TREPIDATION // h.s

CHAPTER 1 //

"What is this ?" My voice cracks, almost making my words inaudible. My heart is slamming against my chest. 

"Li, please let me explain ." He pleads as worry fills his eyes. His hand reaches out to grab my arm, but I back away, not allowing him to touch me, it makes me weak. His touch always makes me weak.

"You're dealing drugs?" I back away, walking into the shut door behind me. My eyes flicker between Harry and my Dad who is sat at his desk, nervously picking at his fingernails, dead silent. 

A million thoughts run through my head, and time slows down, making single seconds feel like an eternity. My eyes are on him, but I'm not focused on anything. There is a whole other side to this person who I thought I knew every part of. 

And the thing is that's not even what bothers me most, it's the fact that he hid it from me all this time. Lied to me every day about where he was going and what he was doing. If he could have lied about that, what else could he?

I turn around and wrap my hand around the door handle, I take a final breath before I turn it and walk out, leaving the door open behind me. I walk across the hallway in a hasty manner, my heart still racing in my chest as I stumble down the stairs. 

When I take my first step on the floor, my hand gets tugged from behind, causing my whole body to spin around. His anxious eyes piercing into mine, trying to search for any type of emotion.

"You are not walking away from this." He finally speaks up, there is a hint of desperation but also firmness in his voice.

"Walking away from what Harry? You've lied to me, ever since the day I met you and you just expect me to be okay with it ." I raise my voice at him.

"I can't lose you Li." He pleads, lacing his fingers with mine. I want to pull away, but I can't bring myself to it. It's because of the look in his eyes. Sorrow, and regret, honest regret. 

I drop my eyes down to the rest of his face. He looks so vulnerable and delicate like his whole life is hanging on the outcome of my next move. It's something I haven't seen before.

I look down at our hands and how perfectly they fit in each other. I made a decision that I knew was wrong, and I knew would only make the damage worse in the end. I knew I should have walked away at that moment, I knew staying was going to be so bad for us both in the long run. Fuck, I knew all of this, yet every cell in my body begged for me to stay, and so I did. 

x

- Two Months Earlier -

Delilah Allen

Loneliness. A feeling I've become so familiar with over the past 19 years of my life. It's a feeling that haunts me. A feeling that I fear, but it's a feeling I constantly feel. But one thing that loneliness has thought me up until this point in my life, is how to be strong, alone. 

And luckily I've accepted that this is the way it's supposed to be, some people are just meant to be alone.

I felt loneliness for the first time when I was a 12-year-old girl coming come from school to a house that no longer had a dad. I felt it when my mother decided that men on men were more important than me and my baby brother. I felt it when the only boy I've ever loved, shattered my heart into a million pieces. I felt it when the only person I've ever called a best friend, decided that I wasn't good enough anymore. I felt it when I lost my grandmother. 

And I'm feeling it now. Right here standing in the arms of my mother , in an airport about to leave the only thing I have left.

"Please be careful Lila and don't be naive and don't trust people,  just be safe ." My mother says as she holds my shoulders.