Captive Of Lies Book 2(Imprisoned in my Heart trilogy...Larry)

Chapter 15

“Lou? Louis!” Harry clung almost hysterically to his phone, afraid that he might shatter the plastic, but unable to let go, because that would feel too much like giving up. The nasal sound of the empty dialling tone rang in his ears, tainting the memory of Louis’ voice, but he couldn’t tear it away from him because at least it was a reminder that they had just spoken. It took him a good ten minutes to peel himself away from the phone, his lower lip trembling as he closed his eyes and hung up, with a lot of effort. He had to spend a long time persuading himself that there was no way Louis was going to be able to ring him back, and even after that, he quite literally had to force himself to put the phone down.

Once he’d done that, he realized how red and swollen his eyes were, and, determined not to look weak, he ended up dragging himself into the shower and turning it on at the highest possible temperature so that the water pouring down on him was so hot that it felt like it was scalding his skin. It splashed all over every inch of him, leaving his skin angry red so that it was the exact same colour as his eyes, and Harry hung on to his elbows as he felt the water cascading across his shoulders. Eventually when he dragged himself out of the shower to face the world, feeling like one more drop of water falling onto him might break him into pieces, he discovered that someone had left a pile of clothes on the chair beside his bed. He didn’t know whose clothes they were, but they fitted him all right; selecting a plain white shirt and a pair of black chinos, he appreciated that the owner of the clothes was only a little larger than him so the outfit was only slightly baggy. His hair hung dripping down his back, sopping wet and bedraggled, the water having shocked all the waves out of it so that it only curled slightly at the tips. He never really realized how long it was until it got wet, and then it almost reached his shoulders. Harry rubbed his eyes, then after a moment’s hesitation, picked Louis’ jumper off the bed and pulled it over his head. Who cared what people thought? It was the closest thing he had to having Louis’ arms around him, and it smelled like Louis, and it calmed him down a little when he felt like he was going insane…what did it matter if people thought it was a ‘painfully gay jumper’, as someone had cattily whispered as he passed them in the corridor the day before?

He was surprised to find that when he ventured out of his room he was directed towards the room that Kylie had taken him to the day before – could he have missed breakfast and be forced to learn how to shoot on an empty stomach? – but when he arrived, he discovered that the room was filled with people helping themselves to McDonalds breakfasts. Most were sat  cross-legged on the floor, several sprawled awkwardly on bean bags, and the elite few, Kylie included, actually had a chair, although there were only five or six people lucky enough for that. One of the people seated on a bean bag was the man with the dragon tattooed on his head, and he was talking to Niall, who amazingly seemed to have forgotten his food; he was staring open mouthed in awe at the man, and as he reached up to poke more of the breakfast into his mouth, he missed, and smeared it across his chin instead. He didn’t seem to notice. Harry hurried over to them, glad to have a couple of familiar faces, and sat cross-legged on the floor beside Niall. Without tearing his gaze away from the tattooed man, Niall shoved a bag of food in Harry’s direction and continued giving amazed looks to the man in front of him.

“So I got him in a headlock, kind of like this,” the man said, seizing the guy sitting next to him around the neck and twisting him almost upside down to demonstrate, “and I said ‘let’s put it this way; if you don’t hand it over, then in approximately ten seconds you’re so gonna wish you had.”

“Oooh!” Niall said excitedly, and what little bit of food he’d managed to transfer into his mouth abruptly fell out of it, dropping onto the floor. Harry felt a little bit sick. “Then what happened?”

Seemingly pleased by the attention, the guy continued, “Well, he wasn’t giving it up without a fight – so I grabbed my gun, and I stuck it here –” he picked up a breakfast roll and all but shoved it up his friend’s backside, “and then I went ‘okay, then, how’s this: give it to me now, or I’m gonna shoot this last bullet right up your a –”