Stealing Hearts (Zayn Malik Fanfiction)

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Somewhere between his lips touching mine and his hands caressing my hair, we end up in my bed. I don’t even know how much time passed and I honestly don’t care either. I don’t care about anything as long as I can lay here next to him, feeling his hand in mine, being so close to his lips, so close to his touch that I don’t think I’ll survive if he ever leaves again.

‘I love your freckles.’ He interrupts the silence between us, I learned to love so much. Because our silent moments, didn’t feel quiet at all. It was a special kind of silence. A beautiful kind of silence.

‘My freckles?’ I frown. We’re both lying on the bed, without covers, facing each other.

‘Yes. Your freckles.’ He smiles beautifully. ‘They’re cute.’

‘We’ll you are the first one pointing that out.’

‘I’m glad I did then.’ His voice sounds so relax, so at ease, so wonderful. ‘I think those freckles made me stop Stefan the first time in the café. So they’re pretty special if you ask me.’

‘Oh, is that so?’ I smirk. ‘So if I didn’t have these freckles you would’ve let him shoot me.’

Suddenly his whole expression changes, from a happy face to a very disturbed face. ‘That’s not what I meant.’ He shakes his head in the process. ‘That’s so not what I meant.’

I cannot hide my smile and I don’t even question myself anymore for being so ‘okay’ with this. I don’t even take the effort. But there are some things I need to know in order to continue this. And I’ve been holding it back for such a long time, and now I just don’t feel like doing that anymore.

‘Zayn, I-’

‘I know what you’re going to ask.’ He interrupts me immediately, like he was prepared for this to happen. ‘And I agree with you that you have the right to know now.’

‘But?’ I was also prepared for the 'but' part.

He makes sure to have eye contact before he continues. ‘You need to tell me about yourself as well.’

That’s a fair deal. Easier than I expected it to be.

‘You start.’ I tell him after I gave him an agreeing nod.

He rolls from his side, on his back, leaving my glance. I have the idea he’s not going to look at me until he’s finished. And that only scares me more of how bad this can get.

‘It started when I was around the age of sixteen. You know… All kids get in that phase where they don’t really bother listening to their parents. That’s a natural thing to happen and it happened with me as well. Though I never really had the most supportive family. My mom and dad divorced when I was about eight years old. He left, I never saw him since. My mom stood alone with four children. Me and my three little sisters. They were all a lot younger than me. My mom got depressed and drank a lot, which meant that I had to take care of the girls most of the time. And as a teenage boy, I can tell you, that’s not the thing you want from life.’ He was talking to the ceiling and I kept staring at his blank expression while telling me the story he probably didn’t tell a lot of people. ‘We didn’t have money because my mom used the majority of it to buy alcohol. So I needed to find a way to earn money. I was fifteen when I met Stefan. He was seventeen back then and kind of like an older brother to me. He told me about what he did. Stealing money from cafés and shops here in London. He has a lot of guys working for him. All of them kind of in the same position as me: in need for money. The thing is that he’s able to sell himself so well. He acts like he’s your friend at first. Until you’ve had enough of it, and he doesn’t let you out of his grip. It was a double life for sure. During the day I needed to take care of my sisters and during the night I was stealing money with people I didn’t even know. Until I returned from a job, and the house I live in was empty. My mom left, with my sisters and all our belongings. Until this day I have no idea where they are. My mom and I never got along and I suppose she just didn’t care anymore. She just left and that was probably the hardest time for me. I was seventeen when I completely moved in with Stefan. Because I didn’t have anywhere else to go basically. With Stefan I had money and a bed and someone to talk to. Without him I had nothing.’ I heard him take a deep breath before he continued. I didn’t really know if it was because of emotions or just because he was talking a lot. ‘I was eighteen when Louis joined in. Louis and I clicked immediately. If you really want to know his story, you need to ask him yourself one day, but it’s kind of in the same style as mine. I don’t know what caused us to get along immediately, but we did. And from  the day he joined, I kind of started to feel like a person again. As funny as it may sound, I’ve never been that guy who likes to threaten people or walk around with guns under my belt.’