Exposure • h.s.

CHAPTER34.

My heart is hammering so hard against my chest that, every now and then, I'm genuinely afraid it might punch straight through my rib cage. My throat is dry, my stomach is churning; if I sliced open a vein with a scalpel right now, I doubt a single drop of blood would come out.

The inside of the van—an equally unusual and uncomfortable mode of transportation—looks to me like the walls of a fortress that's just survived an attack.

Harry is sitting across from me. He wipes the sweat from his forehead with the wool beanie he'd had pulled low over it and scans our surroundings with the sharp focus of a sniper lining up a target.

"Go," he tells the driver.

The word has barely left his mouth before the vehicle jolts forward, the engine roaring as the driver floors it.

Being around Harry is like being trapped on an endless roller coaster. When everything is going well, when he has it all under control, we climb higher and higher, and with it comes that intoxicating sense of control and power.

But the climbs are constantly broken up by sudden, violent drops—moments when I cling to my life the way I would the safety bar of some creaking, haunted amusement-park ride.

I don't think I've ever felt as alive as I do today.

If someone had told me back in college that one day I'd be taking enormous, greedy bites out of life in the company of Harry Styles, I probably would've laughed my ass off.

And yet, here we are.

The city streaks past the windows. Buildings blur into shapeless, anonymous slabs of concrete. Every now and then, a glimpse of ocean breaks up the skyline, though those flashes are becoming rarer—which must mean we're heading back toward the center of the city. Tall palm trees stretch upward like hands brushing against the roof of the sky.

Everything is so unbelievably confusing.

The people around me speak in riddles, act like every other sentence is classified information, and it's starting to drive me insane. I'm slowly accepting that there has to be something much bigger than me behind all these strange events and loaded silences.

I'm sure Harry is so obsessed with making some immaculate, earth-shattering return to music that he'd happily rehearse his facial microexpressions before appearing in front of a camera.

Then there's the whole curse thing. Harry disappearing for weeks at a time. The bizarre events he attends, crawling with predators he apparently has no choice but to surround himself with.

At this point, I'd bet everything I own that he and the guys are involved in something seriously shady.

And ever since I started working for him, apparently I am too.

I push the thought away without really letting it go. If I actually stopped to think about any of this for more than a few seconds, I'd probably have a panic attack, and now would be a spectacularly inconvenient time for one.

Thoughts crash into each other inside my head, all within the span of a few seconds.

I turn to Harry, who, despite the fact that we are the only two passengers involved in this absurd escape, has made a point of sitting as far away from me as possible.

I try to focus on myself. On individual parts of my body.

My feet first.

Then my calves.

My knees.

I think about why I'm here in the first place: to manage Harry's image and help him pull off his great personal redemption.