After The End: Book 2

45. Tell the World

Louis POV

Harry and Lux were gone for a month. It was the longest I'd gone without seeing him for several years and I found myself hopelessly lonely in my empty home. Naomi still came by for dinner every night. She slept over on weekends and tried to visit with me but after the Becca revelation, there had been a tightness between us. More things went unsaid. Tension carried. I tried to ignore it, but it persisted. I wondered if we would become the type of people who treated their children like cargo, exchanging them like drugs in empty parking lots. Would we glare at each other through car windows and talk shit to our new respective partners about how bad our ex's were at coparenting?

Aside from my issues with Naomi and the fact that Harry and Lux were gone, I felt like I managed well on my own. I spent a lot of time with Oliver. I tried to get Naomi to go to the zoo with us, but she said she was busy. Most likely, she was busy avoiding me, but I took him myself and we had a great time. He was the worlds best backwards crawler and he'd mastered a subtle inch by inch forward scoot, but I was starting to think full blown crawling wasn't in the cards. Online it said he might skip straight to walking. I was still hopeful. He'd also started on some pretty intense babbling. No words were discernible yet, but his voice was the highlight of my day. He was also popping out the start of a couple new teeth. He was still mostly bottle fed but he also seemed to like bananas and soft snacks. He was just growing up right in front of me.

We spent a lot of days in the last two weeks sat in my music room. Once I'd sent helpers to Jamaica to get control of whatever Harry was doing down there, I started getting daily emails with sound bites and drafts and even some more completed feeing pieces. Harry had actually made music, and it wasn't the type of soft recordings we made in my space. He was making actual productions and recordings with clear sounds and cut together demos. He had something we could actually use. It was incredible and raw and uniquely his.

By the time he returned, I was almost less angry with him over the abrupt and secretive manner in which he'd left. I'd also started a rapport with his cat, who only hissed at me sometimes when I went up to feed her in his absence. I'd even let her in my flat a few times.

I had grown to understand why he'd done his international escape like that in time. He was the most impulsive person I knew and he was taking on a major responsibility with the album and everything that came alongside it. I understood his desire to make sure that the album conveyed everything he wanted to say, and I understood not wanting to feel pressured to divert from his course. I thought hiding on a Caribbean island was childish, but I wasn't going to pretend I didn't envy him. I loved the idea. My life just wasn't as accommodating as his.

When Harry and Lux burst into my flat, I expected some smiles and hugs, and maybe even a little, "I'm sorry for leaving you with no warning," but that wasn't what happened.

They came through the elevators looking more elevated than I'd expected. Harry darted out first and saw me alone on the sofa. He'd paused with an unreadable expression and studied me. The skin of his face and arms had a nice tan and he wore a loud button up, colored like the Jamaican flag, that he'd clearly acquired on his trip. "Where is the baby?" He'd demanded.

"Sleeping," I informed him rising. I spread my arms expecting a hug for my troubles, but he ducked out of the way and headed off down the hall, no doubt with the intention of waking my child.

Lux stood in the living room watching him go with a worried expression. She was equally tanned and seemed to glow just a little. When her eyes met mine, I knew that something had gone wrong. She accepted my hug and then pulled her phone out and placed it in my palm with the headlines evident.

She was looking at a video of Harry. It had released that morning from an unknown source and it was bad.

I remembered the day well although I wasn't present in the video, nor had I attended the party with him. It had been a few years prior and I had been dumb enough to offer him a ride to and from the gathering. He told me it was a friends birthday although I didn't know which one. I'd dropped him at a hotel and then picked him up a few hours later. He'd been half conscious and stumbling when one of his other weird friends had helped me shove him into the passenger seat of my car.