Coalescence ➳ H.S.

Five: Phoenix

Harry's POV

Everything was perpendicular, and I much preferred things to be parallel.

Ever since Bria ran away from me three years ago, I made no mistake in thinking she wouldn't do it again. What was she hiding? What could possibly be so important that she didn't want me to know? Why me, out of all people? Was I not good enough for her? After everything we did together?

I remembered a time when she and I, after a proper shagging (which, to this day, I haven't forgotten), would lay in bed and tell each other of our plans for the future. She wanted to get out of Oregon and see the world, live in the Caribbean, and drink cheap coffee and expensive liquor. All I wanted to do was give her that.

She said she'd always be there for me, and she never broke her promises. I felt like a bit of a school girl believing in such trivialities, but she had never broken a promise before, and I didn't expect her to do it now (I do recall promising to buy strawberry gum for her and proceeded to forget, which earned me the silent treatment for a couple days).

Sperling did not smell like hair dye or strawberry gum. Sperling smelled like a girl scout—minty, mixed with a hint of pine or maple—and often reminded me of an enthusiastic child running door to door trying to sell cookies. However, that child would sit on her couch after the end of each day and repeat the words, "I could've done better".

Last night was the first time I'd seen Sperling in action, and I had to say that she was rather good at what she did. At first I thought she was purely sartorial, with nothing else to offer, but I quickly came to appreciate her straightforwardness and ability to act upon what she felt was right. I theorized her actions as such:

One: She was pretending to be a klutz this entire time and was actually a multi-talented police officer.

Two: She was far too concerned with what other people thought of her.

I fully believed in the second one—there was no way Sperling was actually kidding about how clumsy she was.

I came to my conclusions after accepting the fact that she didn't really care what I said about her. Tomislav, Winston, and the rest of the officers at the precinct had an influence upon her, and she was too busy trying to impress them to actually do her job. Seeing her last night was proof of it. She was a good cop—that much could be said without lying.

I got out of bed and made my way into the living room after taking a shower and brushing my teeth to see Sperling hunched over her laptop and scribbling notes down onto multiple pieces of paper she had scattered across the dining table. She was eating a bowl of cereal.

"Morning," I called. She looked up, scowled at the sight of me in my boxers, then returned to her work. I scratched my head and progressed over to her, trying to make out what she had written. "Sperling, I'm going to have to get contacts soon. I'm short-sighted—"

"Oh, right. Sorry about that. We'll get some today. Hey, I've pulled some information together, but I can't seem to get anything about Priestly. Do you think Finch was lying to us?" she asked, turning the computer screen towards me and consciously trying to divert her stare away from my shirtless torso. She went over to her purse and pulled out a pair of glasses—my glasses—and handed them to me. I promptly put them on and directed my focus back at the screen.

The police file was clean; had anybody looked at it, they would've thought he was just some regular multi-billionare that owned a hotel in Vegas.

"Do you have access to any other files?" I asked, sitting in front of the laptop and cracking my knuckles.