Page 85 of Puppy Love

Harrison had yet to even look at his mother, but he did so now. Sophie wasn’t able to get a full reading of his mood, but from the way he held himself, like a bomb that would explode at the slightest touch, she realized it was a dangerous one.

“And you came to take care of me, is that it? You came to sit up by my bedside night after night, watching to make sure I’m still breathing? You came to sing me to sleep and kiss away my troubles and do all those things that moms are supposed to do when their children are suddenly knocking on death’s door?”

“Harrison, I—”

“No. I’m not going to listen to this. I don’t know what you’re doing here or why you’re doing it, but I’d like you to leave.Now.”

Sophie had no idea what to do in the face of such strong emotion. She’d always known that Harrison’s history with his parents was a strange one—as different from her own as possible. Her parents had reacted to her illness with an overzealous desire to protect her from anything and everything this world had to throw at her. From the sound of it, his had done the exact opposite. This woman, who looked so ordinary and kind, had packed her bags and run away—leaving not just her husband, but her son too. And she’d left them both broken.

A part of Sophie hated her.

Looking at Harrison’s face right now, she felt kind of sorry for his mother too. By leaving when she had, this woman had missed out on twenty-two years of this man’s love and respect, twenty-two years of his hardships and his joys.

And the worst part was, she had no idea what a loss that was.

“You will not talk to your mother that way, young man.” Wallace stepped forward, his expression mulish. “She’s here because I asked her to be. If you can’t be respectful, then maybe Sophie should take you somewhere to cool off.”

Sophie felt as though Harrison had every right to his anger, and she was about to say as much, but Wallace made that impossible.

“Minerva and I are taking a few boxes over to the apartment, Sophie,” he said. “If you could explain to him, help him understand…”

All of Harrison’s emotion—all of it justified, all of it simmering under his parents’ watchful stares—should have exploded at once. In all honesty, Sophie wanted it to. She’d worked so hard to get him to open up, spent so much time helping him realize that it was okay to wear your feelings on the outside, rather than bury them deep inside.

For him to close off, to rebuild those walls, to isolate himself in a cocoon of razor wire and loneliness… She’d do anything to stop that from happening again.

But it was too late. He turned to Sophie with a look so full of icy, disdainful cold that the chill permeated to her soul.

“You knew?”

“Yes, but it’s not what you think,” she explained.

“You knew.” Flatter this time.Broken.

“I wanted to tell you, Harrison. I—”

He turned away from her, and that was when she knew she was lost. She was no longer talking to Harrison, the myth, the hero, the man. She was talking to the little boy who’d been left all alone at what must have been the scariest moment in his life.

“Where’s my goddamned dog?” He pushed past his parents to the kitchen, remaining only long enough to scoop up Bubbles and curl her against his chest. “I don’t care what you do with your life, Dad. I don’t care what you do with yours either,Minerva. The only thing I want is for everyone to leave me the fuck out of it. I’ve been fine on my own for years, and I’ll be fine long after the entire lot of you leave.”

Sophie didn’t know if that last bit was meant to keep her away as well as his parents, but Harrison had to know it would never work. Like the goiter she’d always been and always would be, he was stuck with her.

With only one meaningful look at Wallace—full of equal parts sympathy for his position and annoyance at him for putting her there next to him—she followed Harrison and Bubbles out the door.

“Goddammit, Sophie. Can’t you leave me alone for five minutes?”

She took a page from his book and kept doggedly following his tracks with one hard syllable. “No.”

“It’s the least you can do after stabbing me in the back like that.”

“No.”

He kept moving toward the direction of the barn, his steps long and furious. Sophie had to pick up to a jog to keep up, but she didn’t mind. As she’d already shown, she could more than keep up with this man.

Harrison knew it, of course. He came to a stop at the barn door and waited for her to catch the rest of the way up.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice prim. “I was starting to get a hitch in my side.”

He snorted on a laugh. “Bullshit. You could have followed me for hours. Over mountains and through lakes—into a fucking volcano, if that’s where I was heading.”