Chapter Text
Even if I had wished for time to still its pulse, it hadn’t. It wouldn’t—not even for a boy who wouldn’t have much of it left.
The day that came for Harry to leave did, in fact, come. I tried to stretch it thin, tugging at its seams until they frayed, but morning bled into noon all the same. The sun rose without hesitation, spilling gold into the room as if it had no idea what it was taking from me. I kissed my love in the hush between breaths, my mouth wandering the familiar map of Harry’s body, memorizing it in the dim light.
He would go back to Chris, but he would stay with me in ways Chris could never touch—woven into the fabric of my thoughts, caught in the gentle snare of memory. I didn’t leave a mark this time. I’d learned. The first time, I had been reckless with wanting, branding him with proof that he was mine. But proof was dangerous in the wrong hands. If Chris saw a claim he hadn’t made himself, Harry would be the one to pay for it. Not me. Never me. Always Harry.
He ate breakfast quietly, the steam from his coffee curling into the cool air, the clink of his spoon a small, steady rhythm. Then he went upstairs to shower, his absence in the kitchen stretching wide and echoing. When he came back down, I handed him one of my favorite hoodies—a worn, soft thing that still held the shape of my shoulders—and a pair of joggers that didn’t quite fit, but made him look endearingly small, like he’d been gathered into my clothes the way I wanted to gather him into my arms.
When the clock on my phone tipped past noon, dread settled into my chest like wet cement. We’d planned it carefully—Chris was still away on a work trip, so I had to bring Harry back before the man returned. The timing was a fragile thing, brittle with what-ifs, and I couldn’t risk even the smallest crack.
Still, I dragged my feet. As the girls clung to him in the doorway, I felt my throat tighten. When we finally got into the car, I tossed him the keys, pretending it was casual. He drove through my neighborhood in lazy loops, hands loose on the wheel, the morning light threading itself through his hair. I let him linger in the driver’s seat longer than we’d agreed, knowing it might be the last time he touched a steering wheel for a long while.
Eventually, I had to take over. My hands on the wheel felt heavier than they should. Every turn toward his street was a betrayal, but the only kind that could keep him safe. And safety, for Harry, had always been a fragile, temporary thing.
The drive was quiet, but not the good kind. Not the kind where the air hums with unsaid sweetness, where the silence is just two people resting in each other’s gravity. This was the kind of quiet that tasted of endings. The kind that clung to the tongue like the last bitter sip of coffee, cooling in a cup you couldn’t bring yourself to put down.
Harry’s fingers fiddled with the cuff of my hoodie, stretching it, smoothing it, like he was trying to memorize the feel. His gaze stayed fixed out the window, the morning having dulled into an indifferent gray. The roads felt longer than they ever had before, each stoplight holding us just to let the moment ache.
I wanted to turn the wheel. Wanted to take some wrong exit, drive until the map stopped recognizing the streets and there was nothing ahead but sky. I imagined it: Harry in the passenger seat, my hoodie swallowing him whole, our laughter fraying into something freer than either of us had known in months. No Chris. No fear. No clock ticking down over our heads.
But reality doesn’t barter with daydreams. It just waits for you at the next turn.
When we reached his street, my chest caved in on itself. His house—Chris’s house—stood there like it always did, ordinary and terrible. My fingers tightened around the steering wheel until my knuckles whitened. Harry glanced at me then, his mouth forming the ghost of a smile, soft and resigned, as if he were the one trying to comfort me.
“Thanks,” he said, barely above a whisper. The word sounded too small to hold the weight of everything I wanted to tell him—that I loved him, that I’d take him away if I could, that I’d burn the whole world down before I let it eat him alive.
But I didn’t say any of that. How could you? How do you cram the size of the universe into a single sentence without it collapsing in on itself?
“You don’t have to thank—” I begin, voice cracking like a match trying to catch flame.
But Harry’s already nodding, that crooked little smirk tugging at his mouth as his words overlap mine, a soft tide pulling me under. “I don’t have to thank you, I know.”
The quiet in his tone doesn’t match the acid burning in my gut, the sharp coil of dread that knows I’m about to lose him back to a place where my hands can’t follow.
Before I can find something—anything—to say, his palms are on my cheeks, warm and steady, tipping my face toward his. The touch is so gentle it’s almost cruel, like he’s afraid of bruising me, but not afraid of undoing me.
He looks at me like I’m the only steady thing left in a world that tilts too easily. “But I want to,” he says, his thumbs brushing the edge of my jaw. There’s a flicker in his eyes—gratitude, sorrow, something unnameable that feels like it’s been building for years.
“So. Louis. Thank you.”
And the way he says it—my name stretched in his mouth like it’s both a plea and a promise—lodges under my ribs, deep enough that I know it will ache there long after the car is empty.
I can't breathe. Or I am, but it's shallow, a broken rhythm that doesn't feel like enough. The words I'd been trying to find, the ones to fill the silence and push back the ending, have all dissolved into a desperate, hollow ringing in my ears. He's so close, his breath a soft ghost on my lips, his hands holding my face like I'm something precious.
It’s too much. The gratitude in his eyes, the way he’s looking at me, is a knife twist of its own. It's not fair that he has to thank me for something I can't even get right. I didn't save him. Not really.
I'm taking him back to the place he doesn't want to be. And he's thanking me.
"Harry, don't," I manage to say, the words catching on a lump in my throat.
He doesn't listen. His gaze drops to my mouth, and then his lips are on mine. The kiss isn't frantic or demanding. It's soft, slow, an act of quiet desperation. It tastes like coffee and the faint scent of my hoodie, a last, lingering echo of the home we’d made for a moment. It's a goodbye, a prayer, a promise that he's not forgetting.
My hands come up, gripping the back of his neck, pulling him closer, as if I can absorb him into myself and keep him there. I kiss him back, pouring all the things into the press of my lips against his. I love you.
He breaks the kiss, but only to rest his forehead against mine, his hands still cradling my face. His eyes are closed, a single tear tracing a path down his cheek. I want to wipe it away, but my hands are full of him, holding him against me.
"I have to go," he whispers, the words almost lost to the ache in his throat.
"I know," I whisper back. And it's the truest lie I've ever told. I don't know anything except that I don't want him to.
He pulls away, the cool air rushing back in between us, a stark and sudden reminder of the space we can't cross. He lets go of my face, his hands dropping away like a falling anchor. He looks at me for one last second, a silent world passing between us in that gaze, and then he opens the car door.
I watch him get out. He doesn't look back. The door closes with a soft click, a final period on the end of a long, beautiful sentence. He walks up the path, my hoodie swallowing the lean frame of his shoulders. The front door of Chris's house opens, a sharp rectangle of cold light cutting into the gray afternoon. Harry steps inside, and the door closes behind him, the sound barely audible over the sudden, roaring silence in my ears.
I sit there, my hands still on the steering wheel, the ghost of his touch a brand on my cheeks. The car is empty, but it's full of him. His scent, the imprint of his body in the passenger seat, the memory of his laugh. I put the car in drive and pull away, but I can't shake the feeling that I'm leaving a part of myself behind on that silent, ordinary street. A part of me that I won't get back until he does.
——-
Monday was slow, but that’s just Monday—sluggish and gray, a day that drags its heels no matter how much you plead. But Harry wasn’t slow. Not today. He was different. Not in the obvious ways, not in the ways that screamed change, but in the subtle ones—the way his smile lingered longer, like sunlight warming a hidden corner. He wasn’t just carrying the secret of bruises anymore; he was carrying the secret of who pressed soft lips against them, who tried to soothe the sting he bore.
Months from now, he had told me once, one night under a sky littered with stars like shards of angel glass, that after the first week of his affair, he had never felt more like himself. Strange, contradictory, impossible—but it was him being raw, being true. And now, sitting across from him that Monday, I understood that truth in the tremor of his laugh, in the way his green eyes caught mine and held them, wide and vulnerable and fearless.
I was nervous. Scared, even. Scared than when he looked at me, the light in his gaze wouldn’t be love—it would be regret. That the weekend we’d stolen for ourselves, the kisses, the heat pressed into our skin, had been nothing more than an accident. That when he went home, it would be like I’d never existed.
But he didn’t. He blushed when he saw me, the softest curl of color in his cheeks that made my chest twist. He greeted me warmly, sliding our legs together under the table like it was the most natural thing in the world. And when I risked a glance at his skin, searching for fresh purple insults against his perfect skin, he smiled. “I’m okay,” he said, the words soft but absolute. He was mine, still—entirely, irrevocably mine—even if he returned to someone else at night.
We would have to be careful, of course. The wrong eyes, the wrong whispers, the wrong assumptions could put him in danger. Chris already distrusted me. If he knew, even just suspected, there would be consequences. Dangerous ones.
So we learned to be quiet. To find the pauses between the chaos, the stillness before the noise. A brush of fingers in a crowded corridor. A shared smile across the lunchroom. A leg nudging mine under the table, slow and deliberate, our secret pulse of touch. Liam and Zayn noticed, of course—they always did—but they were allies in their own way, silent and protective, and I didn’t mind. Their eyes were the only ones Harry seemed to trust, so they were mine to trust too.
One time, Wednesday afternoon just before Lunch let out. Harry had dragged me into another one of our secret scandals.
“Cheeky,” I teased as Harry glanced down the empty corridor, the corners of his mouth tugged into a sly grin.
He tugged me forward, fingers laced with mine, walking backward with that careful, teasing pace. “Not cheeky,” he said, and the weight of his gaze caught mine, fierce and soft all at once.
“Then what?” I whispered again, though it wasn’t really a question. My pulse had picked up; I could feel it against my ribs, a warning drum. The hall was still empty, but every sound—the echo of our shoes, the distant murmur of kids—was suddenly too loud, too present.
He stops pulling me then, his body coming to a standstill in the middle of the corridor. The playful energy drains away, replaced by something heavier, more profound. He looks at me, and it’s like he’s seeing straight through my skin, past the teasing and the nerves, right to the frantic, hopeful thing beating in my chest.
“Necessary,” he says, his voice low and certain.
The word slams into me, stealing the air from my lungs. It’s not a joke. It’s not a flirtation. It’s a confession. He’s not stealing moments with me because it’s fun or rebellious. He’s doing it because he has to. Because it’s become part of the air he breathes.
Before I can answer, before I can even think of a word that could possibly hold the same weight, he closes the small space between us. His free hand comes up to cup my jaw, his thumb stroking the corner of my mouth, and then he’s kissing me.
It’s not like the kisses from the weekend, the slow, exploratory ones whispered in the dark. This is fierce and sure, a claim, not a question. He presses me back against the cool tile of the wall, his mouth moving against mine with a hunger that’s tangled up in desperation. It’s a kiss that tastes of defiance, a frantic attempt to prove that this—us—is the realest thing in his life. I kiss him back with everything I have, my hands coming up to grip his waist, holding on like he’s the only solid thing in a world that’s trying to pull us apart.
The bell for lunch shrieks through the hallway, a brutal intrusion that shatters the quiet. We break apart instantly, breathing hard, the echo of the kiss still humming between us. Harry’s eyes are wide, his lips slightly swollen, the fearless look back in place, but this time it’s sharp, edged with adrenaline. He gives me a wry, sad smile, a look that says a thousand things I couldn’t say aloud. This isn't enough. But it's all we have.
Without another word, he drops my hand and turns, heading toward the cafeteria. I watch him go for a second, my heart hammering against my ribs, before I follow, making sure to keep a careful, calculated distance between us. The performance has to resume.
Lunch breaks became our stolen hours. Harry would catch my eye across the cafeteria, the corners of his mouth twitching with mischief, a green spark of mischief and vulnerability. And I would grin, leaning just enough to let our legs touch under the table, letting our fingers graze in the quietest, most dangerous of touches.
Some days, it wasn’t enough. I wanted more. Wanted him pressed against me in empty corridors, wanted to trace the curve of his jaw with my fingertips, wanted the heat of his mouth on mine to linger, to imprint. He felt it too—the same ache, the same reckless need—and we would find ways. A hallway just emptied enough. A stairwell with no one watching. Each moment a stolen eternity, fragile and electric.
“Do you ever think about what happens if we get caught?” I asked once, breath hitching as his lips traced the sensitive skin behind my ear.
He smiled, that secret, dangerous grin that made my knees weak. “Every day,” he said. “But right now… right now, I only think about you.”
It was insane, the thrill of it. Our love was a quiet rebellion, a secret carved into the edges of ordinary life. And maybe that’s why it burned so brightly—it had to. Every kiss, every brush of skin, every glance was infused with the knowledge that the world couldn’t see us, couldn’t touch us.