AUTHOR'S NOTE: Short & sweet. ILY

TWITTER: @styles_orama

HARRY:

I want to tell her I love her, but I can't. Not like this. Not if I'm broken. She deserves better than this. As my tongue parts her lips, the tears slip from the corners of my eyes, wetting both my cheeks and hers.

SHERRY:

My cheeks are wet with Harry's tears, our kisses becoming gentle and deliberate, filled with a newfound intimacy. I can only imagine how Harry must feel, and while I want to talk to him and offer comfort, I don't want to do anything that might make him feel worse.

He's been a real trooper so far through all of this. Granted, it's far from over, and there've been a few snags along the road – like when he tried to fire me, protest bathtime, etc., but overall he has kept a surprisingly positive mindset.

I am so drawn to him in every way – his personality, attitude, humor, impeccable good looks, Jesus Christ, his looks. He is so striking that I sometimes expect beams of celestial light to illuminate his lanky frame. That doesn't even take his sexual prowess into account, and right now, even in his current state of impotence, this man is a force to be reckoned with. He is so eager to please and more in tune with the nuances of my body than anyone I've been with before, even though our sexual contact has been limited. Once he gets up and running, God willing, I know I won't be able to walk for at least a week and to say I'm looking forward to it would be an understatement.

Still topless, I pull away from our kiss and use my holey t-shirt to blot his tears. "This t-shirt is pretty absorbent considering the amount of holes in it." I smile, kissing his nose.

Harry's quiet, his fingers idly circling one of my nipples, thinking.

"Baby?" I ask.

"Hmm?" Harry sniffles, his eyes meeting mine.

"You know, it can still take awhile for everything to go back to normal physically, right? It's not like they're going to remove the clot and boom – you're going to be dancing the schottische and fucking like a jackrabbit."

Harry appears bewildered. Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned the jackrabbit.

"What the fuck is a schottische?"

"The dance of my people. A polka."

"Your people?" Harry throws his head back and laughs. "You're something else, you know that?"

"I'm just saying, you've been in bed between six to eight weeks. Your body has to build up its strength again. Like the doctor said, just be patient."

"So it's a Texas dance?"

"No. It's Bohemian."

"That sounds like a disease." Harry squeezes my nipple he's been toying with for the past five minutes.

"It is not a disease, you dork." I argue, slapping his hand playfully away from my tits.

Harry pulls me in for a cuddle quite possibly to avoid my slaps. "You know something, you're pretty sweet, considering how bitchy you were in the coffee shop that first day we met."

"How bitchy I was? How bitchy I was?" Is he fucking serious? "You need either reading lessons or glasses, I don't know which. Or maybe a hearing aid – ya big coffee stealer." He's laughing even harder now, which kinda pisses me off since I'd just hurled some good insults his way. I struggle to get out of his grasp so I can put my t-shirt back on.

"Easy now," Harry takes control, wrangling me in easily with both of his long arms in full working order. "Did you ever think that I might've done that on purpose? Taken your coffee?"

The mischievous glint in his sexy green eyes brings my feeble escape attempt to a grinding halt.

"I saw you there. In the coffee shop. Bitching about something or other to Kate. You were passionate. Beautiful. I imagined an argument with you. Then I imagined make-up sex with you."

I got nothin'.

Harry continues, "They called your name for coffee – when you stood up I knew it was yours – and before I'd even thought it fully through, I'd stolen it. On purpose."