Recovery / / h.s

Part Thirty- Three.

Harry's POV-

I didn't sleep at all that night. I couldn't sleep that night. I had chain smoked nearly the rest of the pack of cigarettes that rested in my top drawer, and drank more than half of the bottle of vodka that was hidden on the top shelf of one of my kitchen cabinets. I hadn't gotten drunk in god knows how long and I had missed it. I wanted it to make me forget, To help me rid my mind of the image of Lily leaving me.

I stumbled around my apartment the next morning; alone, exhausted, and still kind of drunk. I hadn't even bothered to change my clothes. I had my phone in my hand, fighting myself over whether or not to dial her number. My pride screamed no, but the aching feeling that grew every hour she wasn't home with me screamed yes.

I sat by the door, my back against the wall and my knees against my chest. I held the phone tightly in my hand, her contact information open just waiting for me to press the little call button.

I debated with myself a little more. I had every right to be angry with the situation. Her father thought he had me all summed up before he had even given me a chance to prove myself to him. She even stood up for him, as if his opinions about me had been correct. He even had the audacity to compare me to Louis fucking Tomlinson.

And so what that I wasn't enrolled into uni yet. I was getting there. I was busting my ass trying to save up the money. Sure, Anne had offered every chance she got to pay for my tuition, But I couldn't take any of her new husbands money. I didn't want it. I'm pretty sure she believed that if she could pay for school, I'd want her to be apart of my life again and that wasn't going to happen. She had left me once and I'd be damned if I let her do it again.

Every single time someone would walk down the hall, my head would perk up at their footsteps. I couldn't help it. I was on edge.

I jumped up when I heard keys dangling from the other side of the door. I flung the door open to reveal my girl, purple bags under her eyes and a pair of keys in her shaky hand. She stared at me, tear stained cheeks and an open mouth. Before she could say anything, I opened my arms wide. She didn't waste time running into them. My arms wrapped protectively around her small frame, partly because I was so dumbfounded that she was actually here and partly because I didn't want to give her the chance to turn around if she thought she had made a mistake by coming here.

"Oh my god," she sobbed into my chest. "I-I'm so so-sorry." The words that followed were something along the lines of how much she loved me and that she couldn't lose me, I couldn't really decipher her sob-filled words.

I held her tighter, closing my eyes and pressing small kisses to the top of her head. "No, baby," I murmured into her hair as her body trembled against my own. "We're fine. Everything is fine."

"I love you so much," she wiped her tears and pulled away from me. She was still in the same clothes from last night too. I desperately wanted to pull her back in, to never ever let her go.

"I love you," I sighed. "And I acted like a complete jackass-" I reached for her hand but she pulled away from me, an eyebrow raised and a hurt expression on her face.

"You drank," she looked at me in disbelief.

Shit. "Lily, I was upset-"

"You drank," she repeated, running her hand frustratedly through her hair. "You reek of alcohol. You can't just drink whenever there's an issue, Harry. That's what got you into trouble with Officer White in the first place."

I was too exhausted to argue. The after affect of alcohol was in full swing now, and all I wanted to do was lie down. "Your dad knew about me being locked up. He knew the whole story." I wanted an explanation, the one her father had given me the day before just wasn't good enough for me.

She sucked her cheeks in and exhaled loudly. She was messing around with her fingers (which, I learned, was only something she did when she was anxious about something) and I wanted so badly to grab them and hold them in my own to get her to stop.

"Lillian Brielle James," I warned. She dropped her hands and glared at me.

"Don't call me by my full name, Harold Edward Styles." The anxiousness seemed to have been sucked right out of her, being replaced with amusement.

"Then tell me how he knew." I wrapped her hand in my own and led her into our bedroom. We could discuss the rest of this in bed together with her snuggled into me; the way it was supposed to be. She dropped her dress as I yanked the buttons on my shirt open.

"Well, my dad," she started, pulling a pair of pajama shorts up her bruised legs. I pulled my pants off, not bothering to put them in the hamper like I normally would have. "He-uh- well he's a lawyer, a pretty good one actually."

She pulled a pajama shirt over her head and sat cross legged as I pulled a pair of sweatpants up my legs. "Officer White and my father have been friends since high school. White saw potential in you, I guess, so he came to my dad and asked him what he could do instead of pressing charges." We both settled against the headboard, our backs straight as we sat.

She iterated her story using her hands and I watched her intently as she went on. "I was basically just supposed to watch you, make sure you did what you were supposed to, showed up on time, whatever, until the summer was over and you were off the hook."she paused for awhile, taking a deep breath. She hesitantly grabbed my hand, as if she was afraid I'd pull away or something. "So yeah, that's the story."

"So your dad knew that i got into a drunken fight with White and he thinks that I'm this alcoholic guy who fights all the time?" I wondered, pulling her into my lap. I held her waist tightly, she wasn't going to get away from me again.

"Pretty much," she said quietly, tracing the over the inked rose tattoo that covered my left forearm.

"he's going to do anything he can to break us up is what you're telling me." That couldn't happen.

She craned her neck up to look at me, her deep blue eyes soft. " I won't let that happen, Harry."

"But Lily, your dad-"

"No," she cut me off. "Look, as much as I hate the guy you used to be, you aren't that guy anymore. I don't care that you binge drank or that you used to chain smoke two packs a night or how many people you fought back then."

"You're not a bad person for the mistakes that you made, Harry. You're only human. And back then, you did what you thought was right for you. I don't blame you for that."

"My father's opinion of you doesn't affect how I see you at all. His opinion doesn't even matter to me. I will do whatever I have to do to keep us together."

I felt her sigh against my torso. I stayed quiet because I couldn't think of anything more to say on the subject. I was happy that way, but there was still something that was bothering me that I had to address.

"Your father wants you with Louis," i said quietly. Anger boiled inside of me just saying those words aloud. "Your whole family seems to want you with Louis."

She stopped tracing the tattoo on my arm, twisting out of my lap to sit cross legged in front of me. "I don't want to be with Louis. If I did, I wouldn't be here with you in this bed right now."

"Harry," she spoke, grabbing my hand in her own. "These last four weeks- I've felt more in these past four weeks with you than I did spending four months with him. When I say I love you to you, I mean it. With him, it felt rehearsed and fake and just wrong."

And nothing more needed to be said after that. She snuggled into me as we lay silently, her hands lazily raking through my hair. I listened intently to every breath she inhaled and every single one she exhaled feeling like she existed for me and me only.