Harper shook his head. “You’ll hear from him. I’m sure of that. He won’t want to lose you. You’re too good. He’d hate to see you go to the competition.”
I didn’t bother to argue with him. I wasn’t trying to fish for compliments. I didn’t need them. I knew that I was good at what I did. I just wondered if Steve would swallow his pride and call me. He was a stubborn bastard when he wanted to be, but I knew that he would put the business first.
“Have you been to the hospital?” He called from the kitchen.
“I called in on my way home. There’s been no change. I thought we’d call in tonight as usual.”
Harper popped his head back into the living room, munching on an apple. “I rang and spoke to Colette on my way home. I thought that we could have a night vegging out in front of the TV, you know, just some you and me time.”
I thought about it for a moment. We’d fallen into this routine of spending every evening at the hospital with Dee. It had become our way of life over the last month or so. I knew that I would feel guilty if we didn’t go, but being there didn’t seem to make much of a difference to her condition.
“You think that she’d be okay without us?”
“I think she’ll be fine for one night. I asked Sylvie to look in on her.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Oh, you asked Sylvie, did you?”
Harper smiled sheepishly. “I thought that we could do with an evening of relaxation. I thought that you might say yes, so I arranged it with her. We don’t have to, though. We can go to the hospital if you want to.”
I laughed. It felt good. I knew that Harper needed some time to himself as well. We were going to burn ourselves out if we carried on this way. We needed a little time to recharge. “I think that it’s a brilliant idea.”
“You do?” He looked pleased and I was glad that I’d made the right call.
“Yeah. Why don’t you go and get a shower. You stink.” I made a face at him. He didn’t smell that bad. It was a healthy, masculine smell. But he’d just come straight home from the gym and I knew that he would want to freshen up.
“Oh, really? I stink?” Harper said with a glint in his eyes. Before I could open my mouth, he’d launched himself at me and threatened to wipe his sweaty face all over my pyjamas.
“Stop it!” I shrieked.
He laughed and climbed off me. “Don’t stay that I stink then.”
“I won’t.” I said as I held my nose daintily. He swiped at me with the towel that was in his hand as he walked out of the room.
I knew him well enough to know that Harper’s version of vegging out in front of the TV with an extra-large pizza loaded with everything. He was a bit of a work out and health freak when he wanted to be, but he still knew how to pig out like the rest of us. I put a call in while he was in the shower and I grabbed some money from my purse and put it on the table near the front door. Harper walked back out of the bathroom in just a towel and his skin still glistening from the shower. “Have you seen my shorts anywhere?”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Don’t be looking at what you can’t afford, lady.” He quipped and strutted off down toward the kitchen.
I chuckled. He was a damn fine sight. He was far from arrogant and he worked damned hard to get a body like that. I called after him, “I put them in your bedroom with the rest of the clothes that I ironed.”
“Wow! Aren’t you the perfect little housewife?”
“Fuck you!” I replied in a friendly tone and Harper flipped me the bird in response. Isn’t it just great when you can act like that with your friends? He never seemed to take any offence, he knew me too well for that.
As he walked back into the living room where I was waiting for him, something clicked in my head. I knew that I had seen one of Milligan’s tattoos before, but I couldn’t remember for the life of me where. Harper had the exact same intricate design on his ribs. The same design in the same place. Weird coincidence.
Harper looked at me strangely when he saw me staring at his body and walked out to the kitchen to get us each a can of Pepsi, but the door bell rung and we were then too preoccupied by stuffing our faces like pigs to ask him about the tattoo. It wasn’t until we had settled back down on the sofa in front of a horror movie, feeling sick from eating too much, that I remembered to ask him.
“Hey, where did you get that tattoo?”
Harper laughed. “Which one? You’ll have to narrow the choice down for me. There are quite a few to choose from.” Harper was covered in ink. To look at him with his clothes on, he looked too neat and respectable. But, without? He looked like a tough biker dude, totally badass.
“The one that is on your ribs. That swirly design thing.” I pointed to my own right hand side so that he knew which one I meant.
“Oh, that one. I don’t know. It was a long time ago.” He carried on eating another slice of pizza and intently watched the film. “Why? What made you ask that?” He glanced over at me with a mouthful of half chewed pizza. I swiped at his arm and laughed at the grossness.
“Harper! That’s disgusting!” I shook my head at him and his total lack of manners tonight. “I was just asking because Milligan has the same tattoo.”
I thought that he was going to choke on his pizza. He started coughing and spluttering. I put down my chocolate bar to jump up and thump him on the back.
“I’m okay, I’m okay.” He gasped as he grabbed at his bottle of water and took a long soothing gulp.
“Are you sure? You shouldn’t try to inhale your food like that.” I tried to joke, but I had been worried for a moment. Harper had turned a pale shade of white.
“Milligan has the same tattoo? That’s what you said, right?”
“Yeah. It’s on his ribs, just like yours.”
I fell silent again and the food lay untouched. “That just means that you probably got it done at the same place, right Harp?” He was sitting very still, staring straight through the TV as opposed to actually watching it.
He shook his head slightly as if distracted and seemed to come slowly out of his trance-like state. “Yeah, yeah. That’s probably what it is.”
I leaned over to look at him closely. “Are you sure you’re okay?” I hadn’t seen him look like this before. I couldn’t explain it. A look had crossed over his face. I didn’t like it.
Harper coughed to clear his throat again and turned to smile at me with that normal glint back in his eyes. “It’s just that I designed this tattoo myself. It should have been a one off.”
“Uh oh. Looks like the tattoo artist stole your design.” Now I could understand why he was acting so strangely. Harper designed most of his ink designs himself. All of his tattoos were personal to him, to highlight certain times in his life. No wonder he was shocked and a little pissed off to find out that someone had ripped off his design. It wouldn’t mean something to someone else like it did to him.
I didn’t want him to brood over it anymore so I didn’t say another word about it. We snuggled up under the blanket and got lost in a world of monsters and ghouls. I loved horror movies, but they always scared the living crap out of me and I was glad that Harper was there to hold my hand.
Chapter Twelve
I didn’t hear anything from Steve the next day, or the day after that. I wasn’t sure if I would hear anything from him now. Time was starting to drag on. He was well known for his stubborn streak. It would take him a while to calm down and even if he did, I wasn’t too sure that he would back down. He needed me more than I needed him and he knew that as well as I did, but whether he would admit it was a whole other thing.
There wasn’t much for me to do with myself. I had managed to push Harper out of the door in the morning, telling him that I would be perfectly fine on my own.
I spent a lot of time cleaning up the house until it was sparkling and then I decided to head over to the hospital to spend some time with Dee. I still felt bad for not spending the evening at her bedside the other night, but I�
��d been there all day yesterday and planned on spending most of the day there today also. Sure, I knew that I would be spending most of the day talking to myself, but it was still more productive than sitting around at home doing nothing.
I decided to get my comfortable shoes on and walk over there. The day was still only warm but it was not overpowering yet. It was sure to get warmer later, but I would be able to catch a lift back with Harper after he’d finished work.
Walking down the street, I got that awful prickly sensation that someone was watching me. It came out of nowhere. I hadn’t seen or heard anything from Milligan directly for days. There had been the odd text from him before that, but then nothing. Odd in the sense that they had been few and far between and also that he had sounded totally normal, asking me if I was feeling any better. I wasn’t too sure that he had got the message that I didn’t want him in my life, but at least I hadn’t actually seen him in person since the day at the apartment.
It was stupid of me. I shouldn’t have been out walking like this by myself, but the recent quietness of the situation had lulled me into a false sense of security. I couldn’t see anyone lurking around on the street and thought that it must merely have been my imagination working overtime. I scanned all of the shadows, but there was nothing there. No one there. I quickened my pace. The sooner that I hit the main town, the better. It was always safer to have plenty of people around you. Or so I hoped.
When I got to the outskirts of the main city centre, I flagged down a taxi. I couldn’t stand this feeling a second longer. I was feeling nervous. I was feeling sick with dread. I shouldn’t have been so stupid. It was clear that Milligan wasn’t in his right mind and I shouldn’t have put myself in a position where I was alone on the street. It wasn’t so much that I thought that Milligan would actually do anything to me. It was more my mind and imagination going into overdrive, thinking of all the things that could happen. I was frightening myself more than he was frightening me.
Dropping me off at the hospital, I got out of the cab and squinted at the sun. It was already warmer than I thought it was going to be. I looked around the car park furtively. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I was still feeling nervous, but it was more like I was freaking myself out now rather than having a feeling of being watched. It was just me being silly.
I walked into the coolness of the hospital and I had to stand still for a moment while I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. It was like walking into a cave after being in that blinding sunshine.
For a split second, I thought that I saw Milligan. I blinked and he wasn’t there. Great. Now my eyes were playing tricks on me. I wanted to laugh at my own stupidity. Instead, I walked over to where Sylvie was sitting in her usual spot in the waiting room. I knew that I needed a moment to get myself together and Sylvie always had a calming effect on me.
“Carrie! How are you, dear?” She asked in her grandmotherly manner.
“I’m good, thanks. How’s Nathaniel?”
Her smile brightened, “Much, much better. They’re hopefully moving him to another ward this afternoon.
I hugged her lightly as I sat down next to her, pleased for her. “That’s so fantastic. I’m so glad that he’s starting to get better. It must be such a relief to all of you.”
“Yes, I must say, it is a great relief.” I could see that some of the tension had left her wrinkled skin. I really was pleased for her. I knew that it had been touch and go for a while. I had been worried about what the stress was doing to Sylvie. That sort of thing wasn’t good for her at her age.
“Shouldn’t you be at work, dear?”
I grinned. “Day off again. Dispute with the boss.”
“Uh oh.” She laughed. “By the way, that young man called on her earlier. He was just leaving as I was arriving.”
I felt myself stiffen in the chair. I knew that she wasn’t talking about Harper. She remembered his name well enough by now. She had to be talking about Milligan. I didn’t know what to say. After feeling so on edge this morning, I should have really expected to hear something like this. It was just that I had done such a good job of convincing myself that it was just me being silly.
“What time did you get here?”
“Hmmm. Let me think about that. Only about thirty or forty minutes ago, I think.” She said, glancing down at the slender gold watch on her wrist. That would have been about the time that I had been jumping at shadows on my way over here. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or not that it had just been my imagination. It couldn’t have been him following me if he had been here at the time.
“Did he say anything to you?”
“No. I don’t think that he even saw me. He seemed very distracted.”
I paused for a moment. What the hell had he been doing here? What did he want? “I think I’d better go and see how Destiny’s doing. Thanks again for checking in on her the other night.”
“Not a problem, dear. My pleasure. I hope you and Harper had a pleasant evening.”
“We sure did.” I smiled. She was a lovely old lady and I would miss her being around here. I was glad to hear that her grandson was doing better and was improving enough to move wards, but from a purely selfish point of view, I would miss her friendly face.
I waved to a couple of the nurses on the way and walked into Destiny’s room. I stopped dead as soon as I was in the door. As least I now knew why Milligan had been here. There was a massive bouquet of roses lying at the foot of her bed. They were a mixture of blood red and pure white. The size of the bunch was simply unimaginable. They put the others that he had sent me to shame. I picked them up tentatively. I was going to have to try and find a bin big enough to shove them in. That was when I saw that there was a single dead rose placed carefully in the centre of the bouquet.
What the hell was his problem? Was he completely mental? Unhinged? Why was he doing this? What did he think he was going to achieve by sending me such things as this? I threw the flowers at the wall in anger, watching as they fell in a heap of fallen petals.
I must have sat there in silence for well over an hour, just staring down at the broken flowers on the floor. Just when I thought that this was all over, it all started straight back up again. I knew that the only way for me to get this to stop was for me to go and talk to him directly, but I still wasn’t entirely sure that even that would help matters at all. He clearly hadn’t listened the last few times when I told him that I didn’t want to see him again. Sure, to be fair to him, he may have got mixed signals, but surely my prolonged silence spoke volumes to him? I hadn’t spoken to him or text him. Shouldn’t that have told him something?
I looked at the time on my phone and realised with a start that more time had passed than I had at first thought. It was starting to get late. I had been lost in my own world of thought. I had to get rid of the mess of mangled flowers before Harper got there. I had already decided that I wasn’t going to mention this to him. It just wasn’t worth the hassle. He would only get all protective and moody again, and I hated to see him harassed like that. I scooped them up and went off in search of a bin big enough to put them in.
I was just walking back into the room when I heard a noise behind me. I spun around and crashed head first into Harper.
“Whoa!” He said as he grabbed hold of my arms to steady me. “What made you so jumpy?”
I sagged in his arms slightly with relief. I didn’t know if I had expected it to be Milligan or whether I was just generally on edge tonight, but I was pleased to see him. It was much better to deal with something like this when you weren’t alone.
“Are you okay, Carrie?” He asked when I didn’t say anything.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I guess those films that we have been watching lately have finally gotten to me.” It was the first excuse that I could think of and I was plain old lucky that it did indeed sound plausible.
Harper looked like he only half believed me. “I’ll walk you back to the room and then I’ll go and get
myself some coffee.”
I sat back down on the chair next to Dee’s bed. I felt like I was going crazy. Who freaks out at shadows and bunches of flowers like that? What was so menacing about flowers? Nothing. That’s what. So what if there had been a dead flower in with them again? I doubted that the florist had made a simple mistake, but what could it really mean?
“Hello, Carrie.”
I shot up so fast that the chair fell over and bounced back towards the wall. I felt the blood drain out of my face. “Milligan. What are you doing here?” I was surprised that I could find my voice through all of the fear radiating through my body.
He smiled at me warmly, like a friend I hadn’t seen in a little while. “I came here to see you, of course.” He replied, like I should have known.
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?” He laughed and started to walk around the room toward me.
“I mean, I don’t want to see you again. I thought that I made that very clear.” I was actually quite proud of myself. This was what was needed. I needed to stand up for myself and tell this guy to get out of my life once and for all. I needed to be strong and show him that he meant nothing to me. I needed to show him that I didn’t want him.
“But, I wanted to see you.”
I frowned at him. “I don’t really care what you want. I thought you would have got the message by now. I don’t want to see you, Milligan.”
Something in his expression changed slightly. I didn’t like it. It was like his mask had slipped. It reminded me of when he had gone to hell on that kid. There was something broken in his face. Something that couldn’t ever be repaired.
“So, you think that it’s alright to fuck a guy and then just walk away like nothing happened?” He stalked a little closer to me. “I wonder what that makes you.”
I stared at him wide eyed. It hadn’t been like that. Surely he could see that. It was his own actions that were pushing me away. I wasn’t like that.
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