Burden // LS STORY

Part 18.

"No!" he yelled, but it was more like it was meant for himself, rather than for me.

"Harry?" I whimper.

"No Louis, just no." He pulls himself off the seat and creates a distance between us. "I can't do this" he expresses, rubbing his fingers across his lips like he is trying to take my taste off them.

I don't know what to say, I'm completely shook. I thought he had forgiven me, but all it was, was a pure moment of weakness. But his ego was too strong, it fought it off.

"Louis, I just. I can't." he trembled. There was obvious fear in his eyes, but he looked more scared of himself than anything. I didn't understand.

I attempt to close the gap between us, standing my feet and lunging for him. He rejects my endeavour, creeping back from me shaking his head. "Louis don't" he warns.

I feel myself beginning to spiral, but not in an emotional way, I was no longer sad. I was angry. I was furious.

"Why did you come here?" I shout.

He looks up at me with confusion across his face. "What?"

"Why did you come Harry? Why, come all the way over here just to hear me say I'm sorry? No. I don't buy it, you don't want to let this go either. You're scared, and I get that. I really do. But you and I both know you forgave me for what I did the minute it happened. I saw it on your face when you told me to go. You were forcing yourself. You didn't want it. You didn't want me to go. You wanted me to stay and fight for us. Well, here I am Harry, fighting for you and you're running scared." It was all beginning to make sense, I know I hurt him when I forced myself upon him, I knew that. But he knew me better than anyone, and he would have known something was wrong. He forgave me the minute it happened. Something else was going on here.

"Harry, there is no way you would have let yourself come all the way down here just to hear me apologise and then fly home. That's not you. You don't give in to anyone like that." I continue. I knew I was getting closer because he was becoming fidgety.

"Louis don't -" he tried to warn me, but I wasn't having it.

"No, Harry, you don't. I don't know what more you want me to say. I apologised, I explained, you had already forgiven me. What are you waiting for? What are you wanting me to do?" I question him.

"Louis please" he begs, clenching his eyes closed, shaking his head like he's trying to erase a memory.

"Why are you forcing yourself to hate me?" I lower my tone as he allowed my steps to close the gap between us. I make it all the way to him and snake my hands around his lower waist. "Why are you forcing me away?" I lower my head to try and meet his gaze.

"Because it's easier to push you away then have you leave me!" he spits out, finally giving in to my push.

I gasped. "What?"

He can't make eye contact with me. He's punishing himself.

"Harry?" I move my hands up to cup either side of his face and force him to look at me. The swollen bags under his eyes hold a mountain of sorrow in them. Somethings going on. I need to know what it is.

"I can't have you hating me Louis" he breathes out.

What? Why would I hate him? I'm the one who fucked up. Why would he think I would hate him?

"Harry, I hate myself more for what I did to you, but we both know there's something else going on here. Why are you forcing me away?" I mumble.

He attempts to drop his head, breaking the eye contact between us.

"No!" I shout, holding his head level, I need to see him. His eyes give away more than he realises.

He's now sobbing, every ounce of courage he had holding back his emotions finally gave in and he was inconsolable. "Don't hate me" he whined through his pain.

"Harry, stop, you're scarring me. Why would I hate you?" Gosh now I was completely confused. The tables had turned so quickly and now he was sounding like the one who required forgiveness. I was so lost.

"I didn't mean it; it was a mistake" he stumbles.

My stomach drops, he's done something. That's why he's forcing himself not to forgive me, because it's easier to run with this story than admit his own faults. I felt sick. I didn't want to hear anymore, but I needed to.

"Harry?" I sob through a desperate beg.

"I slept with him." He cries out.

Time froze, right there, swallowing me up with it.

"What?" I mumbled, wondering if I heard him correctly.

"It didn't mean anything, and I regret it, but I was just lost in emotion, and he was there, and I couldn't - Louis?" his words fall from his lips, but I can't process them.

He slept with someone. That's what he didn't want to admit.

"Who?" I breath out under my exhale.

"Louis, it didn't mean anything and I -" I cut him off.

"Who!" I shout in an overbearing tone.

"Kyle." He confesses.

I let go of his body, my hands frozen mid-air like I was being held captive at that moment.

The sounds of my heavy breathing block out my ability to hear, this couldn't be happening.

"But Louis, I swear it didn't mean anything and I -" I didn't want to hear his reasoning. I was hating myself enough because of what I put him through, but to go to the extent of involving someone else. To cheat on me.

That, I couldn't even process. I know I did wrong; I understand that, but is this what I get in return?

"Louis, please say something" he pleads.

"Harry, I know I hurt you. I know that, I take full responsibility for that. But this." I shake my head and look at him up and down, trying to work out who was standing in front of me. "this isn't okay. And the fact that you tried to hide it, make it seem like I was the one who fucked this all up. You were planning on letting me live the rest of my life knowing I caused our end, when really -" I don't even want to finish my sentence.

I couldn't process what was actually happening here. Who was the bad guy in all of this?

Maybe we just brought out the worst in each other.

We were toxic. And neither one of us had respect for the other, I took away his vulnerability and he took away his loyalty. The two things that hold a relationship together and we weren't even 5 minutes into ours and we broke them. We broke every rule in the book before we even had a chance to let the relationship be anything.

"Harry, you forgave me the minute I fucked up, didn't you?" I pressed.

"I did Lou, I knew it wasn't you, I knew something had happened. I was just upset and in pain." He tries to explain, unknowingly answering my worst nightmare.

"So, when you fucked Kyle, you'd already forgiven me." I state the thing I didn't want to be true.

That's when the realisation hit him. He didn't do this out of hurt, he did this out of spite. He wanted to inflict the same, if not worse, amount of pain onto me that I forced upon him.

Relationships aren't meant to work that way.

"Louis, no, it, it's not like that." He whimpered.

"The problem is Harry, it is. It is exactly like that."

I turn around and walk away, leaving him there to dwell on the unforgiving truth. He hadn't accepted that reality yet, I saw how it came down upon him when I blew the cover on it. Which made it all worse, he was spiteful and hurtful, in his subconscious, the same way I was overpowering and relentless in mine.

Harry and I were not a good mix. We fed upon the vulnerability in the other person. This was never going to work.