Matilda | Harry Styles

FORTY

If it wasn't me, it was this new issue with the paparazzi. Harry couldn't make sense of it, and that made it even worse - I had a bad feeling about it; all of it, yet I couldn't even give it the attention it deserved, because I was already wrapped up in so much else I'd yet to tell him.

I knew I wasn't helping myself. I knew I wasn't doing myself any favours, but it didn't feel like I had any other option - there was confiding in him; there was offloading some of this weight on my shoulders - but then what? What if confiding in him wasn't actually some magical cure? What if it meant that things got worse? What if trusting - actually trusting - somebody more than I'd ever trusted anybody, was as dangerous as I feared it was?

My life had been spent avoiding, dodging, and desperately trying to convince myself that I wasn't as wrapped up in everything that had happened to me, as I truly was. I'd made a habit of it, and it was safe, because I'd never met somebody who tested that boundary for good. I'd never met somebody who made me feel like he did, and I feared that sharing every part of myself with him could drive him away, just like keeping those parts locked up could, too. It felt like either way, I was screwed - but I couldn't bite the bullet. I didn't have it in me.

I stayed still under the water for a minute, my eyes shut, before I snapped back into the room. I washed my body, trying to force some life back into my demeanour. I was being pathetic. I was always, always so pathetic.

I cleared my throat, stepping out of the shower. I couldn't even let myself break down when I was alone - still, I held it together. If I cracked now, I wouldn't be able to pull it together.

We were fine. It was fine. I could keep this up. Harry would be too wrapped up in this ordeal with the media to even remember how he'd started to notice cracks in my demeanour over the previous days - it was fine. I could keep going.

It was draining. But I couldn't find it in myself to do anything else.

I still felt slightly uneasy as I stepped out of the shower, wrapping myself in a towel as I went back into the bedroom. Harry was sitting there, in one of the armchairs on the opposite side of the room. He had a book in his lap, and he didn't look up as I walked in.

I didn't think much of it, as I walked over to get redressed. I did so, with the room completely quiet as I pulled on my clothes, clipping my hair back so that I didn't have to deal with it.

I went over to where Harry was sitting, in his chair, as he brought a coffee cup to his lips. I glanced down at the table between the two armchairs, noticing another cup sitting there, steaming with fresh coffee that he'd clearly just made.

"Thank you," I murmured as I approached him, causing him to glance up from his book. He lightly stroked his hand over the side of my thigh, just under my skirt, in a silent acknowledgement, sending a comforting chill through my body before I moved to sit down. I sat in the chair next to him as he turned back to his book, and I reached for my coffee, taking a sip, before I set it back down. He'd made it exactly how I liked it, as he always did.

"Your phone kept ringing," he said, then, without looking at me, as he sipped on his cup of coffee. "Whilst you were in there. I think it was three times."

"Oh," I said, feeling my heart plummet to the pit of my stomach. Anxiety overtook my senses in an instant, and I could already feel those minimal ounces of composure that I'd convinced myself I'd regained in the shower, beginning to slip away. I looked down at the coffee table where I'd left my phone the night before.

Please, please don't be her. I'd done my best to convince myself of an accidental misdial from my mother, before, but it didn't stop me tensing up, now. Maybe Grace had called. Three times? My eyes flickered to him, but he wasn't looking back at me.