Carry On {A Harry Styles Love Story}

6.0 ; Plastic Hearts.

6.0 ; plastic hearts.

❝ i’m building a place, something amazing,

just for the sake of saving us

from under the sun.

two plastic hearts with nowhere to run. ❞

☆ h a r r y ★

“My parents are dead.”

Her... They... Dead?

“Wh-What?” was my brilliant response. I turned around to face her fully, forcing her small hand to fall away from the back of my shirt.

Her caramel eyes were as wide as ever now, swirling with surprise and apprehension. For some reason, she looked just as shocked as I felt. “My parents. They’re... Dead.”

“You mean... You’re...” I couldn’t even bring myself to say the word ‘orphan,’ let alone repeat what she had just said. Dead. That’s so... Final. So permanent. “Is that why you have no home?” I asked softly instead.

She only nodded.

“When did it... Happen?” I winced. I felt so callous just for talking about it, no matter how carefully I tried to choose my words.

“Just a few months,” she whispered. She wouldn’t make eye contact now, resolutely staring at the center of my chest. “It’s why I have so much luggage with me. It’s pretty much everything I own. I’ve been kind of just... Wandering around. I don’t... I don’t really know where I’m going.”

My heart literally ached for her. I tried to imagine being in her shoes, but I couldn’t even bear the thought of losing my mum. I loved her so dearly. How must Jersey have felt, then?

“Don’t you have any relatives somewhere? Someone that can take you in?” She shook her head slowly. “There must be someone, anyone,” I insisted, feeling a bit of desperation bubble up. She shook her head again, more firmly. I fell silent, completely at a loss.

“I have no one,” she whispered so softly that I almost didn’t hear her. “No family anywhere. Nobody who can take me in. No one.” Finally, she raised her gaze to my face. I was struck speechless by the raw pain and sorrow I found in her eyes. What the hell did someone so sweet do to deserve this kind of suffering? The answer to that came quite easily: nothing. She did nothing to deserve this. I knew for a fact that she didn’t deserve this, any of it.

Big eyes stared into mine, filled with fear and a muted kind of horror. “Harry, I... I don’t know what to do.” This realization seemed to strike some nerve in her because suddenly, she started speaking faster than before, the words frantically gushing from her mouth in a frenzy. “Oh my God, what am I going to do? I thought that maybe if I just kept moving, I’d find a place, somewhere I can belong, but the truth is I’m going nowhere. Nowhere, Harry...” Her voice broke on my name, her eyes now glistening with unshed tears.

With no hesitation, I reached forward and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her warm body flush against mine—the only way I knew how to comfort her. At this point, I didn’t even care one bit that she still wasn’t wearing any trousers. Any lingering thoughts of that had flown right out of my head the moment we had begun to speak seriously. We stood there for what felt like an eternity, locked in an almost desperate embrace, until there was a crash in the other room, forcing us to jerk apart. We followed the noise and peered into the living room curiously, only finding the lads intensely watching a soccer game. Niall was sprawled on the floor, clearly having been pushed off the armchair by someone. My guess was Lou, mostly because he was in the middle of cheering loudly down at the blonde.