𝐆𝐑𝐈𝐌 & 𝐃𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆! | harry styles

𝐗𝐗𝐈

I wake up on McClean's front porch.

It's the kind of dark that only happens at the very middle of the night, so black that everything is blue. The kind of dark that only happens at the very middle of the ocean, so blue that everything is black. All the windows are dark. I listen, but I can't hear anything. I know he's in there, McClean. Passed out on his couch, the carpet littered in spent 40s and half-smoked cigarettes. Asleep at the kitchen table with his hand down his pants and the remnants of a pint of whiskey spilled in front of him.

What a place for my head to take me.

What a place to wake up.

Everything is dark, but I can see him. Harry is standing in the grass just a few feet off the porch, his suit blending into the black and his skin glowing pale in the moonlight. The hollows of his eyes are midnight, and his mouth is a dark gash, and he's staring at me just the same way he always does, his face gone slack and his tongue edging his lips.

"You're always staring at me." I pull myself upright and take inventory. At least I'm wearing shoes. For that matter, at least I'm wearing clothing. At least I'm not naked, or half-naked. At least I'm on the porch and not inside the house.

"I can't help it," he says and shrugs like he doesn't think it bad or creepy, or like he's at the top of the food chain, and I'm at the bottom.

"It makes me nervous."

"Why?"

"Because sometimes it feels like you're planning on how to eat me."

"I suppose that hunger and adoration can look alike." He swallows hard, his throat flexing, and he's shrugging again. "Both are painful if left ignored for too long. Both make your insides twist up. Both leave you lightheaded and weak-kneed." His eyes meet mine. "It's been a long time, decades even, but I think I know what this is."

"What what is?"

"I'm feeling very enamoured of you," he says. His hand drifts to his chest, and I wonder if he misses the feeling of his heartbeat, the thump under his ribs, or if it's been gone so long he can't even remember it.

"Can you speak in modern talk, please? This isn't 1915," I grumble.

"I like you, Violet. I like you a lot."

"You can't."

"Can't I?" His brows furrow, and he looks confused.

"No. You can't. Because you promised my sister you'd marry her." My mouth is so full of sarcasm, it almost chokes me.

"Violet," he sighs. "Be reasonable. She's eight."

"No shit," I snap. "That's why you don't promise to marry her."

Harry breathes deeply and looks up at the sky for a moment, shaking his head like he's waging some internal debate. "I'm going to tell you what it's like, what it was like for her. It won't be easy to hear, but I think you need to know." He looks right at me like I'm supposed to say something, supposed to tell him to go on, but I stay silent and scowling like we're in some gun-drawn duel. Like this is the Old West and we're ten paces apart in the dust rather than staring each other down from the yard of an asshole who, up until just a few days ago, I was convinced had murdered my sister.

"I'd just come back, that night. I do that, occasionally. Show up to check on things, make sure the house is still standing." He glances off into the tree in the general direction of his haunted-by-my-sister house. "Unfortunately, it still is."

"What does this have to do with Sadie?" I'm tired and cold and beyond the point of wanting to think about that night anymore, or ever again. Nothing turned out like I thought it would, nothing was right side up or rational or made even the smallest amount of sense anymore. I'd give anything for a really bad case of amnesia right now, just so I could move on with my life.