Can you love me now, Zayn?

Chapter 6

ZAYN

So much had been left unsaid, so many questions unanswered, yet Zayn was happy that he'd had a chance to see Harry again. Happy to hold him in his arms, to smell his hair, and stand in his presence, although it had been all too brief. For some strange reason, he felt honored by that. Then he realized it wasn't strange at all, Harry had allowed him entry into his home, maybe – ever so slightly – even back into his heart. It was an honor and a privilege and even if nothing else came of it, even if they didn't see one another again, at least he had that.

But it hurt, too. It hurt to stand so close to him and realize they were still so far apart. They hadn't spoken about anything important, they carefully avoided any painful topics, and honestly, there were so many. How could two people have so many things that were so difficult to talk about between them?

It seemed ominous, really. Zayn wasn't sure how they would ever move beyond where they were now. They were familiar strangers, comfortable enough to banter about home décor, but not comfortable enough to talk about anything that had happened between them.

As he thought about it, he wondered if maybe that had always been true with Harry. So many things in Harry's past had kept them from sharing themselves completely. Maybe even more than Zayn realized. He wondered how well he really knew him.

Harry had shared things with him, things that Zayn knew Harry had never shared with anyone, but they were facts. They were things that happened, but Harry often seemed to draw the line at sharing his FEELINGS. What really made him tick? What did he really want out of a relationship? Was Zayn even the kind of person he wanted to be with? How well did Zayn know Harry? How well did Harry know HIM?

It wasn't something he'd considered before, not really. Maybe he had assumed too much. Maybe he had wanted to be with Harry so badly, he let that cloud his vision about what Harry might need or want?

...And then there was the agonizing guilt over the fact that he'd cheated on Harry....and the even more agonizing guilt that while he'd been busy getting off, Harry had been suffering a horrible rape.

Zayn had visited his parents back in Boston after he'd quit his job at the LA Times. He'd been a shell of a human being then. He'd poured his heart out to his parents and had told them everything. He'd told them about Harry's background, which he had never shared with them before, he had told them about their relationship, how hard it had been to get Harry to communicate with him. Then he told them about that night, that one terrible, horrible, dreadful night.

He recalled crying into his mother's arms. So racked with guilt and shame he hiccupped his way through the words when he told his parents about it. His mother had insisted he seek counseling, that something like this would be over-whelming for anyone and that he needed to sort out his feelings.

When he had arrived back in LA, he heeded his parents advice and went back to Dr. Hanley. They'd had several lengthy sessions where Zayn cried and cried about the pain he felt in his chest over what he'd done, and the guilt he'd felt about how he hadn't been there when Harry needed him.

But Dr. Hanley had helped him to see that the two things weren't connected. There had been no way Zayn could have foreseen what would happen to Harry, and the fact that HE kept connecting them in his mind, didn't mean that they actually WERE connected. It had helped, too. He began to see that it was true, they were separate things, although both horrible. Once he could separate the two, he also began to realize how wrong he'd been to leave Harry to deal with the aftermath of rape on his own.

He was supposed to be his lover, his friend and when Harry needed to heal, both physically and emotionally from the trauma, Zayn had taken the cowardly way out and decided he didn't deserve to share in the recovery.