Imprisoned in my Heart Book 1 (Imprisoned in my heart trilogy...Larry)

Chapter 6

Louis hadn’t suffered from insomnia since childhood. He’d always been so bouncy and energetic that sleep seemed like a waste of time – why bother shutting your eyes when there were so many other much more interesting things you could be doing? You only live once. So while everyone else was wasting their time sleeping, Louis was up doing fun stuff. It got to be a habit of his; even when he was exhausted, his eyes wouldn’t close, and he ended up lying and staring at the ceiling for hours on end. Sleep never seemed to come.

The problem had been solved years ago, but that night as he lay in bed, the only thing that came to him were thoughts, and sleep gave him a wide berth. It was frustrating to be awake when he just wanted to escape for a few hours. His head buzzed with confusion and his eyes wouldn’t stay closed. Eventually, he resorted to extremes and went to find some paracetamol, and eventually, drugged up to the eyeballs with medicine he didn’t need, he fell asleep.

When he was driving like a maniac at five minutes to eleven the next morning, battling through the work traffic and struggling to focus through a haze of exhaustion and cold medicine, he decided that the next time he had a group psychology session with the prisoners, he was going to give them all a very long and boring lecture about drug abuse. So cold medicine was strong enough to let you sleep through the alarm! Who knew?

As he staggered through the doorway, a couple of people stared at him and he thought he heard a few people muttering, but he wasn’t in the mood to listen. It was only his third day and already he’d made somebody cry, drowned the plant in his office and turned up three hours late for work. Well, he was definitely making a good start.

“Louis!”

Louis growled and didn’t look around. He wasn’t in the mood for Liam today.

“Louis! Will you wait for a second? I need a word!”

“I’m three hours late, in case you hadn’t noticed. I really don’t have time for a chat.”

“It’ll only take a second.”

Louis stubbornly didn’t turn around. “I’m running late on all of my appointments, I have paperwork to organise and my plant is dead, so excuse me for not wanting to stop and talk to you!”

The plant part made Liam’s mouth twitch, but he forced himself to keep a straight face. “Louis, I really need to ask you something.”

Louis whirled around. “What?” he snapped. “So I overslept! I’m sorry, okay!”

“Oh, no, it’s not that. We’ve all done that.” Liam shook his head and smiled. “On more than one occasion. It’s nothing to do with that.”

“Oh.” All of a sudden Louis felt pretty stupid, and guilty for being so rude. “Sorry.”

“No problem. It’s about Harry.”

Louis felt his insides freeze with worry. “Harry Styles?” he asked casually.

His attempt at nonchalance made Liam roll his eyes. “Is there any other Harry?”

“Um…no, I guess there isn’t. What about Harry?”

“He’s been acting kind of funny ever since he spoke to you yesterday; I was wondering if you knew anything.”

“Me? Nope. No, I don’t. I don’t know anything.” Falling over his words, Louis knew he sounded fake and Liam wasn’t buying it.

“You’ve seen the kid; he never shows he’s upset. He just…sits there. He smiles and he acts like nothing fazes him. For him to let people see that he’s down…it must be something pretty serious.”