Page 78 of The Sound Between Us

18

on the hill

Harrison

My house sits perched in the Hills. All glass and steel and views. The kind of place that looks impressive in architectural magazines but feels hollow when you’re actually living in it.

Tonight, though, with Seren curled into the corner of my Italian leather sofa, it feels different. She’s tucked her feet underneath her, still wearing that black dress from the ceremony but barefoot now, her makeup long since cried off. There’s something translucent about her skin in the warm light.

Beautiful and broken and here. In my space. Trusting me not to make it worse.

Fuck, I could make it so much worse.

I move around her carefully. Water first, a proper glass, not the plastic bottles I usually grab. Then I raid my closet for options she can change into if she wants. An old university sweatshirt, soft joggers that will drown her but at least they’re clean.

“Do you need anything?” I set the water on the coffee table within reach. “Food? I could run you a bath?”

She looks up at me with those dark eyes that seem to hold too much. “I don’t know what I need. I don’t know anything right now.”

The honesty in her voice guts me. I’ve been in that place, that hollow aftermath where everything you thought you knew about yourself gets stripped away in public. The difference is, when it happened to me, I had an army of handlers to control the narrative. She has nothing but the clothes on her back and whatever trust she’s placed in me.

She trusted me enough to leave with me.

Christ, don’t fuck this up.

“I can’t go back to London.” Her voice is small, defeated. “Not yet. Not with this all over the papers tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to go anywhere. Stay as long as you need.”

The words are out before I can stop them, but I mean them. Whatever this costs me—time, privacy, the careful boundaries I’ve spent years constructing—she can have it.

She studies my face. “Harrison... what is this? What are we doing?”

The question hangs in the air between us, loaded with everything we’re not saying. I can see in her eyes that she’s asking if there’s something real between us, if tonight means what I think it means, if the connection we felt in London was worth blowing up her entire life for.

I want to tell her this is everything. I want to cross the room and show her exactly what this is, what we could be if we let ourselves.

Instead, I give her the safe answer. “Whatever you need it to be. No pressure. No expectations.”

The lie tastes bitter in my mouth, but I tell myself it’s the right thing to say. She needs space to heal, not another man who wants things from her.

Something shifts in her expression. Confusion, maybe disappointment. I see the moment she realises I’m treating her carefully, being protective in a way that feels more like rejection than care.

But she doesn’t call me on it. Instead, she nods and curls deeper into the sofa cushions, withdrawing from me in a way that makes my chest ache.

“Are you hungry? I could order something, or⁠—”

“You cook?”

There’s genuine surprise in her voice, the idea of Harrison Carter knowing his way around a kitchen somehow incongruous with everything else she knows about me.

“Had to learn.” I head toward the kitchen, needing the movement, needing something to do with my hands. “Grew up in a tiny terrace where Mum worked two jobs just to keep us afloat.”

She follows me, perching on one of the bar stools, and I can feel her gaze tracking my movements as I pull vegetables from the fridge. The fridge that’s actually well stocked because I learned long ago that empty cupboards feel too much being eight years old again, waiting for Mum to come home with whatever she could afford.

“Dinner was whatever I could figure out after her second shift.” I line up ingredients with the efficiency that comes from years of cooking in tiny tour bus kitchens and hotel rooms with hot plates. “Started with jacket potatoes, moved up to actual meals.” I glance at her, catching the way she’s studying my hands as I work. “It was the only time things felt normal. Taking care of someone instead of just surviving.”

Her expression shifts, something raw flickering across her face. “That’s so fucked up it makes me want to cry.”