oh, anna [-hs]

sleepless

a/n pit stop everyone. take a second to mentally center yourself before you read this.

63. 

HARRY'S POV

I am a complete and utter-fucking dumbass.

I can't look her in the eye without feeling like the entire world is crashing down around me. Because it is. With every agonizing second of my existence, the atmosphere becomes more and more catastrophic. I feel the walls closing in, only to crumble at my fingertips. Each breath leaves my lungs slightly smaller. Each glance in her direction leaves my heart slightly more desperate.

She has no idea. As of now, I'm holding everything together by a flimsy thread. It's the calm before the storm, a hurricane raging inside my own bones already. She's obliviously blissful, twirling around the park. Her orange coat hugs her body. Her golden hair is squished against her cheeks by a bright pink, wooly hat. Quinn loves snow, especially the kind piled on the ground we're walking on. It's soft and fluffy, and it leaves white pillowy banks along the sidewalk.

I can't keep this secret much longer. I know she can already sense that something's wrong. She's always had the ability to read me like a book. Sometimes she knows I'm having a bad day before I know myself. But she's respecting my privacy. She's respecting my need to pretend that everything's okay, because she's had to pull that card herself.

This is different than me giving her space after Hibbing though. I don't deserve her patience like she deserved mine. This time, I'm a fucking dumbass.

And she doesn't want to fuck until I admit what's wrong. Which is smart. She's always been smart, but now I feel stuck at a crossroads. My first instinct was to pretend that everything is okay. But now she knows that's not true, and she won't let us go back to normal until we confide in each other.

What she doesn't know is that we will never go back to normal. Not after I tell her why I'm so upset.

"Hey," she reaches for my hand and intertwines our bare, freezing fingers. I lean down to kiss her temple, my head still spinning and spiralling with thoughts.

"You look like a little sunrise with your hat and coat," I murmur in her ear. She blushes and leans her head against my shoulder.

Someone needs to kick me in the balls. I am such an asshole.

How can I say stuff like that to her? After what I did?

I've always been good at faking it. For five years, whether I was in a good mood or not, I would plaster on a smile and perform. I barely ever faltered. Back then it was something I was really proud of. Now, I'm disgusted with myself. I hate that I can say sweet things in her ear, like I did nothing wrong.

I did something very wrong.

Track after track. Song after song. It was his voice. I hadn't heard his voice in so long.

I wanted to curl into a ball and cry. My heart was pounding, pushing out of my chest, trying to reach him through the music. I wanted to wrap my arms around him, more than I ever had before. I wanted to hold him, to press his ear to my chest so he could hear just how fast he was making my heart race.

Wes said something to me on that fire escape. He told me that I've never been running towards Quinn. I've always been running away from Louis.

As soon as that damn album started playing, I stopped running. I froze in my tracks, part of me secretly relieved my feet weren't moving anymore. My breath was ragged, my head throbbing.