“I’m collecting seashells,” Harley said. The way he said it instantly irritated me, as if it were a completely normal activity to do with a storm brewing.
“Are you fucking kidding?” I demanded. “In this weather? Do you have any idea how stupid that is?”
He shrugged. His nonchalant attitude pissed me off. But under the anger was something else—something tight and uneasy that built rapidly in my chest.
“What the hell were you thinking?” I snapped.
“That I can!” he exclaimed. “I could fill the whole goddamn house with seashells if I wanted, because who cares about the sand? No one fucking cares! No one! Because there is no one! There’s no one to tell me no or what to do! There’s no one left to care about me!”
Oh, shit.Those words hit hard. They were unexpected and cut straight through my anger like a knife.
“Harley…” His name caught in my throat. I didn’t know what to say to all of that.
“And you know the worst part about it?” he continued without acknowledging me. The tremble in his voice ripped me apart. “She gets to forget. All of it! Everything! Every little thing she ever did… she won’t remember. Guess who forgot my father killed himself today? Yeah, that was a fun thing to have to relive with her .”
Jesus fuck.I could only imagine. Actually, I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. I knew how hard his father’s death had been on him, and I knew how horribly his mother had handled it. Reopening those wounds… I knew it had to kill a part of him to do so.
And suddenly, the seashells didn’t seem so stupid anymore. They were the only thing he could control.
He took my silence as an invitation to leave, storming up the beach in a huff. He left me and the pile of seashells behind. Istared at his retreating back, my mind glitching out as I tried to figure out how to handle this.
How the fuck did I help him?
Well, I wasn’t any good to him if I just kept standing here.
“Harley!” I shouted, chasing after him, up the hill and through his backyard.
“Don’t!” he snapped without ever looking back at me. “Just don’t!”
“Hey—”
“I don’t want your pity, Maverick.”
“I wasn’t about to—”
“Yes, you were!” Harley cut me off once more. Jesus fuck, this man needed to let me get a word in edgewise. “Just go away.”
“No,” I said.Like hell I was leaving him like this.The part of me that needed to help him was running on adrenaline and instinct. I couldn’t just do nothing. I couldn’t walk away knowing he was falling apart.
“Go away!”
I grabbed his arm and yanked him back. As he stumbled, I used his momentum to turn him and drag him in for a hug. It barely qualified as a hug as I folded my arms around him, doing whatever I could to make him realize he wasn’t alone. He pushed against me in an attempt to free himself, but I held on tighter.
He shook violently in my arms, and I squeezed, doing my best to hold him together however I could.
“Let go,” Harley ordered, his voice loud in my ear.
“No.”
“Yes—”
“No,” I interjected. He shoved harder, and I took the brunt of it without a word.
“Maverick—”
“You are not alone,” I interrupted, speaking over him loudly. The words stunned him, and I felt his fight weaken slightly.I took it as a good sign and kept going. “You are not alone, Harley.”
“I am—”
