21 Murders | Harry Styles AU (discontinued)

LIII. Limerence

limerence (noun): the state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation

PLEASE READ THE AUTHOR'S NOTE! xx

Harry's POV

"Mum?"

It feels like all the air has been vacuumed from my chest all at once. My eyes bounce back and forth between her very confused ones, as they take me in from head to toe and try to make light of our newly encountered situation. I am at a loss for words as I blink rapidly, trying to somehow remove the mess of my reality but failing miserably as my thoughts rage inside of me.

Part of me wants to engulf her in a bear hug and make up for all the years that I have gone without her loving smile and words, but then the other part of me, the more rational and realistic side, is begging me to step back and remember this is the same woman that I thought was dead for almost my entire life.

"Y-You're alive?" my voice comes out shaken, a good representation of how I feel staring into her eyes after so long. Those same eyes, the ones that would comfort me as a child, but now they are filled with worry and confusion unlike the emotion I would hope to receive from her.

This amount of uncertainty is swallowing up every part of my brain and making this the hardest thing to take in. I mean, what do you say to the woman who left your life for twenty years? Especially after thinking she was dead? This has to be a sick vision. I watched her die. I watched them shoot her mercilessly.

"Harry, I can explain." Instead of muffled sobs or sighs of relief, she looks at me with cold, distant eyes. The woman I once knew nowhere in sight. I drop my eyes to her ripped blue jeans and tight shirt, her dark hair combed and pinned into a ponytail. "You've grown so much since I saw you," Anne says, but I don't think she means to speak aloud.

"I-I," I stutter. "I don't know what to say."

When she takes long strides up to me and grasps both palms on my shoulders at a wide span, I see that not only am I the one who is finding it difficult to speak aloud. Her eyes search my face silently, and I wish I could read her mind and understand what she is thinking about.

The longer I let myself stare into her eyes, the more pain I feel deep in the pit of my stomach. It isn't the same pain that I felt when she left, but worse. Worse because know I know that she chose to stay away from me and wasn't forced to. Worse because I see the look in her eyes that declares without her permission, that she didn't want me around.

I reach out and grip her wrists in my hands, making sure I am not insane and seeing illusions, before dropping them down to her sides. She frowns at my dismissal but lets them be anyway. "Come sit down, Harry," she suggests, nodding toward the couch that I hadn't noticed before. It sounds so strange to hear her speak my name and I know I am breaking inside every time she does.

I want to be overjoyed that she is here and happy that I finally get an answer to all my prayers, but now that a bit of reality has set in, I find myself raging and pissed off. "What kind of mother do you think you are?" I yell with a distant tone. "Letting your only son think his mother is dead for twenty years!" It's hard to be grateful when so much hate has swallowed you entirely.

"Harry, I can explain everything," her tone weakens and I just now notice the tiredness behind her features. The small bags under her eyes and crinkles by her lips tell me time hasn't been pleasant, but I guess she should consider herself lucky considering she was apparently dead all this time.

"You don't get to explain shit to me, Anne!" I fume down at her, throwing a pillow from behind me to the floor. The white spreading to the surface of my knuckles compared to the brown leather only gives me more reason to lash out and destroy this house of lies. "For years I thought you were dead, Anne. Twenty years! Twenty!"