One Chance: a Ted Sweeran fanfic

Ch 11

Ed's POV

It happened slowly, as if I was moving through water, the current pushing up against me. The current wasn't strong enough, though, I was. The way she smiled, the way she laughed at all my jokes, the way she had been broken and desperately needed someone to lean on.

We had both been talking about childhood memories, since those were really the only memories I had at this point. I had talked about being the odd one out at my school, my brother, discovering beer and fast food at seventeen, relinquishing the chances of abs at an early age. She told me that I was different from the guys she had dated (present spouse included) while laughing hysterically with me, but that she liked it. She started telling me about how she had first met Harry, and how they had fallen in love and gotten married almost right away.

"It was perfect, more than perfect actually, I mean I had always loved One Direction, but whenever I saw a picture of Harry, my heart skipped a beat like no other thing could," she started, seemingly in a blithe utopia of her memories. "When we started dating, I told myself not to do anything rash just because he was famous, but at that time it seemed like the best thing was to get married sooner than anyone would have liked. And look where that got me."

"Well, what changed?" I asked, hungry for more proof that Harry was the traitor I thought he was.

"One Direction. A few months into our marriage they broke up as a band. Of course we had talked about this, I had made sure that he would be okay when the band broke up, and he told me-" she seemed to choke on the memory, suddenly saddened at the recollection of a happier time, "he told me that I was all he could ever need in his life, and of course I knew that the band break up would be hard, but the way he handled it when it actually happened was so much worse than I had thought. He became obsessed, made sure he knew what the boys were doing at all times of the day, booked gigs and more gigs trying to get his big break as a solo artist. He changed, he had no more time for me." The way her blue eyes shone into mine at that moment sent shivers down my body, and in that moment everything happened at once. I put down my coffee and leaned in to kiss her, closing my eyes, ready for her. Then it happened. Our lips collided and I connected to her in a way that felt like the stars themselves had aligned perfectly for us star-crossed lovers. I ruffled her soft blonde curls in a way I had felt like I had done a million times, embracing her as I might have done with another before.

Maybe that was because I had done it a million times. But it wasn't Cara's angelic curls I was remembering- it was Taylor's. I opened my eyes as the memories flooded back, as if the barricade of my injury had broken and the water was crashing through. I remembered it all: writing a song with Taylor on her trampoline, looking out into a crowd of thousands of people but only really being aware of her, getting married and our honeymoon, then making love the night we had gotten back. That was it. The child inside Taylor's womb was mine, and here I was making out to another woman when I had promised Taylor I would be faithful to her all of her life-in health and in sickness.

I pulled my lips away, and stumbling back out of my seat, I tried stuttering an apology to a very confused Cara. I threw open the coffee shop door and ran out onto the street-desperate to find Taylor. In that moment my cell phone rang-it was George.

"Ed, Taylor's in the hospital-and I'm not sure if she's going to make it."