Call Me a Thief (Harry Styles)

22. Accident

Wow!!! I feel so horrible that it has taken this long to update! I'm insane and busy and crammed with school and I had tremendous writers block and I haven't been able to bring myself to write. But now I have.

And my little project is almost coming to a close!! One more chapter and an epilogue is all I expect there will be. But of course that is subject to change.

This chapter is also subject to change; I was so excited to get it uploaded that I haven't exactly edited fully for content.

THANK YOU all for reading!!

~Rhonda

Chapter 22 – Accident

Beth-

Everything was going to be fine, I supposed. The morning lights glared back at me from the window, my office seeming especially tiny today. I needed to leave; needed to get back to my hotel (my home for now) with Harry. I needed to be near him. I yearned for safety and I yearned for being able to provide for his safety while he was here. I was also strangely worried about him.

I will never know what came over me the other night in my room with him. I was honestly almost ready to give myself to him, even though I knew it was wrong and not what a Christian relationship would look like. It wouldn't be a satisfying start to whatever would come between the two of us from here on out. Giving in so easy would make things harder for me later, even forgetting about the guilt that would plague me. It would mean I would be another one of those girls, another one he couldn't wait to be with physically. And I knew he'd been with tons of those.

But aside from those feelings, my desire for him, I couldn't believe my own actions, even as I was moving away from him. The kiss was too much. I had closed my eyes, and as soon as I did, I knew it wasn't Harry I was kissing anymore. It was Ross.

And even when I opened my eyes, it was still Ross.

The similarities, I knew, were hard to get away from. Their hands were very similar in size, huge hands that could crush and break and destroy. Hands that could also protect and defend. It was growing increasingly hard to distinguish the two, the more intimate I became with Harry. Their hair color was the same dark brown, and even its texture was similar: curly, but soft in a way that made my fingers tingle to touch. They weren't the same person, I knew. Harry was gentle, kind, safe. Ross was on the other end of the spectrum – dangerous, brutal, demeaning. Couple the attempted rape with the physical similarities of the two polar opposites and there you have my situation: an inability to distinguish the two. I feared it would prove to be a challenge throughout the rest of my relationship with Harry.

I had yet to hear from him this morning, even though I knew he was still in the area. He wouldn't leave without saying goodbye, and he'd promised to be here until we got things sorted out with Ross. Detective Rhodes had told me to call later today to see how things were going with the case. But I was sure it would be more of the same news – a warrant for his arrest but no leads on where he might be. Maybe not even that yet.

Rhonda insisted that I continue with my work on the newspaper, and I would be working even harder and more often than before, if she had it her way. Diving into my work – it's exactly what Rhonda would have done if something tragic happened to her. But I'm a different person, and more changes had come about in the last few months than I'd seen my whole life. I couldn't bring myself to divulge so quickly like she would. But I was trying, and I guess that was enough.

I twiddled my fingers over the keyboard at my desktop, smiling as I thought of the way my articles had been doing recently. It seemed like all eyes were on me after the gas station incident, and even though I knew I'd been doing the right thing by saving that man, I knew that the extra popularity was even better for me than what I expected. I knew I could publish just about anything nowadays and make the paper staff proud, and I wasn't about to squander that power. I'd done stories on poverty and charities and love and fellowship... and not to mention the story I'd finished about church, when I'd been so close to Christa. All of these were making lovely additions to the paper.