why they had gotten me in the first place? Because my mum had been feeling how he had been slipping away from her? They hadn’t even been married for two thirds of a year before she got me, before the disaster being my presence occured.
I was lost in the darkness of my thoughts, and still my non-existing heart managed to hurt like hell, as I stared at the computer screen in front of me. Not seeing the actual view of it - as memory after memory flashed before my eyes. Trying to find the mistakes. Mistakes I had made with Amber, with my father, with my life. Where had I done wrong?
I knew one of them - it had happened on February the 1st 1994. Though there obviously wasn’t anything I could have done about it. I just knew that was one of the reasons he despised me like that. All of this time. If I hadn’t been born she would have lived. It was logic.
To know even one life
has breathed easier
because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
It had been a comforting thought I had made up and written down in the journal Amber now had - that maybe my mum had been glad it had all ended. Maybe she had been glad to get away from him, maybe I had been able to help her in that way?
My thoughts were strangling me. Suffocating me. Making my eyes burn and my head hurt. That empty place in my heart which now was one big black hole just grew larger for each thought.
Had I killed her? Had that been my mistake? Or had I helped her breathe easier - helped her get out off his cage? Was it the same with Amber? Had my mistake in someway been good - as it had freed her from me? And what about Jenny? Aria? Daisy? I had to get away from them, in that way I couldn’t hurt more people right? Like I had hurt my father with killing her.
I tried to focus though my non existing heart seemed to feel blurry, as it kept growing. My sight was blurry. My thoughts were more black than sticky coal oil. They spreaded out through my body, as I sat there; Wednesday evening on my bed with my old laptop in my lap. I couldn’t breathe.
The black plastic cover witnessed of how old the mac computer was. I had gotten it from him to use for assignments - at that time it had been the latest model, new, expensive.
At some point I had denied ever using it again - right until this very moment. It symbolized him. And it had been long since I had gotten rid off that fancy mobile phone he had gotten me too. Diamonds, smartphones, golden Rolex watches, dinners at The Four Seasons, champagne, black limousines with private drivers, power, money, greed.
I burrowed my head in my hands, as the hatred towards everything he stood for boiled inside of me. How all of those things were keeping me prisoner. I stayed like that till I could concentrate on one thought; the most important of all. I had to get away, so I wouldn’t hurt the others.
I managed to take a deep breath, though it was like breathing in air filled with ashes. I was completely losing it. Everything I had tried building up ever since moving here to Chicago on my own, was being torn down brick by brick faster than I could managed to say stop. Because he had always been here - I had never truly managed to escape him, even though I had moved hundred of miles away from Washington D.C. and left his entire world behind. Denied its existence. It still had me in chains.
An airplane ticket to England. I had to check my mail first thing, so I could make a user.
One thing at a time.
I could do this. I could get away.
With heart beating out of my chest and my vision blurry I managed to get the thing started, logging in, quickly skimming over the inbox.
I saw the repeated title of an email, which had been sent to me over and over and over - I had had no idea he had tried contacting me. It felt surreal.
Without thinking I opened it, reading it through with the tiniest flame of hope burning, that maybe he was suddenly a different man, a different kind of father. Word for word. And with each letter, with each sentence my hope of being able to ever get away from him was shattered into a thousand pieces. My hope that he had changed was crushed by the unbearable reality of my sad mistake of a life.
With all my fury and incontrollable rage I threw the laptop into the corner of the room. As it crashed against the bare brick wall with an awful racket, I didn't even take notice of the sound. It was drowned by the screams and yells in my mind. I could still feel which muscles in my arms I had used in the throw, as they were still sore from yesterday and today. It hadn’t helped much - running, training harder than what was healthy. Every move hurt now, but it still didn’t drown out the other things, as I had wanted it too.
My cheeks burning, my eyes stinging, my head hurting, my heart hurting, my everything hurting like hell. I was trapped in my personal hell, where the bars were replaced by my bones and the walls was my very own skin. I was never going to get away, I realized as I watched the place the laptop was now laying.
[amber’s pov]
“Are you home?” I interrupted Jenny before she had even managed to finish her first word in the other end of the call.
“Amber - oh god,” she sounded extremely worried, I quickened my pace though my inside was still screaming at me to wait for that good solution to come first. I hadn’t figured out how to solve my problem with - well trusting Harry - anybody really. Because that was my problem. I hadn’t been able to trust him. I hadn’t been able to open myself like that. It was still a problem, which I had no idea how to overcome by myself, but right now I knew I had to make sure Harry didn’t have any problems. Because this wasn’t his problem - it was mine. And as Jenny’s worried tone reached me through the phone, a flash of fear struck through me like thunder. Was Harry okay?
“What - what is it?” I started running, with my bag bumping up and down against my side. The wind was terribly cold against my still wet cheeks, as I hurried down the street. Only with him in my every thought.
“I think,” Jenny held a small break. I could hear her move a little before she continued whispering, “I think Harry just threw something into the fucking wall in his room.”
Oh no. My heartbeat was racing. I couldn’t catch my breath, though not because of the running, but because of Jenny’s words. Oh no. Tinglings of icecold fear started spreading through my stomach.
“Is he okay? Has anything happened to him?” Even I could hear the panic in my own tone; it created chills running down my spine having to ask those questions.
“I… I just got home - I didn’t knew he was home, I thought he was out running again or something,” Jenny explained to me, as I rounded the corner of the street. At least it was better that I was able to run, instead of still being seated in that bus I had taken from the school, trapped in the bus.
Running? He had been running? From what?
“Just check if he’s okay, please Jenny. I’m on my way. I have to hang up - I’m almost there,” it simply wasn’t going fast enough if I had to hold my phone like this too. I grabbed it tightly in my fisted hand and tried moving even faster down the street, jumping in between bypassers and breathing hectically, while I prayed to God, that Harry hadn’t done anything… I couldn’t even think the thought through.
“Is he okay?” Was the first thing I whispered breathlessly, as I caught sight of Jenny’s blood red hair, though she now had dip dyed the ends in a lighter orange color.
She stepped out in the small stairway with me, closing the door slowly behind her. I noticed she was wearing her jacket and a bag, “he’s totally beside himself, Amber. I didn’t go into his room, because I asked him at the door if everything was okay. I mean it sounded pretty extreme with that high noise, but he said that everything was fine and just to leave him alone. So yeah. Thank God you’re here - is it because something happened between the two of you? I mean some days ago he was like a fucking angel just smiling and like fucking glowing all the time - and now these past two days, he’s just been.” She looked slightly helpless around her and her words came out in a rush.
It was clear to me, she had had no idea how to help Harry, “he’s been so furious and distant as shit and just. I swear, I’m not sure he’s even been sleeping? I have no idea what he’s trying to do with all that training? Oh gosh I don’t know what happened? Maybe something with his family? I mean I know him - but I don’t know about all the shit he got in life, though you know like I had the feeling of course. But I have no idea what it is - oh fuck, and I seriously just have to go! I got shift at the Café, I feel so bad for just leaving but, and like I swear - “
I cut her off before she could continue, “it’s fine. It’s fine. I’ll make sure he’s okay.”
Jenny’s words had shocked me. I had expected Harry to be angry with me. That he would be seriously pissed at me - and just continue his routine. Being charming, friendly, but still angry with me. What Jenny told me was completely opposite - I had never imagined Harry could be able to let his anger affect others, who had nothing to do with it. I had always imagined him as the controlled kind of person somehow. He had managed to hide everything so very well till I had found him. It had only been visible through his eyes. He had managed to keep everything else in place.
I gulped, but somehow my fear from before - my fear for putting all my faith into one person, was replaced by something else. The fear of losing him. I could hardly stand here any longer, knowing he was so close and so hurt. I stared into Jenny’s eyes for what seemed like a nanosecond and still an infinity.
“Go. Go he needs you,” Jenny told me. And she meant it with her entire heart. I gave her a breathless nod before she stepped aside letting me pass her, leaving her alone behind in the stairway.
I pushed the door open to the place I had been to only once before. As I was about to close the door behind me I saw Jenny look back at me with a worried gaze, as she rushed down the stairs - probably already more than late.
It was awfully quiet. Totally unlike the last time I had been here. The place remained in darkness. There was not a living soul in view, just the closed door on my left, which I knew led into his room. And from the living room natural light from the window probably, which still managed to reach the entré.
Carefully I took off my jacket and the bag in the dark. Meanwhile, I was listening intensely to any possible sound, which could come from the closed door. I tried imagining how he would react - I hoped, I hoped - I didn’t even know what I hoped would happen. Maybe that he would just at least forgive me? But I definitely deserved to be yelled at.
I took a deep breath my hand shaking as I lifted it towards the door handle of his room. He was so close - but still so so scaringly far away. And what made me brave enough to finally close my hand tightly around the cold door handle was the thought of Jenny’s last words.
He needs you.
please vote & comment
a/n: so yeah Harry's thoughts are pretty much in contradictions sometimes in this chapter - but that's done on purpose, cause when you're so lost like that - nothing, absolutely nothing makes sense and everything just comes rushing down over you.
anyway sorry for the late update :c school was really tough this past week *sob*.