This Thing Upon Me [Order The eBook] [Harry Styles]

Chapter 58***

(DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. It's important to remember this is all totally fabricated, embellished, and exaggerated for entertainment purposes.)

**********

***THIS CHAPTER  HAS BEEN EDITED AND IS NO LONGER CENSORED***

"If this was meant for me, why does it hurt so much?

And if you're not made for me, why did we fall in love?"

SYML | Fear Of The Water

On our final night in Vegas, Z came up to me where I sat nodding off at the head of the bed, watching a bad Hallmark movie. He straddled my lap in nothing but his briefs and my old Grateful Dead t-shirt I'd worn earlier that day. Now it smelled like a mixture of both our colognes.

"Hazza..." he whispered, caressing my cheeks until I opened my eyes. "Y'okay?"

"Just dozing," I mumbled.

"Y'tired, babe?" he laughed, opening one of my eyelids. "Youh gonna dream of me, then?"

"When don't I?" He kissed my slightly parted mouth, pecking it again and again.

"Haz..." he hesitated, seeming up to no good. I rubbed my eyes.

"You're plotting...I can feel it."

"M'not, babe..." Now he set our foreheads together with a sigh. "Hey...I was wonderin'..."

"Yeah...?"

"I really miss youh a lot..." Now he was inhaling me like a drug.

"I'm right here..." Despite being half-awake, I perceived in his tone a tentativeness; like he was beating around the bush. There was something he wanted to ask, but was too afraid to blurt it out. I had an idea of what it might be, but didn't want to be too presumptuous in voicing it before he did.

"Hm, baby?"

"Don't make me say it," he breathed, hiding his face in the crook of my shoulder.

"Say it," I spoke into near his ear, as though we were onstage. "Tell me what you want..." He melted, pulling away to look me sheepishly in the eye.

"Babe, I'm f—ked up,"

"Me too."

"I think sometimes...maybe I need it. Noh... yeah...I know I do."

He didn't even have to say it. I'd already experienced the same sort of jittery hankerings over the past several months, ever since that fated Sunday in my new house a year ago. So much had changed since then, but he and I remained the same. Steadfast in our devotion. We'd be the same level of obsessed 10 years from now, guaranteed. This kind of love didn't run out. Except, now I was on the giving end. I was his provider.

Shutting my eyes and listening to his ragged breaths, I was beginning to feel like a seedy dealer who ought to have reveled in the fact that someone like him was at my clemency. I had what he wanted (needed), and he would do anything to obtain it. That was a powerful position to be in. It should have turned me on to wield something like that over his head, but on the other hand, seeing him in this condition made my heart break. Like I was the sole reason he was strung out; left to throw his life away for a good hit and a fleeting buzz. I had robbed him of his precious normalcy.