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

Chapter 7

The door of Louis’ office clicked and he looked up with a friendly grin, expecting to see Niall – and his heart sank, the smile dropping from his face. In the doorway, Harry was stood watching him, his halo of curls standing up around his head, freshly washed. His cheeks were slightly flushed and the dark circles were gone from underneath his eyes, and he looked warily at Louis, but with an odd kind of defiance, sticking his chin out as if he was looking for a fight.

 Louis’ hand slipped under the desk and he brushed his fingers against the little yellow button for reassurance.

 “You’ve been avoiding me,” Harry said in a low voice.

“I haven’t. I can’t see everyone every single day, you know; there are a lot of people around here.” But Louis couldn’t meet the scrutiny of Harry’s hard green eyes without having to duck his head in shame.

“That’s funny, because you seem to be finding plenty of time to hang out with Niall.” Harry eyed him accusingly.

“Niall has been helping me with my paperwork,” Louis said patiently.

“I could do that.”

“Thanks for the offer, but there’s really no need. Niall has a handle on it. This place is pretty organized now, as you can see.” Louis gestured across the office, which was remarkably tidy, considering that he was hardly the most systematic person around.

“Why don’t you want me?” Harry asked reproachfully.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Louis said briskly.

“Look at me.”

“It’s hard to look and write at the same time,” Louis answered mildly, neatly scribbling out a mistake and correcting it in his best handwriting, swirling the letters with elaborate care that he usually wouldn’t have bothered with. Still, it was a welcome distraction.

“Then stop writing!” Harry cried impatiently. He strode forwards and plucked the pen from Louis’ fingers, and hurled it to the floor.

Louis allowed a polite frown to crease his forehead for a few seconds, then pulled a biro out of a pot of pencils on his desk and continued neatly copying out his notes. It was petty, but he felt an odd satisfaction from the gesture. He was almost tempted to stick out his tongue.

“What have I done?” Harry demanded despairingly. “I thought we were going to get on. I don’t understand why you’ve suddenly decided to hate me.”

“I don’t hate you. But believe me, at the moment I don’t like you much. You’re kind of intimidating me. If you honestly want to talk about this, I’d appreciate it if you calmed down a bit first.” Louis looked pointedly at the chair.

Muttering darkly about where Louis could stick his chair, Harry sat in it and then scowled at him.

 For a few minutes, they both listened to the sound of the biro scratching against paper. Eventually, the lines on Harry’s forehead smoothed out as his frown collapsed into a quiet, blank expression, and he watched the pen moving across the paper and Louis’ handwriting forming rows of deep blue letters, blue curling against white. His stiff posture relaxed, and he sat in silence, watching and waiting.

 Louis looked up. “There,” he said softly, “maybe we can talk about this like adults now.”

“That might be nice.”

“If you hadn’t been so determined to sulk for so long, we could have started a lot earlier.”

“I wasn’t sulking!”