Storms {z.m.}

Chapter 56

Chapter 56 – Christine

(Sorry for the poor editing on this one, I was just really anxious to give you guys this chapter since the last one was such a cliffhanger. There are less than ten chapters left until the finale, so please keep sharing this story so as many people as possible can experience it as it's being published! I'm going to be finishing up the rest of the chapters of this story and I'll let you guys know exactly how many chapters we've got left before the last one. I'm aiming for the last chapter to come out around Christmastime. You can also expect some chapter trailers to make the wait a bit more bearable! Please keep your comments coming, I need them more than ever as we're approaching the finale! And above all please share this story on twitter or instagram or facebook with your friends and other fans! xx -F)

“No way,” I whisper into the spacious alley. I know my eyes aren't failing me and I know I still have my mental faculties, for now at least, but I can't bring myself to process what I just saw. There's absolutely no way Harry would ever treat a woman the way I just saw him do to that girl. I know he banged up against the wall a bit back at my house, but that was a one-off incident, and I'm sure he feels horrible about it. There's no way he would do this again.

I'm having trouble digesting this information even though I watched it unfold before my eyes the last few minutes, but then my brain switches back to the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle: who the girl in the alley was. For minutes, I listened to Harry argue with a girl on the other side of this dumpster, but I didn't know who she was. That is until a mysterious man came to her rescue and she walked away, that's when I let curiosity get the best of me and peeked from behind the dumpster. That's when I realized that Harry had been choking Poppy.

“Christine?” Harry asks. He must have heard my comment. Shit. He's squinting his eyes as if he can't tell if it's me or not, although he's less than six feet away from me. I expect a look of fear or regret to cross his face as he realizes that I caught him choking a girl, a girl who used to be my best friend but now is blackmailing me, in a grimy alleyway, but his eyebrows furrow in anger instead.

“What the hell are you doing out here?” he says in a gravely, rough voice. All the warmth that he used to be able to pack into his words is all gone, it's been replaced by an emptiness that I can't describe. It's like his words rob me of my happiness instead of giving it to me like they used to.

“What am I doing here?” I ask him, appalled that he has the nerve of being suspicious of me. If anyone should be asking the questions right now, it would be me. He rolls his eyes and turns his back to me. I see him pull a cigarette from the top of his ear. I hadn't noticed it was there before because it was hiding under the brim of his floppy fedora. He pulls a box of matches out of his pocket and lights up, then throws the match on the floor. It strikes me how like Harry it is to opt for a box matches over a lighter, but how unlike Harry it is to just throw trash on the street.

Suddenly, Harry's turn of personality starts to make sense to me. All of the synapses start to connect, and I can relate to what he's doing. This isn't some sort of personality disorder, this is a defense mechanism. I don't know how I didn't realize it before, but Harry is using the same shield I used before Zayn came back to Bradford. I was so devastated by being abandoned by Zayn that I had to create a facade that allowed me to go in with my life without falling apart. I used alcohol and drugs to numb myself or to get my mind off of Zayn. What Harry is doing is no different, only more extreme. He's putting on a front of anger and indifference and trying to blow away his problems with cigarette smoke, but deep down he's the same guy who loves harder than he should and prefers an antiquated and nostalgic approach to life instead of a cold and modern one. The Harry I know is somewhere in there, I just have to get him to come out, much like Zayn got the old me to come back.