This Is My Version; A Conor Maynard Fanfiction

Chapter 23

Conor's POV

My happiness had been short lived and for the first time is sex not able to mask the pain living inside my chest. But I'm yet to tell Olivia anything about it, yet to pull out early in case she'd judge me for it. 

I know she probably wont do that, Olivia isn't someone who'd judge me for such a thing but all I can think about is a rumour spreading, a rumour saying that I, Conor Maynard hadn't been able to finish during sex. Conor Maynard, the man everyone thought was amazing in bed not being able to come because of his fucking mind. 

"Conor?"

She, the girl currently beneath me reaches her hand up to my bare chest and her eyes say it all, she already knew, has already realised that I am far from alright right in this moment and she strangely seems fine with it, something that only Olivia could portray through such a simple thing as a glance. 

"We don't have to continue, it's okay"

I nod, pulling out and instantly covering my erection with a pair of discarded Calvin Klein boxers I find on the floor and the next thing I decide to do surprises the both of us. 

"I think- I think I need help"

She doesn't say anything, just simply lets her hand rest on my curved back as I hide my face in my hands, sat on the edge of the bed. 

I've been denying it for what feels like years, telling myself that this is something that is going to heal with time, that talking to someone isn't going to do anything. But right now I realise that shoving your problems deep into your bag to try and forget about them isn't a way of solving them. It was always going to come back and haunt you in the future. 

So I inhale a deep breath, my back still turned against her as I contemplate if this actually is a good idea. Can I trust her not to tell a single soul about this? Can I trust her not to sell it to the press? I sigh, there was only one way to find out. 

I start from the beginning, back to a cold December in Brighton, a December that now, eight years later you could say had changed my life forever. The December of 2008 where I'd gotten tired of sending videos of my covers to my friends on msn and instead decided to revive my two years of age YouTube channel. 

"I wanted to see how delusional I was by getting complete strangers involved. You see, all my friends said I was good, my parents and siblings were over the moon every time I opened my mouth to sing something but what if they were all just putting on a show because they didn't want to hurt my feelings. So I locked myself in my room and decided to cover Lee Car's song Breathe and it got a couple of views. But nothing really seemed to happen until I posted the next video and it got to a hundred views in a week and someone left a comment, a complete stranger and I finally got the confirmation that the people around me weren't licking my arse"

The memory is a good one, one I often like to look back on and be proud over. The way that decision had paved the way for my whole career this far, how as much as my label had tried to take me away from YouTube and into the more mainstream and commercial music scene had it always been there in the background. I'd built my fanbase on YouTube only to come back seven years later to evolve it to something so much bigger, a whole 3 million bigger.  

I turn my body towards her, noticing the pain I'd previously been experiencing being taken over by an overall lightness. It's as if I can finally breathe easily again and that's when I realise that YouTube and creating music never has been the reason to my current state of mind. 

Instead it is the pressure, the pressure I constantly put on myself along with the one from managers, labels and the millions of fans. That alongside a heartbreak that had lead to anxiety and depression in the end, a heartbreak that had caused me to lose everything I had going for me and I can only blame myself for that. 

"You were so young"

At the time had I pictured myself as an adult but now, looking at my just turned sixteen year old younger sister am I fully aware of just how young I really was at that time. 

"Yeah, I know. But I had a good support network, my parents were very protective over me and I didn't sign a contract until I was eighteen just to make sure I wouldn't get used by some greedy record label"

She nods, a soft smile on her lips as she intertwines our fingers, an act so small yet still so meaningful in my eyes I could happily stay in that position for the rest of my life. 

"I had that too, when I started to get into modelling my mum and stepdad were so protective over me, and I was over eighteen at that point. I can't even imagine how they would've acted if I was younger"

I smile at the way she'd just decided to open up a little about her family, how she'd decided to trust me with something personal in a way she previously hadn't done.  

"I met Victoria early on in my career. I had only just released my debut album and had no idea what the industry would entail. I was so in love and so naive, I honestly thought I could take over the world at that point, but being in a relationship online would become the most intense thing I've ever had to experience. We would get judged for literally everything we did and if it wasn't in the media was it by the fans, in comments beneath Instagram posts or tweets. It got to a point where it pulled us apart, put us against each other as though we instead of being one single team we suddenly were supposed to fight against one another. I was so lost before I met her and since the day we got together she had been my guiding light, the one place where I felt fully secure and understood. It was toxic for months and we hurt each other to a point where the wounds got too deep to heal. There was no going back, we had to go or separate ways-"

Her eyes stare into mine, the hazel coloured eyes that held an addictive sense of calm in them, a calm I've never seen in a pair of eyes before. I look down at my hand in hers, the way her thumb strokes my rugged skin simultaneously, over and over again without fail. 

And I wait for my chest to become tight, for my tummy to cramp up or my heart to race but nothing happens. There's no panic, no anxiety, just this calmness, this lightness within my chest as I inhale a proper deep breath for probably the first time since we broke up. 

"Come here" 

She opens up her arms, pulling me into her chest before whispering the four words I haven't heard since the last time I saw my mum. 

"I'm proud of you"

There's no doubt about it, she really is proud of me and I feel bad for using her for my own winning. For not giving anything back but right in this second do I know that she doesn't mind, because she unlike everyone else in my life right now, is selfless to a point no-one will ever be able to understand. 

"Thank you, I really mean it"

"I know you do. Things are getting better Conor, you just have to be patient and trust yourself. And there's help to get, the first step is to admit to the fact that you need it and that's the hardest part"

I nod against her chest, lifting my head back up to look at her properly, her freckled cheeks and the pink, still slightly swollen lips from the kissing we'd done not too long ago now. I smile and she smiles back before simply letting her lips connect with mine for a peck that holds so much warmth and pride and understanding it makes my whole body tingle on the inside. She is all I'll ever need in my life yet she'll never be mine and I'll never be hers. We're simply just crossing paths, sharing the journey we call life for a short while.