Fairytale Gone Bad √

Chapter 19

HARRY'S POV

She was shaking and crying, and it was scaring the hell out of me. It was that bad?

"Love, it's okay, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"I want to." Beth wiped the tears with the back of ther hands and took a deep breath before resting her gaze on me. "It happened six years ago. Ella was barely a year old. At the time I had been asked to go to a party. My parents refused, they said I was too young to go out on my own. I went out anyway." she lets out a shaky breath. I tightened the grip on her waist. "I was young, and stupid, and careless. I climbed out of my bedroom window and went to the party with some friends. At the time I lived in London with my family, and the party wasn't too far from my house, so I assumed I could go out and return safely without them noticing my absence. It was a stupid thing to assume, because the next thing I knew I was at the party, and my mum was calling me, furious and scared out of her mind." She was shaking again in my arms.

"Beth, you don't-"

"Please, I want to tell you." She breathes, tears silently running down her face.

Beth pleaded with her teary eyes and I nodded without saying a word. "So, she called me, and I knew she was going to kill me. She drove to the party and picked me up to take me home. I remember we were fighting-" She started to sob, whimpering. She needed a few moments to put herself together before continuing. "We were fighting, she was saying the usual - how disappointed she was in me, how irresponsible I had been - and then it happened. We stopped at the red light, and then when it turned green we moved forward. A car came crashing into us, right at my mum's side. The other car was driven by a drunk man, who didn't even pay attention to the lights and the signs, or us, for that matter. He was driving too fast, and drunk, we didn't even stand a chance. My mum died instantly."

"I'm sorry." I whispered, snuggling closer to her, even though it was almost impossible due to the small space we were in. She buried her face in my chest, trembling. I rubbed soothing circles on the curve of her waist.

"I tried to wake her up, but she didn't open her eyes." Her voice cracked, making my heart ache. "There was a lot of blood. I tried to help her, but there was glass and metal everywhere, I cut my legs and hands when I tried to crawl to her. I escaped with light injuries. I banged my head against the window when we crashed, so that was the worst that happened to me; I was conscious the entire time, so I tried to get to her. But I couldn't save her, it was too late. My mum died and it's all my fault."

"Love, don't say that." I cupped her cheek with my hand and made her look up. "I don't want to hear you say that ever again. It was an accident, it wasn't your fault."

"If I hadn't gone to that stupid party in the first place, my mum would still be alive."

"Beth." I looked deeply into her eyes, our noses brushing. "It's not your fault. If anything, it's that drunk driver's fault, okay? You shouldn't have gone to that party, but in the end it wasn't that what killed your mum. It was a car crash, a drunk driver. It's not your fault."

Now I understood why Beth was the way she was. She was always concerned about her sister, and her best friend. She never talked about her parents, which I understood now.

"My father started drinking after my mum passed away. He started to drink and to gamble and then the debts started to appear..." She trailed off. She had stopped crying, thankfully. I wiped away her tears with the pads of my fingers and caressed her cheek softly. "He made us move to the other side of the country, the farthest we could go without actually leaving the UK. We left London, and a couple of years later I got the job at the music shop where I used to work before meeting you. I did everything in my power to raise Ella and to take care of her, but I'm not enough. Of course she needs a mother, and I can't take my mum's place, no matter how much I try."