Fighting the Stars - A Jack Harries Fanficton

Chapter 28

Jack gave a playful roll of the eyes and chuckled as I slid my Nat Cole CD into his car radio. I had burned it myself, considering CDs were far before his time. Although I’ve always fancied the idea of records. They would be so much more difficult to lose than CDs, and even harder to replace. Kind of like important people in your life.

Difficult to lose, hard to replace.

I hummed to L-O-V-E, which was one my absolute favorite Nat Cole classics. Jack couldn’t help but give a cheeky grin as I swayed with the music. Even the blood in my cheeks became embarrassed and chose to hide itself, leaving my face pale white. 

This was my first time returning to London since the charity gala a few weeks back. It was also my first time coming without James since we visited Bristol for the first time. And I knew that London would no longer feel the same for me. It was just a matter of whether that was good or bad.

I’ve been trying so hard to forget my past, but I just can’t. Every time I close my eyes I see his burning eyes, his hand making my lip bleed. I force my mind to wonder elsewhere, but somehow I always get back to those memories. Even when he’s gone I always go back.

I obviously understand that I’m not going to forget about him within the week. How do you forget someone who gave you so much to remember? And maybe there’s a part of me still holding on to the past, that doesn’t want to let go of all the bittersweet memories.  

I grazed my middle finger over the stitches on the top of my head. They were among some of the last scars James had given me, physically anyways. In a perverse way, I was glad for the stitches, glad it would show. What’s the point in just being hurt on the inside? It should bloody well show.

“You alright, love?” asked Jack, glancing from the road to me. 

“Getting there,” I answered truthfully. I made the conscious choice to be finished with lying. It’s what got me here in the first place. Jack reached over and grabbed my hand, planting a soft kiss on my knuckles.

Then I thought, why do we as humans only tend to remember the painful things? What’s left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars. 

I made a mental note to remember this very moment, when Jack’s lips touched my skin. That would be a nice thought to go back to when the pain started boiling up again.

“I hope they don’t follow us,” I said after a moment, “the press.”

Ever since news of James’s death all forms of media personnel have been tailing Jack and I. I couldn’t even walk outside without having my photo snapped. I was used to mild paparazzi when James and I would go out in London, but it was nothing like this.

Our story had become the hot topic of the business world and was making headlines in the entertainment industry as well. There were news segments telling everything from the beginning to the end. But they only knew what they heard from police reports and rumors. They only highlighted the negative moments from our relationship, completely skipping over the year we spent madly in love.

The fact that my name had made it into newspapers and television broadcasts terrified me. Luckily they left Jack out of it. They requested an interview, but he politely declined, for the both of us. We both knew that his fans would have been off their rocker if they saw he was a part of this ‘Heir to the Throne’ scandal. And any chance we had at a normal relationship would disappear.

I was growing extremely tired of having my thoughts and feelings written for me by someone else. Nobody knows what goes on in my mind. Nobody even imagines what causes me pain, not what makes me lose sleep. How can anybody saw they know how I feel? The only one around here who is me, is ME.