No Strings Attached

Chapter Three

They arrived at the bookstore within forty-five minutes, and even Louis was impressed with their speed. Rosie was practically bouncing out of Louis’ arms when she pointed to the far corner of the store where she knew the picture books were waiting for her. He quietly reminded her to keep her voice low, to which she agreed with a solemn look and a finger pressed to her lips.

Once in the children’s section, he let Rosie run around and choose whatever books she wanted to have read to her. Within five minutes, she came waddling back to him with two books, one in each hand. He smirked when he saw that one had to do with a unicorn and the other a horse. Even without being able to read the titles, she certainly had an equestrian fascination.

“Alright then,” Louis muttered from where he was sitting on the polka-dotted carpet as Rosie climbed into his lap. “The Rainbow Unicorn, is it?”

Rosie only shrugged and leaned into her father’s warm embrace, glancing down at the colorful illustrations of the book spread before her. Whenever Louis read to her, she always fell intensely quiet. He often wondered if he was doing something wrong, but his fears were always assuaged by the enchanted look on her face.

They were midway through the second book when Louis heard a familiar voice.

He looked around, trying to maintain his composure. He straightened up and looked for the source of the voice. Rosie seemed to understand that Louis was in the middle of something relatively important, so she didn’t fuss when he trailed off halfway through a sentence. Instead, she sat patiently in his lap, tracing the illustrations in the book with her fingers.

Louis held his breath, waiting for that voice again. It couldn’t be…

“…don’t know what book she would want,” came the voice from somewhere behind the bookshelves.

That wasn’t Harry’s voice. But Louis remained on alert, certain that he had definitely heard that voice somewhere before. But he instantly knew whom he was listening to when a second voice joined the conversation.

“She can’t read!” said the second voice in an apparent Irish accent.

Louis’ breath hitched when he realized that the voices were getting closer to where he and Rosie were sitting. He looked down at his daughter in a panic, but she was calmly petting the horses in her book.

Christ, Louis thought as he looked around for some sort of escape. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t want to be seen at the moment. He gently lifted Rosie off his lap, not at all thankful that she was starting to fuss at this discrepancy in their reading time. He pressed a finger against his lips, hoping she would understand the signal. But she only plopped down on the ground in refusal.

“Read,” she demanded. Louis sighed.

“That’s not the point,” came the voice that Louis now knew belonged to Liam Payne. “I’m supposed to be a good uncle, aren’t I? And what kind of uncle would I be if I didn’t – Louis?”

Too late.

Louis turned around to find Liam Payne and Niall Horan standing in the same children’s section of the same bookstore in London that he had the misfortune of bringing Rosie to that afternoon. The only bright spot in all of this was that Harry was nowhere to be seen, and Louis breathed a little easier. Although he had spent the better part of the last week looking for their third band member, he never actually considered what he would do if they met again.

He awkwardly lifted his hand to the back of his neck, staring at the two boys standing before him.

“Erm, yeah, hi,” he said in a lilting voice that couldn’t possibly be his own. He cleared his throat. “So I guess you guys remember me, too.”