An Unexpected Love | Harry Styles

Chapter Six

When the next morning rolled around, my heart felt kind of heavy. He's mad at me and now some of the world hates me to and they don't even know me. This isn't what was supposed to happen. There's soon a knock on my door and I open it to find Harry standing there looking at me with a concerned look on his face. "You, okay?" He asks me. I lie and shake my head yes.

He's good at reading people because he told me to tell him what's wrong. I explained that I read the stuff the internet is saying about me. He sighs and runs a hand across his face. "I'm sorry Charlie." He apologizes. This must be serious to him because no matter if we were fighting or not, he always called me Charlotte. He knows I hate my name and prefers to be called Charlie.

"I talked with my team about this earlier and they are handling this. Everything is going to be back to normal and we won't be a "couple" anymore."

"You do realize I didn't actually mean what I said yesterday? Dating you isn't the worst thing in the world. It was hard for me to picture us together." I look up at him from my position on the bed.

"I know what you meant; I just think my feelings were a little hurt. That's all." He tells me. I just nod but that didn't make me feel better. We got back on the road and in the next couple of hours he was right. It's like none of this ever happened. Things were cleared up and Harry posted on his social media saying that this was all fake.

The way that he acted about this situation made me think a little. Did he want this to be real? That thought stayed with me for a while. We soon stop at a little store that we pasted because it looked nice, and we wanted to see what they had. It's a small store but there's a lot of people here. Some noticed him and it was cool then we continued browsing. It's coming across like an antique store and I like it.

Old stuff is just so cool to me, and I love seeing it all. "Look at this old watch." He holds it up for me to see and it looks 100 years old.

"It's funny to me that some of the stuff in here are as old as our grandparents." I say. He agrees as we look around. We didn't end up buying anything, but it felt good to look. We got back on the road and all I could think about was how this drive is longer so it's feeling tense between us. He's kind of ignoring me and looking at the passing cars on the highway.

Instead of making things any worse, I just kept my eyes glued to the road and continue our drive. We seemed to be fine at that store back there. Is he still upset with me from earlier? All this disagreeing and small arguments we have makes me take it as a sign we really aren't supposed to be friends. This whole time we've been trying to be friendly with each other. Maybe it's just not in the cards for us.

We spend most of the day on the road, other than stopping for gas,  getting food, or bathroom breaks. It's almost 10pm and I'm tired so I try to find a hotel for us to stay in. We finally find one and book our separate rooms. He only says goodnight before walking away. I roll my eyes and go to my room. It's small and nice as I'm looking around.

I throw my bags on the table before rummaging through them, looking for my toiletries. It felt so good to lay down after getting ready for bed.

My eyes shoot open as I sit up in bed in a panic. The time on the clock says 3:27am. My heart is beating so fast and I'm struggling to catch my breath. I had this really bad dream that felt so real. It's giving me anxiety and I'm finding it hard to breathe. This isn't the first panic attack I've had. My mom caught me having one and she told me to take deep breaths.

I pictured my moms voice telling me to calm down and breathe but it doesn't help not having her here. Her method of soothing me was rubbing circles on my back and it helped. My shaky hands grab my phone and call Harry. After a few rings he finally answers in a sleepy voice. It made me feel bad to wake him up. All he heard is whatever my breathless voice could get out.

The line suddenly went dead and it confused me. Just as I'm about to call him back, there's a loud knocking on my door. I open it and there he stood, concern covering his face. He came inside and had me sit down. He sat next to me and without having to say anything, starting rubbing circles on my back.

"Just take a deep breath. In...and out." He whispers to me. I closed my eyes and did exactly what he said. He rested his head on mine while continuing to rub circles. "Everything's okay, just continue breathing for me." He says. It started helping and my breathing went back to normal. When the panic attack went away I turned to face him.

"Thank you." My voice comes out weak. He stared into my eyes then looked down at my lips for a split second.

"Of course." He spoke, his voice quiet and soft. There's this small part of me that wants to kiss him but the other part won. I pulled away and he cleared his throat. "If everything's good, then I'm gonna head back to bed." He tells me. I nod and watch as he leaves. Now there's a part of me that wishes he would have made the first move. What is wrong with me?

It felt a little hard to sleep the rest of the night but I did and by the next morning we never talked about what happened. We had breakfast together before leaving that hotel. Neither of us brought up the panic attack, the tension we had is because we both wanted that kiss. Today he drove and it gave me some time to rest. I took a two hour nap and woke up to see him driving and eating snacks.

"Good morning sunshine." He smiles as I stretch. It's currently like 2pm.

"Hey," I yawned. He chuckles at me and told me that I sound like I had a good nap. Better than last night. Just as I'm about to speak, my phone starts ringing. It's my dad.

"Hello?" I answer.

"Baby, how are you? Is everything going okay?" He asks me. I fill him in on all the good things that's happened so far. But the guy at that bar in Vegas, Harry and I having these almost kisses, none of that was brought up. He wished me luck and fun on the trip and said to tell Harry he better be taking care of me. I roll my eyes and assure him it's all good.

"You left out a couple of details," Harry smirks.

"Details that if he knew, he would only worry and ask me to come home so yes I did leave them out." I tell him. He shrugs and looks back at the road. My dad is overprotective of me and would ask me to come home so those are things he doesn't need to know. I just can't wait until we get to Texas. The sooner the better.