Un-Shattering Lucy (The Lucy & Harris Novella Series) (Volume 4)

by Terri Anne Browning

  I lifted my hands, cupping her face and forcing her to look at me. “Nothing would ever make me stop loving you,” I told her fiercely and a few tears spilled down my face. How could she not see that my love for her didn’t see the scars as anything but scary, because I could have been forced to live without her for the rest of my life if she’d gone too far? Nothing, not one damn thing, terrified me more than the thought of a life without her in it. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around it. Trying to block out all the pictures of what could have happened if you’d killed yourself while doing this.”

  “I’d never…” She shook her head, her tears falling faster. “I’ve never wanted to kill myself, Harris. Never. The cutting has only ever been a way to help me cope.” She tried to lower her eyes again, but I refused to let her. “I know it’s wrong. I hate myself for doing it.”

  “You need help, sweetness.”

  “I know,” she whispered brokenly. “I know.”

  I pulled her against me then, wrapping her so tightly against me that I knew she probably had trouble breathing, but I was unable to stop myself. My hands shook as I held on for dear life, terrified I would lose her if I didn’t. “Will you let me help you?”

  I didn’t know how I would do it, but I had to try. I had to get her some help because I couldn’t live without her, and I knew even if she didn’t have a death wish, cutting was dangerous. She could mistakenly hit something vital and I’d lose her.

  Her eyes widened in surprise. “You…You want to help me? I thought... I thought you wouldn’t want to be with me if you ever found out.”

  “Never. You’re my everything, and I’m not ever letting you go. Nothing will ever stop me from being with you. Nothing.” Her tears started flowing faster. I caught one with my thumb and wiped it away. “I love you, Lucy. One day, I’m going to put a ring on your finger and make you my wife. I’ve always known that you were mine and that I was yours. Now, please, let me help you.”

  “But what if I can’t be helped?” Genuine fear filled her dark eyes. “What if I’m…unfixable?”

  “Then I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure you don’t ever feel the need to hurt yourself again, Lu.” I pushed her hair back from her face and gave her a reassuring smile. “We’ll do this together, sweetness. You don’t have to face it alone. You’ll never have to face anything alone again.”

  “H-Harris.” She sobbed and buried her face in my shirt, her hands balling the material into her fists as she held on to me for dear life. I held her like that for a long time, just letting her cry it all out, while I was trying to figure out the first steps we needed to take to get her on the road to the recovery she so desperately needed.

  When the tears stopped, I still held her. I had the beginnings of a plan I hoped would set us in the right direction, but I knew it was going to be hard for her. As I stroked her curls and kept her safe in my arms, I started telling her about what I thought we should do.

  Lucy didn’t say a word while I told her we needed to call her parents. She didn’t move when I told her I’d call Emmie and we could all sit down and make the right decisions that would be best for her. It was only after I’d finished speaking that she lifted her head and looked at me.

  “Will you be there with me?” she asked with a trembling chin.

  “I’ll be right here beside you the entire time, Lucy.” There was no way in hell I was leaving her now.

  First Bass could burn to the ground for all I cared.

  I was exactly where I needed to be.

  Nothing else mattered.

  Chapter 21

  Lucy

  He knew. Oh, gods, he knew.

  He knew and he was still there.

  Harris knew my deepest, darkest, most shameful secret and he was still right there beside me. Telling me that he loved me.

  How the hell can he still love me after finding out what I do to myself?

  Telling me that he would help me. That he would make it better.

  How?

  I couldn’t understand how he could still want me, still love me. I couldn’t for the life of me comprehend how he wasn’t disgusted when I was so disgusted with myself.

  He’d lain in bed beside me, holding me and stroking my hair while he called Aunt Emmie. He didn’t tell her everything, just that he needed her to bring Mom and Dad—and even Lana—out to see me. Now. I’d heard her demand to know if I was okay, but he’d refused to tell her over the phone.

  It was early evening now and they were supposed to arrive at any minute. I don’t think I’d ever been so nervous in my life. Marcus, who was sitting on the chair in the living room, watched me more often than the television. Harris hadn’t told him, but he knew something was going on. My parents and Aunt Emmie didn’t just show up without a reason. The fact that I was still crying and playing with the bracelet I’d put back on, only made him ten times more alert to my mood.

  Harris hadn’t left my side all day. We sat on the couch, while Harris worked from his phone with one hand and kept the other wrapped around me. He wasn’t going back to California without me. I knew I should feel guilty that he was going to be missing two more weeks of work, but all I felt was relief.

  The pounding fist on the suite door told me without having to look that my dad had arrived. My stomach twisted with anxiety and fresh tears filled my eyes. Gods, I didn’t want to see the disappointment in his eyes when I told him. This was going to be one of the hardest things I’d ever done and I wasn’t sure I was ready to do it.

  I doubted I’d ever be ready to tell him.

  Marcus unfolded his big frame from the chair and crossed the small room to the door. I buried my face in Harris’s chest, wishing this day away.

  I felt his lips against my forehead. “It’s okay, sweetness. I’m right here.”

  “I’m scared,” I whispered back.

  “I know, Lucy. I know.”

  “Lu?” Dad pushed past Marcus like he wasn’t even there and crouched down beside me. I felt his hands touch my legs with a gentleness that made a sob bubble up in my throat. “Baby, what’s wrong? What’s happened? Tell Daddy so he can fix it.”

  “Lucy?” Mom was in the room now, her concern-filled voice hurting worse than any cut I’d ever inflicted on myself.

  “What’s going on?” Lana demanded, the worry in her voice tearing me apart, but I still hid my face, holding on to Harris like he was my salvation.

  “Marcus, what’s been going on?” Aunt Emmie was trying to take charge, but for once she wouldn’t be able to just wave her hand and fix everything.

  “I have no idea,” Marcus assured her, his deep voice irritated for the first time since I’d met him. “She’s been crying all day. She won’t talk to me.”

  “Harris…” I’d heard that tone in my aunt’s voice before and knew she was going to tear in to him. “What the hell is going—”

  Unable to let her treat him like that, I lifted my head. “I-I have to tell you all something,” I whispered, but they all heard me.

  Harris tightened his arm around me, offering me the strength I so desperately needed to do this. I knew that he would stand behind me through this and it only made me love him that much more. Scrubbing a hand over my face to wipe away some of the tears, I got shakily to my feet.

  Mom and Lana both moved forward to hug me, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to talk if I let them. Lifting my hands to hold them at bay, I put some distance between me and my family. Dad stood slowly, his dark eyes full of torment as he watched me. “Lu, I can see something is wrong. Just tell me. Whatever it is, we can take care of it. I promise.”

  Harris stood and stepped behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders and rubbing soothing little circles with his thumbs. “Maybe you should all sit down. I know this isn’t going to be easy for her and it’s not something you should hear while standing,” he suggested. “You too, Marcus.”

  Mom, Lana, and Aunt Emmie took the couch. Marcus ret
urned to his chair, but Dad remained standing. My courage was slowly evaporating and I lowered my eyes to the carpet, unable to meet anyone’s gaze. Fuck, this was hard.

  “If you’re going to tell us you’re pregnant, I swear I won’t let Jesse murder Harris,” Lana assured me with a small smile, trying to lighten the tension that was as thick as fog in the room. “A baby isn’t the end of the world, Lucy. I promise.”

  “That’s not funny, Lana.” Dad made a grunting noise. “And if that’s the case, I’ll wait until she’s gone and then beat the shit out of him. It wouldn’t be the first time I fucked someone up without leaving a mark on his face. Ask Nik.”

  “I’m not pregnant,” I whispered.

  “Oh,” Lana said with a sigh. “Then maybe you could tell us what is going on. This suspense is killing me and it’s worse than my last bout of morning sickness with Bliss, so take a little pity on my stomach, sweetie.”

  Harris stepped closer and pressed his lips to my ear. “It’s okay. Tell them.”

  Another tear spilled over my lashes and flooded down my cheek, and I forced myself to lift my chin and look at my dad. “I-I’m sorry, Daddy. So sorry.”

  He took a step toward me. “Baby, there’s nothing to be sorry for. Whatever it is, I swear, I’ll fix it. But I have to know what it is first, Lu.”

  “You…you can’t fix me, Daddy.” Taking a deep breath, I dived in head first. “I’ve been…cutting myself since I was…twelve.”

  A weight didn’t magically lift from my shoulders when I admitted to what I’d been doing. If anything, as I watched my dad’s eyes widen in a mixture of surprise and terror, it only grew heavier. My legs turned to jelly, but Harris was there to hold me up when I started to sway.

  “That’s not funny, Lucy.” He crossed his arms over his chest, trying to deny what I’d just told him. “Let’s go back to the pregnancy thing. If this is some ploy to keep me from killing Harris, I’ll keep my hands clean. I’ll just call his dad and let him handle it.”

  I hadn’t wanted to show him the proof but knew I’d have to. Harris wouldn’t let me half-ass this. With shaky fingers, I unsnapped the bracelet on my wrist and turned it over, showing him my scars. The small smile he’d tried to give me at his teasing disappeared. Lana and Aunt Emmie let out little gasps while Mom’s face paled and I knew if she hadn’t been sitting down she probably would have passed out.

  “Twelve?” Mom choked out. “You’ve been hurting yourself for six years, Lucy? But, why?”

  I couldn’t answer her. How did I explain why to her? It had been hard enough telling Harris.

  Telling her that it was like a release for me didn’t even begin to explain it. No one understood. How could they?

  Lana jumped to her feet and crossed the few feet that separated us. Her fingers were like ice as she lifted my wrist to examine it closer. “Lucy, this one was deep. You could have killed yourself.” Her face was paper white, her honey brown eyes looking haunted now. “Is that what you wanted to do? Kill yourself?”

  “No. It’s not like that,” I rushed to assure her, but her hands were shaking so bad and the tears—gods, the tears—choked me to the point where I couldn’t speak.

  Her head snapped in Marcus’s direction. “Did you know about this?”

  I’d never seen any real emotion from Marcus before. He was normally so stoic that it was hard to tell if he was anything but bored, but right then he looked destroyed. His face was pale, his eyes full of so many emotions I couldn’t even begin to name them all. “I didn’t suspect anything like that.” His voice was hoarse, and I realized he was close to tears.

  Marcus.

  Close to tears.

  I hadn’t realized he cared so much. Never knew I would hurt him just as deeply as I did my family. I wanted to wrap my arms around him, promise never to do it again, but part of me knew I couldn’t. What if I did it again? I wanted to do it right then and there. Everyone in the room was crying and I was fighting to draw in my next breath.

  “But why?” Mom demanded again. She was trembling, and her eyes were just as wide with fear as my dad’s, but her voice was full of anger. “Why, Lucy? Why would you do this to yourself?”

  “Layla, maybe you should calm down,” Aunt Emmie advised.

  “Fuck calm,” she cried. “I want to know why, damn it.”

  “Because it helped,” I exploded, and sucked in a breath that didn’t quite fill my lungs. “It’s the only thing that has ever helped. Sometimes I feel suffocated by everything that runs through my head. It becomes too much and all I want to do is draw in a deep enough breath, and the pain helps. It grounds me. I can breathe again. I can turn everything else off and sleep. I can focus because the pain distracts me from all the bad shit.”

  I hadn’t meant to scream. Hadn’t planned on telling them any of what had just flooded out of me. But Mom’s anger had hit me straight in the heart because it was the one thing I had been scared of if she ever found out.

  That she would hate me for it.

  There have been so many amazingly strong women as role models in my life. I looked up to each and every one of them, but I couldn’t be as strong as them. I couldn’t handle the stress, the emotions that wouldn’t stop destroying me. The cutting brought me the kind of release I’d been unable to find anywhere else. Not with a therapist. Not with Harris.

  Maybe I was defective.

  “The therapist didn’t help?” Aunt Emmie questioned in a voice so quiet I almost didn’t hear her.

  “N-no,” I muttered and met her gaze for a second before lowering my eyes back to the carpet. “Did he help you?” She had been with me when my biological father had taken me. He’d left her unconscious and bleeding on the ground and I’d been unable to help her. That wasn’t the only thing Aunt Emmie’d had to deal with in her life that she’d needed to seek help from a therapist for, but it was one that we both had shared together.

  “A little.” She grimaced. “Not much, but a little.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me it wasn’t working, Lucy?” Mom demanded, moving farther away from me. Seeing the distance she was putting between us only made me feel ten times more ashamed of what I’d done. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Why?” she screamed.

  “Layla, that’s enough.” Dad grabbed her arms and pulled her around to face him, his eyes the stormiest I’d ever seen them. “What is the matter with you? Our daughter needs us and you’re shouting at her.”

  With a strangled cry, she fell against Dad’s chest. “I’ve failed her,” she sobbed. “I should have known something was wrong. This is my fault.”

  “What?” I pulled away from Harris and crossed to her. She thought this was her fault? I grasped her hand and she turned to face me. “Mom, none of this is your fault. It’s mine. I’m the one who did this to myself.”

  The pain in her eyes told me everything I needed to know. The anger that had been in her voice hadn’t been at me. It was at herself. Maybe she didn’t hate me after all.

  “I’m your mother, Lucy,” she whispered sadly, her hands covering my own and squeezing them reassuringly. “It’s my job to know when things are hurting you so badly that you want to harm yourself.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Maybe she should have known, but I’d hidden my secret for six years. No one had ever suspected. No one. Why should she have? I’d found a way to cope and she’d thought I was getting better after the nightmares from my father had followed me around for so long.

  “None of us knew, Lay.” Lana wrapped her arms around us both, her lips pressed first into Layla’s hair and then mine. “But now we do know, and we can help her.”

  “How?” Layla whispered. “How do we help her?”

  “We can figure that out together,” she promised, offering both of us a reassuring smile. I’d always thought Mom was the strongest of the three of us, but right then I knew it was Lana. It had always been L
ana. “As long as we do it together, I know she can get through this.”

  With a shuddery breath, Mom nodded. Her arms wrapped around me, holding me against her chest. “I’m so sorry,” I told her, trying not to cry again.

  “Me too, baby. Me too.” She stroked her hands over my hair, telling me without words that she loved me and wouldn’t ever let anything hurt me again.

  I knew she couldn’t keep that promise. She had no way of knowing what the future held, but right then, I soaked up all her love and hoped it would get me through the worst that would follow.

  

  I was exhausted. My eyes ached from crying so much, my throat was raw, and my stomach was still twisted with anxiety.

  I wanted to fall into bed and sleep for a year, but I knew sleep would elude me. The events of the day kept replaying in my head and I tried to figure out if I should have done something differently, said something more—or less. After removing every possible thing I could use to hurt myself with, my family had gone to their hotel for the night, promising to return the next morning and hopefully having answers as to what steps we could take next.

  After they had left I’d taken a shower while Harris and Marcus had stayed in the living room, talking quietly.

  That had been half an hour ago, and now I was sitting in the middle of my bed, waiting for Harris to join me. Hoping that he still wanted to be with me. That I hadn’t scared him off with my fucked-up issues and he wasn’t still there only because he felt sorry for me.

  He’d been beside me all day. Had held me and given me the courage I’d needed to tell everyone what was going on. I’d thought he was there because he loved me and wanted to help, but maybe I’d gotten it wrong. Maybe he just wanted to be friends now. Maybe he didn’t even want that much.

  Those thoughts were driving me crazy and I clenched my hands into fists to keep from going into the bathroom and finding the kind of release I was becoming desperate for.

  The bedroom door opened and Harris stepped through, distracting me for a moment from the suffocating need to cut. He dropped down onto the bed next to me, letting out a tired breath and wrapped an arm around my waist. “Shower feel good?” he murmured, pressing a kiss to my temple.