Into You Series: The Complete Collection

26. Harry

CHAPTER 26

HARRY

M y chest aches, like a dull knife being twisted over and over into the place just below my shoulder and above my ribs.

When I went back up to the apartment after Saria left, Cara stared at the door with her doll clutched close to her chest—the very one that resembles Saria’s beautiful silver-blonde hair.

“Did she leave?” she asked.

If my heart hadn’t broken before, it was breaking then.

“She’s just going on a trip,” I said. I felt like a terrible father for lying, but I couldn’t bring myself to have a deeper conversation on love and loss at that moment. Maybe in a month or so.

I sat on the couch next to her and she curled up in my lap despite me telling her I was wet from the rain. She fell asleep within minutes, leaving me to settle into my heartbreak.

I wake up hours later to carry Cara to bed and tuck her in. That’s when I walk down the stairs back to the garage and swipe to Nia’s phone number on my cell. Then I realize it’s the middle of the night and call Grant instead. I’m not surprised that he answers. I can hear the distant sounds of the television in the background and the crunching of an apple.

“I told her I love her,” I mutter right as the line connects.

“Shit,” he answers through a mouthful of fruit. “I’m willing to bet this late-night call means it didn’t go well.”

“She left,” I mumble.

“Shit, man.”

“I should have known.” The sentence trails off as I say it. I try to parse all the memories from the past few weeks, looking for signs. The nights we spent at the park with Cara lying on the picnic blanket where she would look over at me, grinning from ear to ear; volunteering at the animal shelter where she would hold up puppies, making character voices behind their backs and saying, “Harry, adopt me!”; all the tears she shed at movie after movie in our living room only to end the credits by kissing me so deeply it almost hurt.

I say I should have known, but there was nothing to learn. Saria was falling in love with me too. There’s no doubt in my mind.

“So, what are you going to do?” Grant asks.

I consider for a moment. Saria loves me. I can’t get the nagging thought out of my head that maybe she was just too scared to say it, just like she’s too scared to stay—to explore the possibility that maybe someone loves her in return for once.

I’m not Noah. I want her. I need her.

As if reading my mind, Grant says, “Go get her. First thing in the morning. This isn’t over.”

I pause, blinking, wanting to find any reason this might be a bad idea, but I can’t. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me.

“I have to drop Cara off at school…” Excuses. Excuses for a man worried about getting turned down again. “No, you’re right. I need to try.”

“Exactly. It’s not over until it’s over.”

“Since when are you the romantic?” I ask with a laugh.

“I like it when my siblings are happy,” he says. I can imagine the shrug that must be happening on the other end of the line. “And I like happy endings to my love stories.”

The problem is I still don’t know if this is that kind of love story.

My hands are practically trembling as I drive through the drop-off line at Cara’s elementary school. I’m tapping the wheel, peering over the dashboard to see how many cars are left in front of me. With drop-off at seven thirty, I tried to get here early, but it seems like there are even more cars in the early bird line.

My hand lands on the center of the steering wheel, letting out a wailing honk.

“Daddy!” Cara’s voice chastises me from the back seat, and I know how ridiculous I seem. My gut churns and the guilt carries through me. It was impulsive, but it felt necessary.

“Sorry, pumpkin. I’m just… I’ve got a lot of work to do today.”

If I didn’t already feel bad, the paraprofessional waving her index finger at me as if scolding a child is enough to make me wave my hand in a ‘Yes, I see you’ kind of a way.

I lean back in my seat, rolling my neck over the headrest. I don’t know what Saria’s plan is. I don’t know when she’s planning on cutting out. All I know is that I woke up this morning thinking I had more time only to find Frankie missing from the lot.

I open my eyes. The car line is moving once more, and I’m revving up to the sidewalk.

A teacher comes around to Cara’s side as I press the button to unlock it.

“Mr. Smith, that was highly uncalled for,” she says the second the door slides open.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I can’t help the clear frustration in my voice no matter how sorry I actually feel. “It was an accident.”

Politeness normally overrides any other impulses, but I’m too jittery to not sigh loudly when she takes her sweet time helping Cara out of the car.

“Daddy is weird today,” she mumbles to the teacher, who narrows her eyes at me, shaking her head.

“Bye pumpkin,” I call. “Have a great day! Love you.”

“Love you too, weirdo!” she calls back.

That’s my girl.

Once the teacher shuts the door, I fly out of the parking lot and down the road, hoping against hope that I make it to Saria’s apartment in time. She mentioned a subletter was dropping by—what subletter would come before eight o’clock? Hell, probably the same type of subletter that would move in the same day as viewing an apartment, no questions asked.

I don’t need a psycho like that taking over Saria’s rent. That would be absurd.

I hit a red light, my foot tapping the brakes and then the gas, inching forward bit by bit like a drag racer challenging another car. My hand flies to the gear shift, but with the SUV being an automatic, it’s not like I can peel out of my spot with any type of power. Plus, it’s weekday traffic and I have fifty cars ahead of me trying to make it to their offices on time.

A groan. An exhalation. And then the light turns green. I slam my foot on the gas.

Down the road I go, changing lanes and flying so fast my wheels must be gaining traction and sending out smoke. I roll down one street, two, the minutes ticking by. My anxiety growing higher and higher.

It’s only eight. There’s no way.

There’s no way.

I take a right into her complex and— holy fucking shit are you kidding me?

Her apartment gates are closed.

They decide to fix them now , of all times?

I pull up the keypad. There’s not even a directory. It’s just a number pad. I sift through my phone, a car pulling up behind me as I find Saria’s number and jam it in. After about four digits, it starts ringing, and someone picks up with a yawning, “Hello?”

Of course they have designated call numbers.

I try to find the call end button as the other person continues to ask who is calling, but there’s not even one of those. No wonder it took so long to fix the gate. The system doesn’t even make sense!

The car behind me honks. I honk back.

I inhale sharply and press to call Saria’s number.

One ring.

Two.

Three.

“Hi—”

“Saria, I?—”

“—you’ve reached my voicemail. Leave a message, but I probably won’t call you back. Just text! Bye!”

I groan, hanging up and attempting to call again.

“Hi, you’ve reached my?—”

HONK!

I’m losing my mind. I turn my wheel sharply to the right, pulling into the roundabout to leave the keypad area and instead swiping through my phone to find someone to call. I can’t think of a single person. Not one. Until I remember someone’s house.

I squeal out of the complex entrance and drive another five miles down the road and into the neighborhood with the much-too-fancy houses. Off one of the side streets is the brick monstrosity I’ve come to loathe.

Saria’s van isn’t here, so at least there’s that.

I get out of my car, briskly walking to the doorstep and knocking hard.

There’s some rustling on the other side of the door, some voices saying something along the lines of “Who the—”, and then the large wooden door swings open to reveal the one face I wish I didn’t have to see but is exactly the one I came here for.

Noah’s eyebrows turn in, confusion racking his features. I glance over his getup: a white t-shirt, striped pajama pants, and one of the fluffiest navy-blue robes I’ve ever seen. I look at his feet, and he’s wearing matching house shoes of the same material. Of course he got a matching set.

“Can I help you, Harry?” he asks. His tone is more polite than I wish it were in this moment, but part of me appreciates his understanding in my urgency.

“Have you heard from Saria?” I ask.

“She’s not here if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It’s not.”

“She left,” a voice says from behind him. It’s Charlotte, tiptoeing her way forward. “She posted a picture on social media,” she says, her voice light and still full of sleep. “She’s heading out west, I think.”

My stomach drops. My knees give out and I want to sink to the floor. I steady myself on the door frame, biting the inside of my cheek and feeling something resembling frustration and sadness. Lots of sadness. I want to yell for the first time in my life, punch a wall, do anything that isn’t me. I wish I were a different person right now, one who wasn’t having his heart completely obliterated. I wasn’t sure this type of pain even existed.

“Do you want to come in?” Charlotte asks.

Noah looks from her back to me, biting his lower lip and inhaling sharply.

“We have coffee made,” he says. His offer seems reluctant, but Charlotte’s doesn’t.

I think about how my planned morning…the cars waiting for me in the shop, the mounds of paperwork I need to be sorting…that’s my life. That’s who I am. I need to open the business. I need to do work.

But I can’t stop thinking about Saria, and only working doesn’t seem like enough anymore. I need something more.

I need a fucking life.

Something needs to change, and maybe having morning coffee with the two people I least expect to spend time with is something the new Harry would do. So, I nod and smile the best type of smile I can manage.

“Sure. Coffee sounds nice.”