The Timeline

23.

February 2015:

Harry had thought he knew what it meant, to be furious with someone. Specifically, to be furious with Claire.

He was wrong. Anything he has felt in the past pales in comparison to what he is feeling right now. Before he has merely been annoyed, something that has gone away after a couple of hours, once he has calmed down.

It is no longer like that: the rage he feels against her is so strong it makes his entire heart burn with it, and his bones ache so much it feels like they are being lit up with flames so hot they should make them melt. Instead, the whole ordeal makes him feel electric.

It's been 4 days now, since the last time he has seen her, at his birthday party.

The rage, however, has started earlier than that. She had been avoiding him for a whole month, only texting him once or twice a day, being elusive with him, being vague in their phone calls and video calls, no longer jumping at the opportunity to tell him things. He knows the patterns too well: he has had the same behavior with her whenever he has wanted to distance himself in the past, when he has been too jealous out of his mind to come up with any other type of plans.

The only question mark he has regards the reason she is acting like this with him: he knows she's not jealous of Nadine; if anything, she encourages his relationship with her. And, jealousy is something that is familiar to him, for Claire has never struck him as the jealous kind.

No, the trouble, he knew, resided within himself: the reason she is avoiding him has to do with him. He can't put his finger on it, but he feels that it has to do with him. He wants to know, so he confronts her about it. But unlike the other times, where she has gladly leaned into him to pour her heart out (making him feel almost invincible, knowing he has that type of power, when it comes to her), this time she is wriggling away from his hands like an eel.

He wants to be in her life, he knows that if they cut each other out he will be miserable for an unforeseeable period of time, because he has come to consider her a permanent fixture in his life; but it is exhausting, to keep up with her, and he is so busy at the moment, preparing for his fourth tour with One Direction, and his mind is greatly tried with the troubles inside the band he finds he can't keep up with Claire and her problems.

So, even though he doesn't really want to, he draws back a little, hoping that whatever it is that is keeping her like that against him will fade, or she will tell him in due time. Maybe her friends are right, and sometimes she needs to process things on her own.

Obviously, he sees the way she lies to him when they talk. It makes him annoyed, but he tries to rein it in. It will end.

More than anything, he realizes he needs to see her in person, so he can look her in the eye, face to face, not screen to screen, and hug her and remind her that she can always go to him, if she feels like she has no one else to go to in the world. She has done it once, already, forever changing their relationship and cementing her place inside of Harry's heart. She will do it again.

It's a piece of work, getting her to come to his birthday party, but he manages to mak her go.

And then everything shatters, inside of his mind and outside.

Robert.

It takes him less than two minutes to piece the whole story together, after his brain has finally accepted what he has seen: Claire is with Robert; she has been with Robert; she has been avoiding him because she was with Robert. The same guy he has warned her against, showing, for the first time in her presence, a side of him he considers ugly and has been media trained to keep to himself.