Harry Styles, a secret service agent working for British intelligence is tasked with finding the killer after a series of brutal but calculated murders across Europe. His mind is sharp, he's smart, arrogant and works with a precision that leaves no...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Winter.
My eyes opened.
It was always the same— the beeping, the sterile smell, and a white hospital gown.
For a long time, I didn't move. I just stared up at the ceiling. Watching the unfamiliar cracks in the tiles. The lights were softer than usual, like they'd dimmed them for me, but they were still too bright. I blinked against the white and let my eyes blur again, unsure if the blur was because of how hazy I felt or because of the tears that already began to build.
My throat was dry. Nausea caused my stomach to turn. It curled inside of me, this dull, constant feeling. It weighed on me, like it was keeping me to the bed. At least they gave me a bed this time, instead of that same, metal table. I didn't want to look around to take in my surroundings. It always made me feel worse.
The monitor continued to beep, my pulse. He always liked to stand and watch as he ripped the life for me. Maybe this was finally it, where he brought me to die like he'd been waiting for.
I didn't call out like I sometimes did. Because he liked it, he liked to make me cry and scream and beg to be let go, to not go through with another punishment. And I didn't have the energy this time, I didn't want to beg for him to let me go because I thought finally it could be time to just let him take me, kill me, ruin me. Whatever it is he was going to do.
I tried to move, I didn't know why, because as expected, my wrist was in a cuff, locking me in place. So I couldn't escape even if I wanted to. The small effort of moving my arm made my stomach twist again, a sharp and bitter pain that made me taste bile at the back of my throat.
My body felt like it had been wrung out, used and destroyed, like almost every part of life had been taken from me. I felt heavy and hollow. So heavy.
I closed my eyes again, not to go back to sleep. I could never sleep in here. But I just wanted everything to disappear for a moment, as if I could pretend I was anywhere else.
But I had no place I wanted to go. Even my imagination didn't want to go anywhere else, there was no place safe, no place nice. And maybe, after all, this was where I belonged. It's what I'd always been taught, I would never be able to escape. I'd always end up back here, under his control.
A small noise escaped me, a whine from the back of my throat as another wave of nausea passed through me. The tears that had been building at the back of my throat began to slowly run down my cheeks, falling from me slowly, I heard the dampness hit the pillow beneath my head.
"Winter?"
A voice, soft, familiar.
The weight that had been pinning me down to the bed suddenly disappeared.
My eyes opened again, and it took a second to focus.
Harry.
Harry, with his hair tied back into a loose bun on the back of his head, his eyes bloodshot, rimmed red like he'd been crying, or hadn't slept at all. Harry with marks from fabric creases on his cheek, from my lap. He'd been resting on my lap. Until now, where he was up on his feet at the top of the bed, looking again like he was either going to cry or throw up.
