“That night, before.” Sin looks at me with a touch of confusion in his eyes, like he’s trying to piece together what happened in his mind. “James was there for me when I woke up. I’ll start at the beginning, or close to it.”
“Only what you want to share with me. No pressure.” Sin’s sweetness makes me want to open up and trust him completely, but I will skip over some details from that night. Many are too painful to dredge up for me still, they’re the ones that consume me and plague my nightmares.
“I came home late from work. Later than normal. My mother’s boyfriend was drunk and flipping out on her for some reason. I still don’t know why. He was screaming and pointing a gun at her head. I tried to stop him, but the gun went off.” I don’t tell him about grabbing Tony’s arm before he shot her. I can’t risk Sin possibly blaming me, too.
“And you watched this happen?” Sin’s brows are drawn and he looks at me with pain and pity.
“He killed her and then turned the gun on himself. All in front of me.”
My summary leaves out so much, but I feel only up to the basics.
“I freaked out and remember hearing my neighbor’s voice over my screams. My neighbor called nine-one-one and paramedics came with the police. They gave me something that knocked me out. James says my body went into shock and my mind shut down in self-defense. I have no real memory of anything after the gunshots until I woke up in the hospital.”
“God, Harlow. I had no idea you went through so much hell.” Turning toward me on the couch, Sin takes his other hand and covers it over mine. The simple gesture gives me more courage to continue. “I’m so sorry. It doesn’t seem like enough, but I truly am.”
“Thanks, Sin.” I take a few breaths to bury the surge of emotions rising inside me. I close my eyes and almost feel the heavy weight of the blood soaked on my shirt along with the splatters on my skin from that night—the last conscious memory I have of my life in the apartment I’d lived in since I was born. My heart races at all the memories. Freaked out from where my thoughts have trailed off to, I open my eyes quickly to look at Sin. His beautiful face, with eyes seeming to share my pain, will help me wash away the vivid memory … I hope.
Chapter Seventeen
Sin
How does Harlow handle what has happened in her life? Witnessing the brutal murder of a mother isn’t something a person can get over in a few months. Hell, I’m still coming to terms with the death of my friend in the desert of Australia some four years ago. I wonder what he’d be up to now if he were still alive. Would he have married the love of his life and have a couple kids? The timeline of my life is marked and divided in the before and after of his death. The storm it caused inside me changed the course I was on.
But Harlow sits here beside me, brave and resilient in a fragile strength despite the pain life has dished out to her. From what I’ve seen and heard between her and my uncle, I’m beginning to think she’s traded one nightmare for another.
“Do you have family? Were they there for you afterwards?” I ask, hoping she didn’t bear the burden of her mother’s murder alone with my uncle.
“I don’t. At least none I know of.” A shadow of sorrow crosses over her and my heart actually hurts at her words.
“No one?”
“No one. My mother ran away from home to have me. She kept me in the dark about my father and any family she left behind. She said she had to flee to keep me. When I pushed her about it, she would say I was only alive because of her cutting off all ties with them.”
A shudder courses over her slender frame. I suppress the urge to haul her into my arms and tell her she’s found a friend and isn’t alone in this harsh, cruel world.
“So, it was you and your mother against the world. I’m amazed by you.”
“There’s nothing special about me. I woke up with James at my side smiling down at me. I had nowhere to go that night. No one to really call that could handle what I’d been through, so I took the hand he offered and let him help me.”
There’s no medical reason for my uncle, a top cardiologist at The Clinic, to have been in her room. There’s something fucked up with this scenario.
“Had you ever met my uncle?”
“Not that I remember. Though, he was a member at the country club where my mother worked.”
An odd intuition hits me as uneasiness crawls up my back. Something is amiss, but what? The dots are there, but the connection to them isn’t apparent. I don’t have a clear picture of their entire relationship from both sides and I need both to make sense of it, if that’s even possible.
“So, you turned to him for help,” I say gently, without a tone of accusation.
“I did.” She lowers her head. “I had no one else.”
Though my desire to know the whole story isn’t satisfied, I’ve asked enough questions of her tonight—except one.
“Harlow?” She gazes back up at me with eyes the color of the sea—eyes I could get lost in and never be found again. I realize it’s a look full of innocence and trust.