Of Happiness (25 page)

“Not your fault.”

I wiggle to try and scoot up to hug him, but the movement causes me to cry out when a rippling pain shoots down my sides.

“Fuck!” Harris roars, turning his attention back to Jared. “What did I tell you, asshole?” he demands. Underneath him, Jared splutters, not answering. “I said if you bothered Edith again I’d destroy your father’s political career.”

From where I lie, I’m unable to listen or watch how Jared responds, but I do hear his grunt of pain when Hared presses down on him harder.

“You’re really blessed that I’d rather spend the night with my Edith than in prison,” Harris barks.

From the commotion of footsteps and voices, I can tell we have company. Luke’s answering questions, a flurry of activity ensuing as the paramedics attend to Claire and a handful of police officers surround Jared.

As soon as they police assume control of my former boyfriend, Harris jumps to his feet, rushing toward me. At some point he had shed his jacket and tie, but he’s still wearing the bottom portion of his suit.

“Are you hurt?” he asks, stormy eyes full of worry.

“Yes,” I murmur, suddenly overwhelmed by exhaustion. Adrenaline seeps out of my pores, leaving a sedated and scared mess in its wake. “Is it over?”

Then, with his arms around my back, he gently maneuvers me onto his lap. His face finds my neck, lips grazing my skin. My hands move to his chest, wanting to feel the steady, reassuring beat of his heart. The tears I managed to hold back for so long begin seeping free.

 “I’m so sorry, baby, so, so sorry,” he murmurs against my trembling skin. He holds me carefully like I might shatter in his arms.

“I love you.” The words are very, very soft, but I still think he hears my feeble attempt to comfort him. He doesn’t need any more suffering at the hands of his sister. What I wouldn’t do to shield him from the secrets scattered around us like land mines.

Try as I might to find a focus on the activity around me, I can’t. Weariness wraps around me like the blanket covering my nakedness and my eyes continue to droop closed.

Harris inhales a deep, shuddering breath and then draws himself to his full height, careful not to disturb my injured body. As soon as he’s sitting upright, I mold my cheek to his chest. One hand clutches the fabric of his dress shirt tightly.

“Mr. Grant,” a deep baritone drawls.

Unable to battle against the soothing call of sleep, I let my eyes fall closed. Harris’ grip tightens on me slightly as he addresses the man standing near us.

The last thing I remember before succumbing to my exhaustion is the touch of Harris’ lips to my temple.

Before I set my sights on him, my senses recognize his touch. There’s the familiar weight of his hand surrounding mine, our fingers weaved together, connecting our bodies. His thumb brushes over my knuckles at a leisurely cadence. His voice is just a few decibels louder than a whisper. 

“She’s sleeping now. Doctor says she’ll be fine. Eventually.”

His words trigger memories of what happened. Claire attacking me, kicking me, Jared attempting to sexually assault me, Claire and Cooper… It’s all such an outlandish story, I can’t believe it actually happened.  

“Harris,” I croak as my eyes open, taking in the stark walls of the hospital room. I’m lying in a bed with thin, eggshell-colored bedding covering my body. The room is private, no other patient sharing the space.

“Mom, I’ve got to go. Edith’s awake.” He pauses and when his gaze meets mine, I sigh in relief. His calm and tender reaction relieves my instantaneous anxiety. “Okay. Travel safely.” With his free hand, he ends the call and slips the phone into his pants pocket. He hasn’t changed out of his stained shirt, though the top few buttons are open, revealing his undershirt.

“What time is it?”

Leaning closer from where he’s seated next to me, Harris brushes a kiss across my forehead. “Eleven. You had a nice nap. How are you feeling?”

I gauge my pain level, running through my memory of the injuries I incurred at the hands of his sister and my ex-boyfriend. Tears well up in my eyes. “What happened?” I whisper, not answering his question.

Reaching over to a switch beside the hospital bed, he tells me that he’s calling a nurse. “You have a couple of bruised ribs. No concussion, thankfully. And”—he scrubs his free hand across his face, cursing softly—“bruises on your face, hips. Edith, how do you feel?”

“Hurts, but not too bad.”

He nods once, relief relaxing his tense features when a nurse scurries in.

“Hi there,” she says cheerfully. “I’m Katie. I’ll be helping you out. How are we doing?”

“Um,” I mumble as she gently places her hands on Harris’ shoulders to move him aside and scoots in front of him. She pushes up the sleeve of my hospital gown to wrap a Velcro arm band around my bicep as she takes my blood pressure. “My side hurts and I’m not sure, but there might be a herd of elephants walking through my head.”

Katie nods agreeably, not bothering to smother her smile. “The doctor wants to keep you overnight for observation, but he told me that you should be able to go home in the morning. With painkillers.”

I return her smile with a wobbly one.

Turning, she addresses Harris. “You know, it’s way past visiting hours.”

His lips thin into a straight line. “Are you trying to kick me out?”

She pats his hand, then turns to look at me over her shoulder, winking. “Not the doting boyfriend, but the two gentlemen outside will need to go home shortly.”

“I’m staying,” he confirms. “But I will see that they head home once they’ve taken stock of Edith.”

When she’s satisfied with my vitals, she leaves us alone again. Harris watches me fearfully like he’s afraid of how I’ll respond to him.

He launches into a speech. “I should have protected you from her. I should have never left your side. It was against my better judgment to go to work and that damn dinner, but I went anyway. I am so sorry, Edith.”

I grab his hand, squeezing it reassuringly. “There’s nothing to apologize for. None of us knew Claire was capable of this…” As the sleepy fog clears, I have a million questions. “Why did you come home early? Where’s Luke? What happened to Claire and Jared?”

“Luke is fine, shaken up. He’s out in the hallway with Sean. He’s arranging for Sarah, Greg, and your father to come to Chicago tomorrow morning.”

My eyes widen. “You’re flying them out?”

“Your father was the first person I called when they”—he shudders visibly, coming to sit on the edge of my bed, clutching my hand in his warm, larger one—“when they brought you here and the doctor was examining you I had to do
something
, so I called him. He called Sarah. You’ll be with them tomorrow.”

“But,” I whisper the word, “you’ll be with me too.” 

His lips form a grim smile, a slight one erasing any worry I have that he might be back to sullen Harris. “There’s no way I’ll leave your side.”

“And Claire?”

His eyes fall to where our hands are joined. He blinks a few times. “When she woke up, she was hysterical, raving about Cooper. They had to sedate her. She’s on another floor…” His eyes fall closed for a beat. “I don’t know what they’ll do with her. The police don’t take too kindly to false imprisonment.”

He curses softly.

“What happened to my sister? I should have stopped this—I should have done something, saw it coming. She wasn’t well. We both saw it.”

“Harris, stop,” I plead. “There’s was no way of knowing she would take it this far.”

He lets out a tortured breath and his deep gray eyes blink open. “Can you forgive me? I failed you.”

“No, no, no.” My eyes fill with tears again. “Don’t think that, not for one second. We can’t be responsible for anyone’s actions but our own. You didn’t know. I didn’t know how far she had fallen. Then she found Jared at the exact right time. How were we to guess how desperate they were? Claire wanted to get rid of me and Jared wanted back in his dad’s good graces. They were fighting for their livelihood.”

He nods, but his disbelief is evident.

“Will you hold me?” The request will calm both of us. I need the reassurance as much, if not more, than him. He complies eagerly, stripping off his sweaty shirt and throwing it on the abandoned chair. I shift my body toward the opposite side of the mattress, giving him room to join me. His arm slips around my shoulders and I turn into him, pressing the side of my face against his undershirt. Some of the tension I saw in his body language before drifts away when he carefully tucks me into his side.

“I called my parents,” he says gruffly, lifting a hand to run his fingers through my messy hair. “They’ve decided to come home.”

“Why now?”

“Pick a reason: Claire’s about to be institutionalized or worse, their son has fallen completely for the best woman he’s ever known, we may finally get the answers we sought about Cooper.”

“I wish so badly we weren’t meeting under these circumstances.” I’m frantic, wanting to protect him, but knowing that these aren’t my secrets to hold. “Harris, we need to find Cooper’s journal. Claire said some things—some awful things.”

“It’s all right,” he soothes. “I know, she was rambling on and on about him when she woke up. But that’s not something to worry about right now. Let’s focus on getting you better, then we’ll concern ourselves with what’s left.”

Thousands of worries sprout in my mind. “But Harris, as soon as any media gets wind of what happened, it will destroy your family’s reputation. Not to mention the damage that could happen to your business.”

“My family was wrecked long before Claire decided to attack the most important person in my life,” he says vehemently. “I have no worries that this story will blow out of proportion. The police will smother my sister’s involvement. And when it does come out to the public, they’ll just see a girl who never got over the loss of her best friend and brother.”

I ponder his statement. That sounds too easy.

“Cooper killed himself and no one but a detective and the four of us know it wasn’t an accident. When you make the kind of donations my family does, they’re willing to help keep some things quiet,” he explains ruefully.

I nod my understanding. “And what about Jared?” My voice drops to a worried whisper.

“Arrested,” he says with finality. “Officially for breaking and entering, assaulting my girlfriend. There’s nothing that needs to be hidden there. That piece of shit singlehandedly ruined his father’s lifetime of work.”

“Don’t go after Congressman Gordon,” I plead. “He had nothing to do with this. Jared said his dad found out what happened between us. Then he practically disowned Jared—”

“Shh,” he croons. “It won’t be me that stifles his career, baby. Jared’s done that all himself.”

Shivering at the malice in his tone, I snuggle closer into his embrace. “One more question.”

“Anything.” He strokes my cheek tenderly with his knuckles.

“How did you know to come home early? How did you know I needed you?”

“That was two questions.” I can hear the twist of his lips, a slight smile. Then he sighs heavily before explaining. “There was a nag hounding me since I left you this morning. At first I thought I was just paranoid. I told Luke to call me when he got to our place, tell me what you’re making for dinner, so I could bring you dessert from the restaurant. When he didn’t call, I was worried. I was getting ready to call him and then my investigator texted, telling me that Claire and Jared had left D.C. for Chicago.  Deem it intuition, whatever, but I knew then. I called the building concierge and he told me that Claire had come to visit.” He lets out a noise of disgust. “I fucked up. Should have told him that no one was allowed upstairs except for you and Luke. But I didn’t. As soon as I found out she was there, I left my dinner and went to find you.”

“Thank goodness you did,” I murmur.

His grip around me tightens fractionally. “I love you, Edith Neff. And I will do whatever it takes to take care of you, cherish you. I’m—”

“You saved me, Harris. Stop apologizing, I
know
you cherish me and want to protect me. You couldn’t have prevented this.”

“It’s my fault you were ever in this situation.”

“If you want to blame someone, Harris, blame me because I’m hopelessly in love with you. Every time Claire tried to scare me away from you, I fought harder to be with you. If I had taken her threats seriously, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”

I feel him shudder. He wavers between a fine line of confidence and despair. “What am I going to tell my parents?”

“The truth. You’ll tell them that you did everything you could to heal your sister, but she needed more than you had to give. You’ll tell them that you wanted her to be better, so much so that you were unable to uncover what she hid so well—the torment that clung to her. When you tell them, I’ll be with you and if you can’t speak, I’ll speak for you.”

I tip my head, so we can make eye contact, and I give him a gentle, hopeful smile. He stares at me unblinkingly.

The door to my hospital room swings open, Sean bounding inside with Luke following close behind.

“I’m a fan of kink, but don’t you think you took it a little far, Ms. Neff?” Sean demands, crossing his arms across his chest. When neither Harris nor I respond, he quirks on eyebrow with a
really?
facial expression.