The day drags on in agony. Boo stays close to her phone, incessantly checking it for any sign of a missed call or text from Ashton. She knows better than to expect anything, but at the same time she can't help herself. Her curiosity now borders on torturous, yet the only cure lies far from her reach.

Left with no answers and only her uninhibited worry, she lays awake in bed that night, once again staring a hole into the ceiling while her mind whirls. Harry crawls into bed beside her, kisses her cheek, then rolls over onto his back and buries himself underneath the covers.

A pit forms in Boo's stomach. Harry's kiss burns into her cheek; she places a hand where his lips were, feeling the blood rushing underneath her skin. She thinks back to the jolt of adrenaline she'd felt when she first saw Harry standing in the middle of the Jack Creek department, his electric gaze on her as the world around them slowed. Her heart thumps rapidly as she remembers the way Loughton had approached him; with venom in his throat, like seeing an old enemy.

She bites her bottom lip nervously. "Harry?"

"Yes, Lita?" he replies in exhaustion.

Her heart flutters for more than one reason. "Did you know Loughton before you were arrested that day?"

A pause. "How did you know?"

He doesn't sound angry, merely curious. Boo's heart leaps into her throat. "Little things I picked up on . . . how he spoke when he uncuffed you, the way you looked at each other after the break-in, remarks he's made to me . . .  over time it just added up."

Harry clears his throat. "We were friends once, a long time ago," he admits hollowly. "But the Harry he knew is gone. I am not the same man I was five years ago."

Boo rolls her lips together, trying to process a reality in which bitter, jaded Loughton and sweet, mysterious Harry could be friends.

"Are you mad I didn't tell you?" he asks, mistaking her silence for anger. Fear lines the edges of his voice; he sounds afraid of her answer.

"No," she replies, giving his arm a reassuring squeeze. "You don't owe me every piece of your past."

"You asked me once why I left town," he says in a low voice. Her ears perk in attention. She wonders what memories she's just awakened for him to bring this up unprovoked.

"Yes," she answers hesitantly.

"Do you still want to know why?"

Her heart hammers against her ribcage. "Yes."

His hand brushes against hers as he feels for her in the dark. She twines her fingers with his, aching to touch him more. "You know I used to be an alcoholic," he begins softly. "What I didn't tell you is why."

"You don't have to if it's too much to talk about," Boo answers consolingly. Her voice is nearly swallowed by the curiosity raging inside her.

For a moment, he hesitates. Already they exist in a web made of glass, yet here he is, about to drop a bowling ball of a secret. But it dawns on him that the same blood that once ran in Martha's veins now runs in Boo's; the heart that once beat within Martha still pulses within her granddaughter. And so he pushes forth, following the truth.

« • »

A beat passes. Time drags on as she waits for him to speak, and for a brief second she wonders if he's decided against telling her after all.

"I was in my second year at uni," Harry begins hesitantly. "I was at a party with my friends, we'd been drinking all day and then again at this party. Brett—Detective Loughton, as you now know him—had just finished his time in the academy and we were celebrating."

He pauses, and when he speaks again he sounds dangerously close to falling apart. "At some point I decided to leave. I shouldn't have been driving but my friends were all off doing their own thing and I wasn't prepared to stay at a stranger's house. My house was too far to walk, so I drove myself home."

His grip on her hand tightens. Boo is suddenly pinned to the bed by the heavy pit that forms in her stomach.

"I . . . I will never forgive myself for not just staying at that party," he rasps. His voice is much hoarser than in the moments before. Boo herself feels like crying. "But I was so young and drunk, and it will never change what I did but I wish so badly that I could."

"Harry," she murmurs, desperately wanting to comfort him.

He inhales raggedly. His profile shifts in the moonlight, his chest heaves as his lips open for air. No amount of oxygen could cleanse the darkness that clings to the inside of his veins. "His name was Theodore. He was leaving the hospital, his granddaughter was recovering from a surgery and he'd stayed there late to see her."

Boo's eyes are shrouded in tears. Harry reaches up with his free hand and wipes his face. "It happened so fast, I couldn't . . . I just couldn't stop. One second the light was green and the—the next, it was red but I—I was still going straight. He never saw me coming, he pulled out of the hospital exit and . . .''

Tears slide down Boo's cheeks, dampening the pillow beneath her head. Harry's voice trails off into nothingness, but after a moment he sniffles quietly.

"They told me he died quickly," he croaks. "The family was very forgiving—much more so than I deserved."

Boo is unable to speak, too crushed by the swell of emotion building inside her. Calum's acrid words about Harry having a record are finally striking a chord.

"I gave up everything after that—drinking, smoking, seeing my friends, going out . . . everything. I lost my job because I couldn't bring myself to even leave the house. I just kept seeing that man's face in my mind, over and over. I stopped sleeping at night."

"Harry," she cries softly.

"I tried to forgive myself," he whimpers. He sniffles once more and his chest heaves again. "But eventually I had to leave because being here was too much of a reminder. I sold the house and went back to living with Mum in England, but all I did was go from one end of the spectrum to the other. Suddenly I couldn't stop drinking, even though it was the one thing that drove me to where I was.

"For five years, I watched my life spiral down the drain. I was little more than a walking corpse—time was . . . inconsequential. I don't really remember a lot of my time in England but I know it wasn't pretty. Mum won't talk about those years anymore."

Boo blots her face with her hands and tries to quiet her ragged breathing. Harry himself takes another minute to collect himself before continuing.

"It took quite some time before I realized that I was only going to forgive myself if I stopped running away from what happened. So I moved back into the house and happened to meet Martha that evening. She told me about the meetings she was spearheading at the church and . . . that was that."

The grief in his voice is replaced with awe. "The timing was serendipitous. Almost divine. I went to my first meeting soon after we met. She knew everything about what I'd done and how low I felt."

"The regrets she asked about," Boo hums, the realization falling into place before her eyes.

Harry suddenly rolls over in the bed, one arm winding beneath the small of Boo's back while the other gently drapes across her stomach. She immediately shifts to meet his embrace and he rests his temple against hers. "Yes. She saw me, truly saw me, at a time when I wasn't even human. I'll never be able to thank her enough for that second chance."

Everything inside Boo is swallowed up by a storm of grief. She reaches up and cups Harry's cheeks, cradling him with the same careful caress of a new mother. "I . . . Harry, I'm so sorry."

A moment passes before a dry laugh leaves his lips. "Are you actually apologizing to me right now?"

A white-hot feeling floods her veins for the smallest of seconds. "Well, I—"

"Melita, I should be the one apologizing to you," he says resolutely. Even in the dark, she knows his gaze is already searching her face for any shred of forgiveness. "I did something unforgivable and I kept it from you for as long as I could. I am so sorry for lying to you."

Boo can barely breathe, let alone speak; her voice is once more drowned out by the abundance of tears rolling down her cheeks. She pulls him closer, wrapping her arms securely around him and holding him close to her chest. Fingertips dig into her back, gripping her like she's the only thing still keeping him tethered to the earth.

"What did Loughton tell you that day?" she whispers, her voice strangled by tears.

Harry clears his throat, clearly suffering the same affliction. "Didn't take too kindly to seeing me, that's for sure. Told me that he'd made it clear last time we spoke that I was to keep my nose clean. He had a hand in keeping me out of prison, but that was the last favor he said he'd ever do for me."

She holds him tighter, wishing she could shield him from the weight of his pain. He nudges his head closer to her, akin to a child clinging to his mother for comfort.

"Do you still have my journal?" His voice is muffled as he keeps his face pressed into her shirt.

Boo's eyes flutter open. "Yes," she murmurs, raking her fingers through his tousled hair. "Do you want it back?"

She feels his body move as he shakes his head. "Can you grab it real quick?"

She obliges him despite her confusion. Harry slides up in the bed and gestures for Boo to sit in his lap, which she does. He cradles her carefully, tucking his chin on top of her head as she squirms to get comfortable.

"Harry, what is this a—"

"Turn to the last page," he instructs softly. Something in his eyes tells Boo that she's about to find what she fears most. He nods her on and she complies, flipping through the weathered pages until she reaches the last one. In the center of the page, scrawled in faded blue ink, is a single word.

Fin.

Her words wrap sadness around the word as she reads it aloud, her voice seeming to echo around the room.

Harry sighs. His breath rattles the baby hairs adorning her hairline. "I wrote that a couple weeks before I moved back. I had reached my limit. I was done with myself and the world."

Boo gently traces her fingertips over the pen ink etched deep into the paper. She can only imagine the force, the desperation, that would've been present for him to cut the word into the page like he did. "You were ready to end it?"

"Yeah," he admits hoarsely. Shame casts a deep shadow over his lovely features. "I gave up."

Immediately she's moving to grasp Harry in a hug, tossing his journal onto the sea of bedcovers while she clings to him, unspeakably grateful that his heart is still thundering strongly in his chest. Her lips go to his neck, pressed under the crook of his jaw, until she can feel his pulse against her kiss. His hands go to her waist in response and he heaves a deep sigh.

"Please, please, tell me if you ever reach that place again," she cries, her grief returning in a wave that nearly drowns her. "To lose you—I couldn't bear it."

The words she speaks are selfish but soaked in truth. A life without Harry is not a life she wants to imagine.

"I promise you, heart, that thought has not crossed my mind in well over a year," he says, sounding on the verge of breaking down. His fingers dig into the soft flesh of her hips, as if to remind himself that she's still there, holding onto him for literal dear life. "I swear, Lita."

« • »

Harry leaves early the next morning, telling Boo he needs the morning to himself to recover from the emotional burden of the night before. She struggles to remain awake after he leaves, wading her way through two cups of coffee as she does her makeup and dresses for work. The weight of the previous night's conversation hangs heavy on her shoulders as she traipses out of her house to head to work. The door swings shut just as she turns to lock it, but her eyes catch sight of a note taped to her door and immediately her blood runs cold.

How does it feel to have a killer in your bed?

She doesn't recognize the handwriting; the letters are jaunty in nature, as though written in a hurry by someone who already has piss-poor penmanship. Boo glances around the street, but of course the unknown author is long gone. She stoops to pick up her keys, unable to ignore the newfound shaking in her hands.

Someone had been camped outside of her place the night before, listening to their conversation. Knowing this, she can't shake the sudden feeling of being watched, even now in the rising heat of the morning sun. She snatches the paper off the the door and rushes to her car, itching to get the hell outta dodge, when another note makes her gasp in horror.

Flapping erratically in the breeze, trapped underneath the driver's side wiper of her car, waits another vehement message:

The blood he spilt is on your hands

thank you all for your patience as you waited for this update (or maybe you didnt notice my absence LOL). i hope you enjoyed this and that some of your biggest questions regarding harry's secrecy have been answered. this has been brewing in my drafts for a loooong time.

my beloved rescue dog, fiona, passed away unexpectedly on wednesday afternoon. i found her in my house after i came home from work and unfortunately there was nothing i could do to help her. this really rocked me and ive been dealing with that for the past few days. i was planning on updating before that happened, but obviously i put everything on momentary hold because of that. i am feeling better now but there is a piece of me gone that i know i can't get back. hold your furbabies extra tight tonight for me. 

until next update. xx