What Goes Around... || H.S. Harry Styles

18.

She reaches for the button on his jeans and is surprised when his hands cover hers to stop movements.

"You wanna take these off yourself?" She purrs as her fingernails scrape up his thighs and Harry actually whimpers.

He shakes his head softly, not believing that he's actually stopping this, and holds her waist to his so that she can't run from him when he tells her this.

"You have no fucking idea how badly I want this, but we are drunk-" His words are cut off by her almost condescending giggles.

"Harry, I'm fine, you don't need to protect me," she says with the slightest bit of venom on her tongue.

She reaches for his fly again and he stops her once more, frowns etching on both their faces, one of frustration, one from confusion.

"Harry, seriously!" She huffs and tears away from his arms to flop down on the couch, shaking her head as she unbuckles the thin straps of her high heels and kicks them under the coffee table. "Why did you even come up here?" She yells accusingly, her ego seriously battered.

She doesn't understand what the hell he wants from her if he doesn't want to sleep with her. He says he has feelings for her but she doesn't believe there's no ulterior motive. He says he cares about her but she's fine. She will be fine.

"I told you, 'cause I wanna be near you!" He yells back, not quite understanding where this anger in her is coming from. "Why are you always trying to rush this!"

She stands up in a whirl, nearly losing her balance and he can't tell if it's the remanence of the tequila or her natural incoordination. She rests a hand briefly on the arm of the couch before furiously walking towards Harry.

She's at least 4 inches shorter than she was a moment ago and her little cranky stomps are making Harry want to throw her down and kiss her all over.

"I'm not rushing Harry!" she spits out, "Just trying to get this over and done with."

He takes a step back as her words hit him like a whip across his flesh, opening a wound deep in the cavity of his chest that was reserved just for her rejecting him.

"I don't want it 'over and done with,'" he chokes out and tries not to tremble as she squeezes her eyes shut as if she can't think clearly when she looks at him.

"Look Harry, it's fine, I'm used to it ok?"

"What are you talking about?" He questions, his brow creasing in the middle as he tries to search for something in her eyes that will explain her hostility.

"I don't know why you're making this harder on me by dragging it out! Why don't you just hurry up and fuck me so you leave me like everyone else?"

The breath in his lungs leaves his body in a sharp, stunned exhale. His eyes bore into hers and he can see seven years of pain and deception passing through them at the speed of light.

The thought of anyone else touching her makes his skin crawl but the idea that they would lull her into a false sense of security and rip it away from her makes him feel physically sick.

She appears so self assured and like an ever lit ball of burning positivity on the outside, and maybe that is truely who she is on the inside, but Harry is starting to learn very quickly that her sweet nature has been clearly taken advantage of far too many times.

He's finding out that her innate self awareness and confidence has been whacked down so often that now she is constantly waiting for the next blow, questioning herself in every situation as to not repeat the same mistakes that seem to keep creeping into her life time and time again, under carefully hidden disguises of different types of men.