BROKEN

CHAPTER 2: SCARS

HARRYS POV

I turn around to see a face washed out in the crowd. She looks all too familiar to be a stranger, but I know for a fact we've never met. I see makeup surrounding her eyes, distracting from her natural beauty. She remind me of a princess. But not one of those princesses you saw in the movies. With the long hair and expensive dresses. She reminds me of a princess in the way smiles, to hide her true pain. Or the way she stands with her hands by her side, almost as if she was in a fairytale. She was a princess in the way she was broken in so many ways, yet she was still so beautiful.

When I say she was beautiful, I don't mean she was pretty, which of course she was. It wasn't her wide, blue eyes that stared straight into mine. It wasn't her cherry stained lips that reminded me of the Easter mornings all those years ago. Most certainly, it wasn't just the way her golden‐ brown hair spiraled down her back, almost like a staircase. It was the way her pale hand pulled back the hair falling on to her face. It was the way her feet stepped over one another awkwardly on the ground below us. It was the way she hid herself from the rest of the fans, thinking she wasn't good enough. Thinking she wasn't beautiful. That's what made her special. That's what made her beautiful.

Her hair is covering her face, representing a mask to hide her insecurities. By the way she

simply stood, with her feet crossed staring blankly at the ground, you could almost see all the stories and pain that masquerades as her life. As the true person inside of her.

As I take a step closer to her, she backs away. Almost as if she's afraid of me. I don't know exactly what it was that made me want to approach her. It was something in her eyes. They resembled a single dream, falling into a deep sleep from which one never recovers.

"Hi love." I whisper softly as I approach her.

Her chapped lips open to reveal a gasp. From the look on her face, it was almost as if she had finally awoken from that deep, dark nightmare that she called her reality. In that moment, she was my star. She shined brighter than all the rest. She may just be one out of the millions in the galaxy, but she's special. She's mine.

"Harry, I..." Her soft, innocent voice attempts to speak but the tears beat her to it. Her pupils bloom like a rose in a garden. Not only do I see the scars on her wrists, which she's been attempting to hide for all too long, but the scars on her heart. The scars from all the times she's cracked. From all the times she's shattered. From all of the times she's broken. But little did I know how much I had done to fix her. To heal her. All I'd done to stop the world from losing her. To stop her from losing who she was. From losing herself.

"Why are you crying?" I ask. I sound stupid asking these questions. Thoughts fill up my mind as a fountain filled with pointless wishes. Thoughts of this girl. I imagine the things she must put herself through at night. The times she's tortured herself thinking about what she doesn't deserve. All that can seem to come out of my mouth is short and simple. "You are beautiful."

Little do I know about the times when this would have meant so much more. The times when she needed me and I wasn't there. Nobody was. All she got was the boy with the rosy cheeks on the posters, or the boy with the nice voice on the radio. All she got were these pieces of me

that never existed, and never will. But at the time, I didn't know about everything she could have

gone through. I didn't know about the nights she spent in a dark lit room, crying herself to sleep. Those times she would spend awake in front of her bathroom mirror counting her flaws, as if she was counting the stars she once counted all too much. Or the time she would spend telling herself that she's not good enough. When, let me tell you, she was better than the rest of us.

"Harry...I don't know what.... to say." She stutters. The girl pauses before taking a breath. "You make me feel beautiful. You make me smile. You make me laugh. You've healed my scars. You've saved my life to be fair. You were the touch to wipe my tears after my first heartbreak. You were the hand that held mine after a bad day. You were the one to heal my cuts when no one else was around. You were the one to catch my demons. But you don't even know." I wiped a tear falling from my cheek, like a parachute falling from the sky. I didn't have words.