Harry's POV
We were on a different plane when I woke up. The last one was small and not-so-cozy, with rickety seats and a very chilly draft that lingered around. This one was a little more spacious and had comfy accommodations—much better than falling asleep on the bathroom floor.
I looked over to my left after pulling myself from the weariness that seemed to drag on and on no matter how much I slept to see Bria hugging her knees to her chest, staring out the window and chewing gum. Strawberry. She always chewed gum when she was nervous.
My chest hurt a lot more than it did when I was awake last, and I could feel the palpitations getting worse. At times it would beat like an uncoordinated drummer—thumthum-thum-thum-thum-pause-thumthum—and I feared what would happen next. I hadn't sweat my fever out yet either. The serum was magnesium based, meaning it would directly affect my immune system, my nervous system and my heart. Some people were lucky and went crazy; others were also lucky if they died.
I tried to keep my coughs down, but Bria was next to me in a matter of seconds as soon as she heard the dreaded sound of me trying to clear my throat.
"We're arriving in Oregon in an hour or so," she whispered, suddenly donning a look of concern. "It's five thirty in the morning right now. We have to get to the cop's place—"
"Clarine," Harry corrected.
"Right. We have to get to her place as soon as possible. We're landing in Gresham, so I'll have to drive to her place—South Portland, right?"
"Yeah, by that one TriMet station with all the condos outside."
I saw her purse her lips and nod, sitting back down after our brief interaction. I thought back to last night—the look on her face when I pulled her down to me and when she finally relaxed her shoulders after being so tense—and wondered why she was doing this—why she was helping me get back to Sperling when I knew she still cared for me. I wanted to shake Bria and tell her that it wasn't as if she didn't matter to me because the reality was that she would always matter to me, no matter how distant we were.
In the hour we were in the air, my cough became significantly more alarming; Bria spent half the time rubbing my back and patting my forehead with a towel while I was hunched over the sink and spitting blood into the basin. I didn't want Sperling to see me like this; no matter how much I wanted her back, I couldn't bear for her to forgive me out of guilt or pity. I felt like if it got any worse, I'd end up vomiting my own organs out. Nice.
I saw Bria shell out five-thousand dollars (how the hell did she have that much cash on hand?) to the pilot before putting her hair up in a bun and pulling glasses from her purse. We landed not long after on a farm that belonged to the pilot's late father. She called a taxi and supported me as we made our way to the edge of the stretch of dirt road.
"6:45 in the morning in Oregon. I missed this," Bria noted, looking around and taking in the sweet air as the sun made things seem a lot better than they were. I could hear the calls of birds just to the east and wondered why I hadn't noticed it before, despite all my years spent in this state.
"Nice isn't it?" I asked, wrapping the blanket Bria's pilot friend had donated to me tighter around myself. My fever was getting worse, my limbs were sore, and it was far too cold for me to feel comfortable at the slightest.
"You don't really get to appreciate peace and quiet until you're constantly surrounded by noise, you know?"
"Yeah. Yeah, that's true."
The peace and quiet didn't last long, for my coughing acted up again. I leaned against the fence behind me, heaving my gasps out the best I could. Something in my chest felt so constricted, almost as if someone was pulling my lungs out the back of my body. It was to my relief when the taxi arrived fifteen minutes later. Bria told the driver where to go ("Step on it; I'll pay you an extra hundred if we get there in before 7:15,"), and all I could do was hope for the best. Sperling was my first priority. Bria let me call her with her phone.
"This is Clarine. Leave a message after the beep."
Monotonous. Lifeless. It wasn't her voice I heard—not nearly the same voice anyway. The tone sounded and I cleared my throat.
"Sperling, I—" I started, but paused, suddenly going blank. Out of all times to zone out, why now? Fucking hell. Bria raised an eyebrow at me and gestured with her head, as if to say 'Well? What the hell are you waiting for?'. I cleared my throat again, certain it wouldn't do anything to help my hoarse throat, but that didn't really matter right now.
"I'm sorry, I love you," I spluttered. "Wait... wait no, those were two separate things, like 'I'm sorry' and 'I love you', not an apology for—"
"Message recorded."
"Fuck," I cursed, shoving the phone back to Bria. What the hell was I thinking? Spilling my heart out over a thirty-second voice message? Thinking that that would make up for the fact that I hit her?
"Well...you were supposed to tell her to pack her things and stay safe but I guess that was close enough," Bria smirked at my misfortune of messing up yet again. I groaned and leaned my head against the window, watching as the taxi got closer and closer to our destination, the fifteen minutes passing by slower than decades in my head. I knew she was angry at me, but I couldn't help but to feel excited to see her again.
However, one peculiar sight stopped my excitement dead in its tracks. As we pulled up to Sperling's home, two black cars—windows tinted to the darkest shade that was legal and chrome rims to add a polished touch—were parked right outside, and her front door was open. My mind clouded and the only name I could hear ringing in my ears was Xander's.
Out of some new found strength, as the car was still rolling, I unlocked the car door and sprinted out, tumbling to the concrete and scraping my knees in the process. I didn't care—I picked myself back up and scrambled to her door, hearing Bria shout at me in the background.
I burst into her home, desperate to find some sign of where they had taken her.
And then I saw it.
I counted them: one, two, three, four, five men in black suits sprawled out around the small girl huddled in the corner of the living room, clutching her phone and playing my voice message on repeat. Her eyes were clamped shut and her gun was clasped tightly in her hand, pointing it aimlessly at the area in front of her. The bodies bled onto the plain carpet I had noted weeks ago, leaving them stained crimson. Tears stained her cheeks, and that's when I saw what they did to her.
Her shirt was torn—nearly ripped to shreds, as if a wild animal mangled her—and her bra strap was hanging off her shoulder; her shorts had been tossed further off on the ground and her underwear pooled around her ankles; her hair was a mess, bearing a likeness to how it would've looked if someone carelessly tugged on it. She was shaking—even from where I stood, about ten feet away, I could tell she was. I did my best not to throw up at the thought of what the men dared to do to her.
"Sperling?" I called weakly, stepping out of the line of her gun. She clamped her eyes shut even tighter and sobbed into her knees.
"I killed them," she whimpered. She repeated it like a prayer. "I killed them."
"Harry, the cars are vacant—" Bria stated as she stepped into the house only to freeze at the sight of Sperling on the ground and me not daring to touch her. Her jaw dropped, but she quickly regained her composure and said, "We need to hurry. Get her to call her family. They should still be safe; Phoenix doesn't have any safe houses in Ontario. Meet me outside in fifteen. We don't have time."
She left without another word, and I figured it was for the best. I turned to face Sperling again.
"Don't shoot," I cautioned, stepping closer to her. "Please don't shoot."
I knelt down beside her and saw bruises etched into her skin—dark, ugly bruises that should have never made their way onto her. God, I felt like shit. I sniffled even more, suddenly remembering I was still battling something internal of my own. But Sperling was more important. She would always be more important. Her eyes slowly opened and once again, for the first time in what felt like years, I was face to face with her eyes.
"Did you send them?" she whispered, her lip quivering. She didn't dare look past me, and she still held her gun up in defense. I swallowed my anxiety and gently pushed her hands down, disarming her before I pulled my hands away.
"I wouldn't do anything to hurt you like this," I said, positioning myself in front of her so she wouldn't have to see the bodies on the floor.
"You hit me."
I didn't have time to explain everything right now. I looked at the clock hanging on the wall and decided to speed things up.
"We have to leave right now, okay? We have to leave, so I'll help you pack a few things and I'll explain everything on the way. Is that okay?"
She nodded. Somehow it just didn't seem like a good enough agreement on her end. Her trust for me was far from definitive. I didn't want to touch her after what had just happened in fear that she would shut herself away from me.
"I need you to tell me it's okay for me to help you up. Can I do that?"
She nodded again and whispered a yes. I cleared my throat, slowly held her hand—her fragile, feeble hand—and, with the minuscule amount of strength I had, lifted her to her feet. Here I was, with barely any energy to keep myself standing, helping Sperling regain her balance.
"Can I help you get dressed?" I asked, keeping my eyes off her body in order to give her the respect she was denied. She nodded, watching me step around the bodies to retrieve her shorts, return, pull her underwear up her legs, then help her put on her bottoms. I fixed the strap of her bra and fixed her hair, smoothing it out the best I could. I took her hand and helped her up the stairs (at the same time trying my best to heave myself up what felt like Mount Everest; my knees felt so weak and I was out of breath by the time I reached the top) and gave her a new shirt to wear before I gathered a few of her clothes, a few men's shirts she owned for myself, her wallet and ID and her gun into a gym bag, leading her down the stairs and out the door after we were done.
"Checked the neighbours' homes. They're all dead. Looks like the people waiting at the TriMet station were killed too—a bunch of random people were stuffed into condo number two," Bria remarked, looking back at me and Sperling. "She's ready?"
"She hasn't called her family yet."
"Do it in the car," she said, tossing her phone to me. I assumed her nonchalant tone was a defense mechanism as I complied and helped Sperling into the backseat of one of the black cars. Bria had collected one of the keys from the men inside and started the engine. I coughed a bit once the car was running in hopes it would cover up the fact that more blood came from my throat. I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand and got in promptly after, shutting the door and signalling to Bria to go.
***
The drive was long and nearly leisurely, cruising down empty stretches of highway into the interior part of the state. Most of it was covered by trees, with the occasional view of the mountainous terrain that the road we were traveling was perched upon. I knew by a couple of turns that Bria had made earlier that we were en route to a safe house she and I had scouted a few years back. She had her partition rolled up before we even had a chance to leave Sperling's home.
"You okay?" I asked, peering over to Sperling, who was staring out the window at the other side of the seat. She had just called her sister and asked her to leave her home to fly out to a family friend's place in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. This, of course, stirred some speculation, but, as good families did, Hyacinth listened and gathered her dad, her wife and her daughter and boarded a plane not long after.
“I hope you know that had it not been for the five guys that barged into my home and…”—she broke off, afraid to say the word—“well, at any rate, it still gives you no excuse to scoop me up and pretend like nothing ever happened.”
My stomach churned at the thought of anybody else touching her, let along doing that to her. She was strong—she didn't let what had happened tear her apart like it would have to most people—but I could tell that even still, she was disgusted—perhaps not with herself, but disgusted nonetheless.
"No, no I'm not doing that," I replied, shifting in my seat. "I'm sorry, I really am. I could spend this whole time explaining myself—"
"Then do it. Explain."
"I...well, when we were at the fashion show—you know, when we were looking for Bria?—she pulled me into a room and—"
"I don't want to know about that. I know you wouldn't have done anything to me without a cause. I figured she asked you to leave. I want to know about what you said back at the hotel. Was it true? About you using me?"
"Yeah. Yeah it was," I admitted, shame burning my neck red. She scoffed and crossed her arms, turning her head even further away from me. "But it didn't stay like that, I swear. I mean yeah, at first it was about using you to get to Bria but the more time we spent together...I don't know. Somewhere along the way things got lost in translation and I started to lose sight of what I really wanted to accomplish."
I knew I sounded pathetic. God, this was much easier and far more sentimental through the letter and over the phone.
"What I'm saying is that I'm sorry. I'm—" I stopped to cough—hack, rather—and pulled a tissue from the tissue box on the ground, spitting blood into it before Sperling could see. I crumpled it in my hand and concealed it from her, but my cough had already caught her attention. "I'm sorry," I repeated, "And you have every right to be upset with me. And I don't want you to feel obligated to forgive me because of everything that happened."
It took me by surprise, however, when she lay her head down in my lap, facing me, and played with hem of my shirt.
"I would never hurt you," I combed through her hair, "I mean I did, but...I won't do it again is what I'm saying. I wouldn't ever touch your family and I won't ever touch you."
I started coughing again, but this time it was a string of never ending, throaty cries of distress. Sperling sat up and rubbed my back until it stopped a minute or two later.
"You're sick," she stated, though it sounded more like a question. Her eyes met mine and I shook my head, denying the fact as I stupidly coughed into the inside of my elbow. Clearly lying was in my blood—I even had to fib about my health (although, for the record, I was sure she knew I wasn't being honest—I sounded like a dehydrated chain smoker).
"I'll be fine. It's just a fever," I replied, brushing her hair back behind her ear. "You're the one I'm worried about."
I wanted to kiss her so badly. Any other person would've looked at how parched her lips were, or how tired she looked, and left her alone, but I couldn't help but note the sheer desire boiling inside myself to just reach out and let her know just how much I missed her.
We pulled up onto a small driveway that winded in past the main road. I rolled down the window and stared at the small little cottages that sat hidden behind the trees. The first cottage belonged to a lovely old woman—Polly, if I recall correctly—Bria and I knew from our earlier years that always commented on how she and her late husband, Jim, used to be just like us—two young people in love. The second one also belonged to her, but she would often rent it out to people that needed it—sometimes for the summer, and other times just for a night. It looked well-kept, and so did the cottage beside it, meaning it was still up and running, and there was no doubt she'd let us stay. Bria pulled up to the front steps, where the old woman was sitting, knitting and chatting with a younger male.
My hands were weak and couldn't open the door of the car; Sperling noticed this and helped me, but I knew I was going to get an earful from her later. I stepped out to see Polly crushing Bria with a hug, and the younger male eyeing her, sizing her up. He had sharp facial features and dark hair and matched my height—the only thing that really differed between the two of us was the fact that I was dying and he wasn't. I almost envied him as I coughed again, harder than before, spitting blood onto the ground and wiping my mouth as soon as I could. He excused himself to grab our things from the trunk, and I caught him and Sperling make eye contact before he moved past us.
"Lina! Lina, dear me, you—and Andrew! My, Andrew, both of you have grown so much. When was the last time I saw the two of you? Back when I owned the parlour a few years back? Dear, it's been a while, hasn't it? Oh, I'm just so happy to see you!" she bubbled with joy, coming over to give me a hug too. I could've sworn I would have died if she squeezed any harder. She broke away after a bit and acknowledged Sperling. "Who's this?"
"Polly, this is—"
"Breanne. I'm Breanne. It's nice to meet you," Sperling replied. She shook Polly's hand and smiled, although to be fair, it looked awfully forced.
"Breanne! What a pretty name. How do you all know each other, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Breanne is Andrew's girlfriend," Bria said bluntly after handing Polly a wad of cash and making her face drop in realization. "I'm sorry, I have to go. Off to the Okanagan to visit the Sperlings, make sure they're okay—"
"Don't you dare," Sperling snapped, stepping over to Bria. I knew it should've been something serious, but seeing the height difference between the two of them—Bria was easily a two heads taller than Sperling—amused me more than it should have. "Don't you even try—"
"I don't have to go. Then they'll—"
"Enough, enough," I intervened, pulling Sperling away before turning to her and saying, "She's alright. It'll be alright,"
"You'd best protect your balls, Andrew. Keep her on a leash," Bria scoffed. "I'll give you a call soon." She waved at a very shocked Polly before getting back into the car and driving away. I turned back to Polly and gave her a weak smile,
"I...well..." she stammered, "I'll let Peter show you to the cottage, hm? That's about as much as an old woman can handle for a day, don't you think?"
I didn't like Peter. I watched his eyes travel the length of Sperling's legs before he cleared his throat and nodded obediently, grabbing her gym bag that he had retrieved earlier and leading us towards the second cottage where we were due to stay.
"Sorry about my mom," he said to her, "she's a bit of a nutcase. Love her and all, but a bit of a lunatic."
"She's sweet. It's a nice place you've got. Cozy and stuff."
"Yeah, it is. Say, if you ever want to come by for some coffee—"
"Isn't there coffee in the cottage?" I interrupted, glaring at him from my hunched position. My legs were weak and I felt a cough attack coming on.
"Har—Andrew," Sperling warned, but Peter placed his hand on her shoulder to ease her up.
"Don't touch her," I snapped.
"Take it easy," he raised an eyebrow and stopped walking, "I was inviting the both of you—"
"Well I think everything would be much easier if our place had some of our own coffee, don't you think? No exchange of bodies between homes—I'll pay for it too, how about that?"
Peter shrugged and kept walking; Sperling sighed and kept leading me until we were on the porch of the cottage. Frankly, I wasn't in the best mood because of what was going on inside me, let alone how shitty I felt to see someone else making a run for what I thought I had.
"Thanks for carrying the bag, Peter," Sperling said, taking it from him and retreating inside after she took the key from him, leaving me leaning against the door frame. He nodded his head and turned to walk away before I called out to him.
"Don't think I don't know what you're doing, asshole," I coughed between my words, trying my best to keep myself upright.
"Hey man, it's a free country isn't it? You were coughing up blood back there. All I did was offer you and your gal pal some coffee—"
"All I'm saying is that I'll kick your ass if you so much as think about her again—"
"What? Kick my ass? You look like you're halfway dead, pal," he scoffed, turning around and walking away from me. Just before I decided to make my way inside, I heard him call out, "And guess what? I'm thinking about her right now! Kick my ass, why don't you?"
***
'Driving the porcelain bus' never had a clearer definition as it did now; I was hunched over the toilet, throwing up nearly everything my stomach could expel, with Sperling rubbing my back and plugging her nose.
Prior to such a romantic image, all I could remember was a prick telling me to kick his ass, then feeling more nauseous than I had in years and running to the powder room.
I had been in the same position over the toilet for almost seven minutes. She had been plugging her nose for seven minutes too.
She helped me stand after I deemed I was finished, helping me flush the toilet and clean up. The cottage was nice because it came with absolutely everything—toothbrushes, towels, blankets—and I made the most of what was given. I spent a good five minutes brushing my teeth before I found her lying on the bed in the master suite just up a small flight of stairs, staring up at the ceiling.
"Why are you so sick?" she asked. "And don't give me a bullshit answer like 'I'll be fine'. You have a fever, you're vomiting blood, you have a horrible cough—"
I sighed and lay down on the bed too, careful to give her some space. "I...I was injected with a tracker. Little trackers that go into your blood. I don't know...Phoenix developed them and they had this capability to, like, electrocute people from the inside—"
"What?"
"Shocking, isn't it?" I smirked. She stifled her laughter and turned to me, holding my hand with her right and stroking my face with her left.
"So how did you get the trackers out? They're not still in you, are they?"
"I...well they are, but they've been deactivated, sort of."
"Sort of?"
"The serum they had contained this magnesium base that throws off the tracking ability, but in turn it makes me feel like dying."
I figured it'd be best to tell her I wasn't actually dying. It wasn't lyng so much as it was keeping her sane.
She frowned and shook her head. "Why the hell—?"
"Because if I didn't take the serum, both Bria and I would've gotten caught. I couldn't risk her getting captured, not after what she did to break me out. And I had to get back to you, so I couldn't risk you getting hurt again either."
"Seems like you're effective at protecting me from bad guys and guys that still live with their mothers, huh?" she teased, referencing Peter. When she put it that way, it made me seem like an overprotective freak (I might as well have been; I didn't know how long I was going to be alive for, and, given what happened to her back at her house, I figured she wouldn't want invaders).
"He was looking at you and I didn't know he was using the plural version of 'you', okay?" I excused myself. She laughed, and I almost rejoiced at the sound of it. This, too, was very nice. "Look, Sperling, I'm really sorry for everything. Literally everything. I'm a dick, I know, but I promise I won't let anything hurt you from now on, okay? And hey, how many people can say that they've stayed at a random cottage with a con man?"
"Con...you called yourself a con man?"
"Yeah?"
"You usually insist on being called a con artist in that pretentious voice of yours."
"Oh...well it's not really that important anymore, I guess."
She smiled and sat up, looking over to the bathroom, then back at me.
"I'm going to take a bath. Do...do you want to maybe sit with me?"
I didn't have to say anything for her to know my answer. She helped me up and let me know that through what the two of us had been through, she wasn't going to quit.
I loved her. I loved her so much. I couldn't fucking tell her, but I did.
***
#hella announcements ok here we go
A) idk man I had to write this chapter bc i made you wait so long for the last one so this probs has tons of mistakes in it BUT WHATEVER (my mistakes are spelling/grammar based ok; if you see a context "error", please know that i plan everything out before writing it so all the details that are put in/left out are deliberate)
B) OK SO I HAD PLANS FOR THE ENDING OF THIS STORY BUT SEEING AS I GOT LOTS OF """INTERESTING""" MESSAGES ABOUT MY OWN FATE IF THE STORY DIDN'T GO THEIR WAY, I'VE DECIDED TO TRY AND EXTEND THE STORY A COUPLE MORE CHAPTERS. love me (but this doesn't guarantee the ending that you want will be the ending i deliver- it just means that y'all get more sperling/harry time bc WOW you guys love them????) (aka the next chapter will be nice ok, i'm giving it to you easy before i dump the feels all over you and drench you in your own tears) (aka my greatest attack)
C) I entered this fic into the "One Direction Wattys" hosted by @CrissCrossDirection and i'm running for best feels and best smut SO IF THIS STORY MADE YOU FEEL ANGRY / SAD / SYMPATHETIC / HEARTBROKEN / SEXUALLY FRUSTRATED, it'd be great if you could look out for the competition and vote for me! i've never won anything on wattpad (bc all of my stuff is rated R //sigh//) so it'd be really cool if i did! you don't have to vote for me, i'm totally just putting it out there lol yolo
D) only literature freaks will understand the significance of the title bc it's a v big hint on the end of the story oopS :)
love you guys! and thANKS FOR GETTING THIS FIC TO 50k I S2G I WAS GONNA GET LIKE 10 READS ON THIS WO W ILYSM
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