Harden My Hart (The Notorious Harts 3)

The buildings—familiar by virtue of the fact I’ve been doing this run every night for the past three or so months—lead me down the streets I know well. Past the bakery that—even at night—smells like croissants, across the street to the gym where people are running, just like me, on treadmills though, illuminated by fluorescents rather than streetlights.

I wonder if they’re running from something, like I am. I wonder if they’re running from loss, sadness. Heartbreak.

Three months ago I came back to Sydney. I left Sundown Creek, my dad’s home, my old life, and this time I left it for good.

It was one of the hardest things I ever did—but nothing compares to the pain of losing Holden.

Missing Holden has become an essential part of who I am. In every breath I taste that pain. I ache for him. It is a cruel and awful reality to exist in and yet I hold onto my pain because it’s one of the only ways I have to know this is real.

I turn a corner; the streetlight overhead flashes and a moment later lightning does the same. I flinch, drenched to the core and glad for that. I’m glad for anything that makes me feel alive now. Nothing compares to Holden—his touch, his kisses, his possession—but running like this comes close. My blood rushes, my heart races, my legs feel like they’re filled with jelly.

I thought about moving out of the apartment. Memories of him are so vivid there, so much a part of everywhere I look, but in the end I stayed for that exact reason. Holden is everywhere I look and here, in some strange way, I can pretend—for a moment—that things ended differently for us.

Now who’s running away?

I grind my teeth, dip my head and run the rest of the way like this, pounding up the street and stopping only when I reach my front steps. I drop my head forward, inhaling deeply, trying to ease the pain in my lungs.

Rain lashes my back; I don’t care. I stare down at my joggers, breathing in the clay-like air, humid and wet, acrid all the way to the back of my throat, and then begin to straighten right as a car door next to me opens. I turn to it on autopilot, reaching for the key I wear around my neck at the same time.

I’m halfway turning back to my door when Holden steps out and everything inside of me lurches into a cataclysmic kind of life all over again. My heart jolts so hard against my chest I half think it’s going to do a Shawshank and burrow out through my ribs.

I do a double-take. It can’t be him, right? It can’t be Holden. I see him everywhere, all the time. He’s burned into my eyes and it’s easy to transpose him into my local café, my course, my living room.

Holden moves. I blink again. It’s really him. I try to remember to be angry with him, hurt, wary, careful but my heart twists and I know love is the strongest emotion I feel.

Love—despite the fact he disappeared from my life. It’s been so long, and I have missed him so much and he’s been nowhere.

It takes me a few seconds but I rally, straightening my spine and fixing him with a look that I hope passes for cool and indifferent.

He comes around the car, crossing towards me, pausing frustratingly too far away.

But on the one hand that’s good because at this distance I can stare at him and really see every detail. His broad chest, his immaculate dark suit, his handsome face, hair that is much longer than when I last saw him, a traditional guy style, dark and thick so I want to run my hands through it.

‘Cora.’ His smile is tight, his eyes locked to mine with an intensity that makes breathing almost impossible. ‘How are you?’

Such a formal question! Has time done this to us? Made us feel like strangers? Rain pelts down, landing hard on his head, mine. Thunder rolls. I don’t move towards the door.

‘I’m...fine.’ I’m not fine. I haven’t been fine in a long time but if the past has taught me anything it’s that pain fades, or at least becomes more manageable. This, I suspect, will become a part of who I am, like a knot on a tree’s trunk. I’ll never get over Holden but one day I’ll become adjusted to living with the hurt he inflicted on me by leaving.

He continues to stare at me without speaking, through the fast-falling rain. He stares at me with a frown on his face and I feel a thousand things in return—I feel anger that he’s here, outside my place when I didn’t expect him, so I’ve had no time to mentally prepare, no time to brace for this. My heart is in knots and my stomach too.

Lightning slices the grey sky, some distance away. Thunder cracks. Holden shakes his head a little, as if rousing himself from a dream. ‘Sorry. I just...haven’t seen you in so long.’

I swallow. It’s been three and a half months. Each day has felt like an insurmountable hurdle at the start, and each evening I am exhausted from acting as though I’m fine, my normal self, when I’m shattered into a thousand little pieces.

I’ve missed him with every breath and I’ve questioned everything about what we were, what I felt, whether it was genuine or not.

‘I’ve been thinking about you.’

Something like a fever runs through my veins. ‘Yeah?’

His eyes flash. ‘Have you started your photography course?’

I nod.

His gaze roams my face. I’m completely drenched—the rain no longer bothers me. ‘Did you go back to your dad’s?’

The line of questioning is odd, as though he has a checklist of things he wants to have answered. And then what? He goes away again? Is it possible he’s only seeking the same reassurance I was—that I’m doing okay?