Norah [H. S.]

prologue

fifteen months after

She laughed lightly, shaking her head at his words. "You're crazy, Styles."

"You love me for it." A cheeky, yet sweet smile formed on Harry's lips,  gently caressing his soft features with the round cheeks, big emerald eyes and plump pink lips.

His eyebrows furrowed as he drew circle after circle into the sand while the waves kissed the shore gently.

O, what kind of love that was. Wave after wave, the shore would send the sea back to where it belonged - and wave after wave, the sea would still return.

"I do", she admitted lightly with a small shrug of her shoulders, not uncomfortable in the slightest and as if she was saying 'I'm hungry' and not something as meaningful as 'I love you'.

She always had that about her, that otherness. Always took things either too seriously or not seriously at all. Every step she took on the surface of the earth was light, and every word she spoke was even lighter. Never did she hurt anyone,  never put herself before others.

She truly was a piece of art, he thought. Her character only added up to her outer beauty and made it shine even brighter. With her tall, slim figure and well proportioned body,  her wavy, brown hair, oval face, stunning blue eyes, high cheek bones, plump peachy colored lips, with her everything, she was close to perfect.

What brought her even closer to perfection were her flaws - she didn't have a slim waist or stunningly thin legs,  she wasn't just skin and bones. She was unpredictable,  at times jumping from one mood to another in a matter of seconds. She cried herself to sleep if she felt like it, thought too much and stood looking in the mirror for long enough to find every single imperfection on her body. She was insecure. And she loved with all her heart.

"Harry", she said, hesitantly all of a sudden. Her slim, large hands with the slim, long fingers traced lines on his leg.

His eyes widened.

"I -" She never got to finish the sentence. Her hand pressed to her chest as her white, too big shirt drained with dark blood, a slight gasp escaping her lips that were forming an 'o' and then turned into a scary smile as she closed her eyes forever.

"Faith!"

Harry's heart was racing as he shot up in bed, bathed in his own sweat for the four-hundred-and-fifty-second time in a row. He pressed his hand to his chest.

His dark curls were glued to his forehead while tears stained his unusually pale cheeks. His lips were white as snow.

Harry's breath went uneven, too fast and too unsteady to be healthy,  just like his heartbeat.

He swung his legs out of bed and got up, shaky on his legs as he walked into the kitchen to make himself some coffee only in his tight boxershorts.

He had hoped sleeping in only boxershorts would help with the sweating, at least. Unfortunately, it didn't.

Every night he would have at least one nightmare, and they always had the same content: Faith's death. However, its cause would be a different one for every night. Only the words they spoke on her last day would be the same.

That night was the first night that he dreamt about the real cause of her death.

She had just turned 21 when she died, and 21 was too young to die. They always talked about everything, but for whatever reason, she always held a single secret. This was also why he never knew why she got shot. He wasn't there with her either, and he only got a call that she was in the hospital because they had been engaged, otherwise he wouldn't have known until a month later when he should have returned from the world tour they were on at that time.