Damaged » h. styles au

Chapter 27 - Harry

I wish I could go inside and see what had happened, but I had to take care of Angel. The girl was already crying a lot, and I knew she would get even worse once she saw her friend. I couldn’t let that happen. Though I couldn’t stop her when she quickly opened the door and removed the seatbelt, running towards the house extremely fast, as if she was running away from apocalypse. When I finally got to remove my seatbelt as well and go after her, it was too late. She was already inside, sobbing so loud it pained me. It really did.

Well, it wasn’t without a reason, though. The scene with which I came across wasn’t pleasant at all. Kirsten was in the corner of the room, nearly unconscious, and there was a trail of blood on the wood floor. She had hand marks all over her skin, including her face, not mentioning the small cuts here and there from whatever he had done to her. Bastard! I wish that asshole was there right now so I could do much worse things to him. What was wrong with his f–cking brain?

I apologized to Lana for letting Angel see that scene, but she didn’t care much. Instead, she just yelled at me to take Kirsten and that’s what I did. God, she seemed so fragile. And I won’t lie, she was awful. I bet she didn’t feel any good either, and for some reason, I felt as if telling her that everything was going to be fine. Maybe if I did that, things would, indeed, be fine. I wouldn’t let that d–ck touch her ever again. I would make my best to keep him away from her, and I didn’t know how I would do that yet, but certainly I would have a lot of time to think about it while she stayed at the hospital. And she would have to stay there for a long, long while to recover from what had just happened.

As I leaned my forehead against hers, and placed her on the backseat of my car, having a few seconds alone with her before Lana and Angel came closer, I knew why I had met that girl. I finally knew why I felt the way I felt towards her. It wasn’t just my second chance to make things right. It wasn’t simply a coincidence that made me meet her that day. It was a sign destiny had sent to me, for some reason, which I still wasn’t aware of. It was a chance to make me fall again, but also a chance to change that girl’s life, to teach her that love doesn’t have to be the way she knows. It was a chance to change her conceptions about people, about the world, and especially, about me.

And it was a chance I was taking.

Week after week I went to the hospital to check on Kirsten after work and before uni. On the weekends I just didn’t answer to the boys’ calls and to be honest, I barely talked to Leigh either. I just said I had a friend at the hospital and that I needed to make her some company. Davie and Mark even got to think it was Charlie, but I told them they didn’t know the girl. When I said it was someone from my class, they obviously suspected, ‘cause I’m not really friends with people from where I study. But it only took me a few more excuses and they swallowed the whole story as if it made sense.

Leigh noted something different, though. When we were alone the only day I accepted to hang out with everyone, she looked at me as if she knew something else. I could see she was concerned, but also, I could see she was happy. Since the day when she helped me to understand my feelings, our relationship got stronger. Even if we hadn’t personally talked to each other for more than four times, she knew me as no one else did, and I was glad I had the chance to meet her. She was a great girl. And she knew that the reason why I wasn’t hanging out with the boys as I used to was because of Kirsten. I hadn’t told her, but she knew it. She didn’t know Kirsten’s name either, nor that she was taken; all she knew is that I was starting to have feelings for this girl who was… Complicated. And yet, I knew she knew so much more than what I’d said. She could read my mind, my eyes. I trusted her my life already.

So she had helped me with the boys. She and Savanna had hung out with them a lot more, and the boys stopped paying attention to me, to be honest. I’m not sure if I should be glad Leigh did that, or worried for the fact that girls were all they needed to completely forget they had a friend for years. Either way, I just ignored that, because Kirsten needed me.