Whispers

Rae’s heart was hammering in her chest as she clutched to Trystan’s hand. Staring at Harry, she watched as his dark expression as he nodded, holding the phone to his ear. Around her the art showing was still in full swing, but she stood between Louis and Trystan, Louis standing very protectively behind her, his eyes scanning the crowd.

The girl felt very small. Not just in size, but she felt like she was being swallowed whole by the world around her. Everything was louder and sharper in her ears and sudden movements made her flinch. She knew that it was the terror that was seeping into her like medicine.

Hanging up the phone, Harry marched over to Rae, his eyes flashing like a storm in the night, his hand reaching out and pulling her hand from Trystan’s. Neither one of the girls said anything as Harry had a firm grasp on her small hand, pulling her and nodding towards Louis for him to follow.

“Harry-"

“We’re leaving.” His tone was clipped, no room for argument. He did not even let Rae to stop and murmur goodbyes to her teacher. She would just have to make up an excuse for her sudden disappearance later, knowing now was not the time to argue with Harry. Not with that storm in his eyes. “Get in.”

Blinking, she had not even realized he had walked her all the way out to the car. She slipped in to the car easily and watched as he closed the door firmly, flitting around the other side of the car and slipping in.

Looking down at the floor, she listened as he started the car and pulled out. He had his phone out again, making a call and saying things in a very firm voice. Rae heard none of it. She was scared, and she did not like feeling scared. She wanted to feel angry, feel brave.

It was hard, feeling scared. Rae considered herself a brave person, even when Leon had entered her house and tried to hurt her, she had hit him and grabbed a weapon like any sensible person would. But now she was running with Harry in his car, and she didn’t want to face him.

The last time that Rae had been brave, was because Harry needed her. Glance at him, as he hung up the phone and tightened his grip on the steering wheel, she knew that her bravery and backbone came from him. When she felt like he was in danger, she wanted to lash out, she wanted to kill.

In some weird way, Rae had become possessive of Harry. The only time she ever was angry, was when a girl came near him or when a boy showed his ass to Harry. He was Rae’s, and she would harm anyone who hurt him. She would burn them to the ground.

As if sensing her panic, Harry stretched his hand across the center console and wrapped her tiny hands in his, encompassing them in warmth and surety. She looked up in him, the streetlights outside that were blurring by the only light on his face. He glanced at her from the corner of his eyes. “He’s out.”

A simple phrase. Two words, six letters and one apostrophe. Two syllables. All of that added to one giant shiver sliding down Rae’s back the way a cold wind slithers through wind chimes on an abandoned porch. Just a sentence had invoked a cold that the weather could not bring.

“Oh.” It was all that slipped from her mouth. Somehow she knew it was coming. She knew that Leon would be released on parole. The boy at the party had said that much. But before things actually happen, the human mind has this way of lying to itself, magic logical excuses and making reasons to believe that the worst cannot happen. But that was rash, and wrong. “Okay.”

“You’re going to gather your things,” he explained, eyes fixed on the road, “you have ten minutes to get whatever you want or need. Trystan will too. She’s staying at Louis until we know what Leon is doing. Understand?”

“Sort of.”

“Rae.” His tone was strained and she knew that he was struggling to keep calm, knuckles white from the pressure he was putting on the leather steering wheel from squeezing. “Until I know if he’s going to ignore us, or if he is going to be a problem, you will stay with me. Do you understand that? You will not leave my sight.”

Her lip twitched in annoyance. He saw it and gave her a very hard look. “What about work and school? She asked finally, noting that his hand was still clamped around her. She knew that his fear was what was keeping it there, not his worry. “I can’t just put those on hold because he’s out.”

“I will take you. Or if I’m working, Liam will. Or Niall. But until I know that he’s not going to leave you alone, I can’t take chances, Rae. You don’t know him.”

“No,” she agreed. She turned in her seat to look at him. He kept his eyes on the road. “But I know you. I trust you, okay? And I know that you’re freaking out inside, and I want you to breathe and to relax.”

He shook his head. “You wouldn’t be saying that if you knew.”

“Then why did you get mixed up with him?”

“Dammit Rae! Don’t start this again!”

Shrinking into the corner of the seat, she pulled her hand from its, holding it to her chest and glaring at him. He was trying to breathe deeply, but she could see that Harry was having an incredibly hard time keeping his cool. Rae may have been an antidote to his anger, but she was also a catalyst, if she wasn’t careful. She had always been that.

Heavy silence hung on them. Rae did not push Harry any further. They had two very different ideas on the topic of Harry’s past. Rae still could not see why Harry had gotten pulled into people who had such a bad taste and who would now be a shadow on his life forever. Harry insisted at the time there was no other choice.

But Rae strongly believed in choices. She believed that there were not exactly wrong or right choices, but good and bad ones. Bad choices led to other bad choices and few good choices, and vice versa. But that didn’t make them wrong, because something beneficial sometimes came out of bad choice, in the long run.

There was nothing beneficial coming from this.

When Harry had told her in full, what his job was for Leon, she wasn’t mad. She wasn’t disappointed. She was just simply indifferent. Harry was no longer that person who gave Leon his connections and who offered him protection. He was someone else entirely. But Leon was going to cling to that old Harry like gum stuck under a school desk.

And he would use it in any way that he could, he would manipulate it and wring it out until it was dry and he was sure that he could either no longer get use out of Harry, or that no one else could get use out of Harry. Because that’s how those types of people were: you worked for them or you didn’t work.

When at her house, Rae did exactly what Harry had said. He stood in the hallway leading to the main door as she hurried around her room, throwing things into a bag. She couldn’t help but feel silly doing it. This wasn’t a horror movie. This was real life, and she should have been able to stay in her own house.

But the silence coming from her boyfriend made her flick off the light, going back down stairs. When she reached the first floor, she didn’t find Harry standing in the hall. She found him in the living room by the glass sliding door, the curtain pulled back as he looked down.

Rae slowly approached, standing next to him as she peered around his large body. His eyes were fixed on the ground, where her painting lay. The only thing different about the painting was that next to her signature, there was another, just as elegant. But it looked cold, and threatening, as if it had been writing in the black ink of hell.

“This,” he said very lowly, his voice taking on such an anger to it that she stepped away, “is what I mean. Let’s go. Stay in front of me.”

*

“Do you really think he’s doing to hurt them?” Trystan’s voice was light as she looked out of Louis’ tall floor to ceiling windows. His house never ceased to amaze her, because though it was the same size as the one she shared with Rae, the things inside of it were expensive and shinny. Things, she tried not to break. “Or is Harry being scary-overprotective-boyfriend?”
Turning, Trystan watched Louis walk out of the bathroom, his sweatpants hanging low on his hips, his hair feathery and dark. He looked perfect, and Trystan felt the need to wrap her arms around her middle, rocking back and forth on her feet as she waited for his response.
Louis sat down on the edge of his bed, but she remained where she was. His room was large, one she had been in several times. Now she felt different, being in his room. She wasn’t sure if it was because they weren’t having sex, or because she had just had a date- that went badly- with him.
“I think that Leon is a crazed bastard who isn’t right in the head,” Louis said honestly, shrugging his shoulders. Trystan liked that he was so honest with her. If she asked him something directly, he answered. The problem was she did not like to ask him questions, fearing his answers. “Leon is capable of a lot of things, especially because he’s mad. But I also think that Harry is protective and can be equally as frightening. So it’s really a toss up.”

“Then why am I stuck here? I rather like my own bed.”

Louis smiled, letting himself flop backwards on his mattress. Trystan finally moved from her spot by the window, laying herself next to him to face the ceiling. They weren’t touching, but she could feel the heat in the space between their skin, which was almost touching. “Sure, pretend you don’t like my bed. It isn’t like you’ve slept soundly in it before.”

“That’s because I was tired.”

“You aren’t tired now?”

She shrugged a shoulder, which was hard to do laying on a flat surface. “I don’t know. I don’t think that I can sleep after all of that. I don’t like not having Rae with me, you know. She’s capable of taking care of herself, she always has been. She’s like a mother to me, sometimes. But I also know that she pretends to have it together when she’s scared.”

Louis turned his head to look at her. She mimicked him, looking in his blue eyes for an answer. This was different, laying there at his side and talking. They had conversations and all sorts of talk, but nothing remotely serious like this was. “She’ll be okay. How about I stay up with you then, if you can’t sleep.” She gave him a look and he laughed, the room filling with it. “Not like that. How about we go clean out my pantry of food and actually put the Xbox of mine to use.”

“Only if we can play fifa,” she said, sitting up and looking at him. “And only then.”

He grinned. “A woman after my heart, you are.”

He had no idea.