Love Hurts

Chapter 6

“What is this?!” my father roared, slapping down numerous magazines on his desk between us.

I looked up at him, slightly terrified and extremely confused. “What?”

He shoved the glossy pages at me and I saw, on the front cover of each, a picture of me kissing Logan being shown from various angles. “Crap,” I muttered throwing them back onto his desk.

The headlines all read things like:

“ABRIELLA COWELL DATES PREP?”

“SIMON COWELL’S DAUGHTER ON DATE”

“WHO’S THE HUNK WITH COWELL’S HEART?”

“This is ridiculous. It was one date!” I protested.

“Well, you better call this boy in here. For two reasons. One, I want to know exactly whom my daughter went on a date with and didn’t tell me about, and two, we have to figure out what to do about this.”

“Crap,” I muttered again, pulling out my phone to text Logan.

Soon enough I got a response from him that he could be here in an hour, right now he was at a friend’s football game.

“It’ll be about an hour, he’s busy right now,” I told my father, who was already busy with paperwork and other things. He waved his hand dismissively, letting me know it was fine.

Since Simon was obviously busy, I slipped out of his office and headed down the way to the studio both the boys of One Direction and I often shared. The light to signal whether or not the room was being used was off, so I opened the door and collapsed down onto one of the sofas with my head in my hands.

Trust my life to make a simple date ten times more complicated.

The door flew open and I jerked my head up to see the noisy One Direction boys piling in.

“Abriella!” I was greeted with various obnoxiously loud versions of my name. I lifted ne hand in greeting and flicked my fingers at them.

“What’s up? I thought today was your day off!” Louis plopped down right next to me, instinctively sliding his arm around my shoulders.

“It was,” I muttered. “But something came up.”

“What?” Zayn asked.

“Um, the paparazzi. What else?”

“Oh, God, what did you do this time?” Harry asked exasperatedly.

“Nothing that any other teenage girl doesn’t do!” I exclaimed.

Suspicion clouded over Niall and Liam’s eyes. “What, exactly, is that?” Liam asked tightly.

I chuckled, knowing that he had probably jumped either to drugs or sex. With a dramatic flourish, I wailed, “I went out on a date!”

Four of the five boys visibly relaxed and I laughed to myself. Oddly enough, Niall was still tense.

“Oooh, who’s the lucky boy?” Louis prodded my side.

“His name’s Logan. He’s on his way in because the paps got a picture of us and now we’re plastered all over the front page of about seven different magazines.”

“I better meet this kid,” Liam called over his shoulder as he began to adjust the sound system.

“Me too,” the rest of the boys began clamoring. Except Niall.

Niall ran a hand through his blonde hair, now styled in a sort of short quiff all the lads seemed to have adopted at one point or another, except Harry. His breath came out in a  short, shaky huff and he dropped his hand before whipping around and stalking out of the room.