Page 81 of The Heartstrings of Harry
Just… not like this.
HARRY
The bruiseon my jaw wasn’t the worst of it.
It throbbed, sure—a hot, ugly ache radiating down my neck—but I’d taken harder hits back in high school brawls behind the local gas station. No, the part that hurt most was somewhere deeper, somewhere I couldn’t patch up or put an ice pack on.
It was the way Andy had looked at me.
Like I was a stranger. Like I was something filthy.
I stood at the edge of the concert site, clipboard in hand, watching the final rig checks, the sound team tweaking the speakers, the lighting crew calling down from the trusses. The park looked like a different world now—stage glowing under the afternoon sun, cables taped down neatly, barricades set, vendors wheeling in carts of bottled water and corndogs.
It was showtime. Whether I was ready or not.
The first of the crowds had already started rolling in—vans and buses coming down the hill from the highway, lines of cars backed up all the way to Brannigan’s Bridge. People in cutoff shorts and T-shirts with Dean’s face plastered across their chests were spilling out onto the sidewalks, chattering, laughing, snapping selfies under the big banner that stretched across Main Street:Welcome To Mulligan’s Mill—Home Of Dean Reeves!
I should’ve been proud.
I should’ve been excited to see the town bustling, thriving like this.
But all I felt was dread twisting hard in my gut.
Because somewhere in that sea of fans—faces I didn’t know, people smiling and laughing and waving signs—one of them might be the sick son of a bitch who’d been sending Dean those letters. One of them might be here for something darker than a concert.
And God help me, if I couldn’t stop it—if anything happened to Dean on my watch—I’d never forgive myself.
I caught myself rubbing my jaw again, fingertips tracing over the sore spot like I could scrub the memory of Andy’s fist right out of my skin.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered under my breath.
I hadn’t seen Andy since he stormed out of my house that morning. Hell, I didn’t know if I would ever see him again. My best friend—myfound family—had looked at me like I’d betrayed him in the worst possible way. And maybe, in his eyes, I had.
A lifetime of friendship had gone down the drain in one sickening, awful moment.
I shook it off.
Or at least tried to.
I had work to do.
I had Dean to protect.
“Harry!” one of the crew called from the barricade line. “We need a hand over here!”
I waved back, nodding, pushing down the ache in my chest and the pounding in my head. I could fall apart later. Right now, I had a job to do.
I crossed the grass toward the stage, jotting notes on my clipboard, giving the lighting rig one more visual check, triple-checking the path to the green-room area. Watching the roads, the fences… the faces in the crowd.
I scanned every damn stranger twice.
The band’s equipment truck was backed in now, crew unloading even more amps and mic stands, hauling gear toward the wings. Astrid was a streak of motion near the front of the stage, headset on, shouting into the mic, already looking like she was one caffeine hit away from a coronary.
And then I heard the voice I hadn’t realized I needed to hear.
“Harry.”
I turned.
