The Contract

01

"Smile baby, you're in the spotlight now."

The words had been echoing in my mind ever since the first time he spoke them to me almost a week ago while we were at the pub for our 'public display' to show the world that everything was okay between the two of us. Even though it had been a week since that day, things hadn't been any easier. And they certainly weren't any better between Harry and I.

I had packed my bags for the flight to Las Vegas and was set to meet Gemma and Juliette and my sister at Gemma's in a little over two hours. Which meant I had about an hour and a half to convince Harry to speak to me about what had happened at the party at his house.

He had refused to speak to me about it since that day and I didn't want to leave the country with us on bad terms. I didn't think they could get any worse than they had been but when he had resorted to sleeping on the couch since that day, I thought that was rock bottom, but I was wrong.

The words that passed between the two of us had been barely more than a few words in the morning and the evening before he went to sleep and while we were in public he kept up the pretense that everything was fine but I knew behind his eyes that things were not okay. The normal glimmer in the deep green of his eyes was lost and while we made eye contact, it was brief and almost hesitant.

Touching was out of the question even. We hadn't been intimate since before the party and I hadn't even tried to initiate anything since the day he pulled away from my hand like it was a hot coal. It almost broke my heart to see the relationship strained between the two of us like it was and if the old me had still been around, I would have ended things then and there and reneged on my contact and probably have been dating Alex or Louis by now.

But something in me had changed that day. Something made me realize that Harry was the one. I knew he was the one before but I don't think I fully comprehended that until I was close to losing him. I had lost him in a sense but I was determined to get him back. I was determined to make him believe that I loved him and he was the only one for me and while I had fucked up countless times - too many for one hand - I knew it would only break his heart even more if I up and left like the old Georgia Gibson would have.

But that was the old me. The new me was not going to let him go. I was not going to run away and I was going to do everything I could to show him that I loved him and that I was really and truly sorry for my stupid actions because when it came down to it, I never had to worry about Harry cheating on me. He had proved a dozen times over that he only wanted me and I had so desperately been wanting to not believe him, I had fuc-ked things up. Harry had to worry about me because I was the one who was constantly picking fights with him. I was the one constantly blowing up at him. I was the one who had kissed Louis and broken his heart.

And to me, that meant that I had to be the one to fix it.

I glanced at the closed door to the gym where music had been coming from for the last hour and heard him grunting slightly as he had been doing over the past week. He had taken to working out or doing anything he could to avoid me when we were home together which was hard considering we lived together.

I heard the weights settle back into their place on the bar and the music stop. His feet padded towards the door and my heart clenched when he opened it and I saw him standing there, dripping in sweat, swigging water out of his bottle. His bare muscles were covered in a thin sheen of sweat and his hair was pulled into a slicked back mess on the top of his head. He didn't seem to notice me yet until I shifted my weight from one foot to the other.

His eyes moved from his water bottle to me to the ground. "Hey," he mumbled.

"I leave for Las Vegas in two hours," I said, staring at him and gauging his reaction.