The Baker Boy (Harry Styles) Book 1

Chapter 18

Harry’s POV

 I watch as she runs off, the sting of my cheek not nearly as painful as the tightness in my chest. This past week had been horrible. I’d spent the entire night looking for her but hadn’t found her anywhere. When I’d gone to her house the next day to make sure she’d gotten home, I’d found nobody there. I’d sat on the doorstep the entire day. When Mr Wakefield finally got home he would barely even look at me. The normal warm light in his eyes replaced with steel I’d never seen before. He had walked right past me into the house, leaving me sitting on the doorstep. He had refused to tell me where she was, no matter how long I begged, banging on the door. I’d even gone to the hospital every day after school to see if maybe she’d be there visiting Caellum. She never showed.

 I began wondering as the week wore on if the rumours were true. If she really had transferred schools. The thing that really got me was how happy Luke seemed to be about it all. He had been walking around school all week gloating about it, that big obnoxious smirk on his face. It was all I could do not to punch it off at this point. I’d started avoiding him in class. Whenever I was able to get away from him I was. I’d started eating lunch in the library, taking different paths around the school, picking up extra shifts to avoid social obligations. The fact that I was picking up extra shifts at the bakery to avoid Luke was similar to jumping from the pan into the fire. I could tell Mr Wakefield was doing everything in his power to get me to quit since he couldn’t fire me for this. I was doing all the jobs that no one wanted. The gruelling, disgusting, jobs that normally more than one person worked on together. But I did them. Each one. In silence. I deserved everything he threw at me. Every time I looked at him I felt the same guilt sweep over me from the moment I saw her run out of the house, Luke standing behind her triumphantly. His warning echoed in my head, “If you hurt her…”. Well I’d done that. If the way I was feeling was any inclination to her’s I wondered how she was alive.

I’d just about given up hope of ever seeing her again, of having the chance to apologize, when she walked through the door at the bell. She looked exhausted. Practically dead on her feet. The guilt knowing I’d done this to her washed over me again. It hurt to see her like this but at the same time, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I silently begged her to look over but it was as if she could hear me and was absolutely refusing to listen. Not that I blamed her, I wouldn’t listen to me either.

I snap back to reality as I hear the bell signalling the end of class and I realize I’d spent the entire hour out in the hall. I’m knocked forward as the hall begins to fill with people walking to their next class.

“Dude where’ve you been?” a voice asks with a laugh as a hand slaps my shoulder. “You’ve been missing all week.” I turn to see Luke there, his arm around my shoulder as he drags me down the hall on the way to our next class. I feel my fist clench, my nails digging into my palm as I bite back the urge to hit that stupid grin off his face.

“Did you hear? She’s already left” he says with a laugh. “Whatever you said to her after you two ran out of class must have worked. She’s gone, and I don’t think she’ll be coming back. We broke her” A shriek fills the hall as Luke slams against the locker.

“What the hell mate?” he asks, pulling his hand away from his nose, blood on his hand. I look down at my hand that was still clenched in a fist, now with traces of red on the knuckles. Instead of feeling guilty about hitting him though, a feeling of satisfaction runs through me and my fist makes contact with his eye. This time he didn’t take it so lightly. I wince as my head crashes against the locker as Luke pushes me back against it, punching me in the stomach. The next thing I know two teachers are pulling us apart off the floor as another teacher desperately tries to get the crowd of onlookers to disperse.

“What the hell is going on,” the headmaster screamed. Luke and I were sat in his office, in chairs facing his desk, glaring at each other. “Never in all my days here at this school have I seen such a blatant act of disrespect for this institute” he continued.

“He started it,” I growl watching his eyes narrow at me.

“How did I bloody start it? You hit me first” he yells.

“You started it with Maedbh” I blow up, standing up so fast the chair falls back. “You just had to make that stupid plan.

“You played along with it,” he says cutting me off, standing up just as suddenly as I had.

“I never wanted to be part of that. Then you bloody told her. ” I yell into his face, my whole body quivering with the need to hit him again.

“Break it up,” the headmaster shouts stepping between the two of us, keeping us an arm’s length away from each other. “Both of you are suspended, 3 days, then probation for the rest of term. Now get out of my office,” he says releasing us with a shove towards the door.

“You are so grounded” my mom says as I walk in the door. I nod, not having expected anything less. “What is going on with you? A fight? With Luke?” she yells as I walk past her up the stairs to my room. “Where do you think you’re going? Get down here” she calls after me but I ignore her, slamming my door shut in response. I flip on my stereo, turning it up to full volume, hoping that maybe if I turn it up loud enough, it would be able to drown out my own thoughts.  I throw myself on my bed, covering my head with the pillow. The volume of my stereo goes down and I flip around, pulling the pillow off my head

“Go away” I say having expected my mom to be there. My eyes widen slightly when I see Gemma standing there.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks gently.

“I really messed up this time,” I say, my voice cracking. She nods her head, a sad smile on her face as she sits down on the bed next to me.

“What happened?”

An hour later, the entire story is out. I’d explained everything from the first encounter in class when Maedbh had told off Luke, to the bet, to me actually starting to like her, all the way to punching Luke.

“Wow” she comments when I finally run out of words. I nod my head, feeling a sense of relief that somebody else finally knew everything. “Sounds like you need to talk to her”

“But she won’t—“ I start saying.

“Make her” she replies firmly.

“But how? I’m grounded. Mum would flip if I even left the house,” I say

“Let me deal with mum”

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So what did you think? I know most of you absolutely hate Luke so what did you think about the fight? Let me know by voting/commenting!! Thank you so much to everyone reading this!