Under Summer Sky • Zarry

33. History

I raised an eyebrow at her as she clung onto my forearms with this pretend scenario she was creating in her mind. 

I shook my head. "Well that's a morbid thought," I murmured, chuckling lightly at my very strange niece, who was seemingly not budging this time on manipulating Zayn's emotions. 

"Zaynie would rescue him," Stella replied assuringly.

I then looked over at Zayn and he stared down at me with his soft brown eyes, sparkling in the sunlight with this sense of worry, as if he was picturing me in danger now. I could see that he thought about what Low said and looked slightly put off by it. 

I jutted out my bottom lip lovingly with this half smile that fell on my lips afterward, invoking a smile on his face now; silently communicating to him not to dwell on the anxious thought.

It was just like Stella and Harlow to be this way. 

They were the best of friends, more like double trouble, and they both seemed to have this particular sense of themselves, to be so hyper focused on me and Zayn's relationship because we were very close with them. 

But I thought it was sort of cute, really, seeing as how they had kind of brought us together again in this odd and random unforeseen way almost, challenging Zayn and I to think more about certain things within their innocent games, without them even knowing the magnitude of their impact on us.

"Of course I would," Zayn clarified sternly. "I'd never let anything bad happen to your uncle Harry," he added, passing his attention on to Harlow. "Or to anyone in our family for that matter, including you little Gremlins," he went on with a slight splash in their direction as they both screamed now, laughing, and began splashing Zayn back until he was now soaking wet, shirtless.

Both cute and sexy coexisting at the same time; Zayn made that look effortless. 

I just treaded water idly beneath me as I floated and watched it all play out admirably before my eyes. My heart was nearly bursting at the words he just uttered; our family. There was something about Zayn saying them out loud that made me feel...warm, cozy, heart full. 

And there I was, basking in another moment in time, another memory we made that I'd be holding onto forever. If there was one thing in this world I valued observing more than anything else, it was how fun and caring Zayn was with kids, and how much they loved him. 

Just then, I watched Adrienne and Gemma emerge from the side gate of Gio's house on the estate, stepping now onto the patio in their pale yellow and white striped summer sun dresses, freshly painted nails on their toes, one a french manicure and the other black, holding their cold brews. A smile was sprawling upon Gemma's face as she witnessed Zayn, Low and Stella's water fight from the sideline. 

"Mummy!" Harlow shouted once she finally saw Gemma standing there and immediately scrambled out of the pool from up the steps. "Did you know what Zee just said? He said that he'd save everyone in our whole family from all the bad things that could happen! Just like a real super hero," she went on with a bright grin. 

"An alien super hero," Stella corrected her, now swimming her own way over in the donut float to the side ladder to climb out of the pool.

"Oh here we go," I remarked with a laugh to Adrienne as I lifted myself up from the water with my biceps, water falling down my body. "They'll call him a super hero and I'll never hear the end of it. It's gonna cause him to break out the Spiderman costume next, just wait for it." 

I looked up with a grin and saw Zayn smirking beside me, his jeans damp and his brown skin dripping wet from all the water splashing. He ran a hand through his tousled, freshly-purple tinted hair and I bit on the inside of my lip, honing in on how brown his skin got in the summer, and how good he looked with his hair like that.