Reign || Harry Styles

16: Conviction

He saw it coming.

But he was also in denial, so he pretended like he didn't.

The lad sitting in his front row seat didn't dare to glance at the tennis court in front of him, he didn't dare to look at her.

(He did, anyway.)

She was a world-class tennis player, ranked number six after her Wimbledon Grand Slam in 2013. But somehow, the bruises imprinted onto her wrists affected her, it affected her more than Harry thought it would.

Maybe she didn't want to win.

Only thirty-five minutes throughout the match between Jean Franco and Elena Vlasenko from Ukraine—number thirteen in the world tennis rank—and Harry was already sweating bullets.

The thing was, Jean Franco wasn't annihilating her opponent like she usually did. She was passive, her reflexes were off, and her hits were barely accurate. She was trampling for survival.

Harry thought if Jean fails to catch up in this match, then she will have to give up her title in the first round. Which was not something that a certain Jean Franco would be content of.

But Jean Franco was and will never be content of anything, really.

Clouded with trepidation, the usual vibrant green hue of his eyes dimmed as his pair of oculi followed the female figure on the court running to and fro just to chase and hit one hairy lime green ball.

The boy felt guilty for putting those red-blue marks on her wrists. And the feeling was slowly taking over. Guilt wrapped around his chest with a single tightening movement, almost like guilt had a death grip on him.

At least, if she won, he wouldn't have to feel so guilty.

You know, if.

“Fourty – love.”

“She's not gonna win, mate,” commented Niall, responding to the umpire's announcement. Harry peeled his eyes off of the viewfinder of his SLR camera and looked at Niall intently, which came out as an almost glare. “I mean—technically speaking, she's not fit for this.”

The chap with the emerald eyes was annoyed, sort of, but he tried to mask it. “You lack conviction in her.”

“You have too much conviction in her,” Niall fired back. “In fact, you're clouded by it. Blinded, perhaps.”

The words struck at him. He furrowed his eyebrows, almost unsure of what Niall was implying, or how to respond to it. Niall fought back his glare with an eyebrow raise, which aggravated the whole situation. So Harry bit the insides of his cheek to release the anger. “I'm not blinded,” he said, attempting to sound casual and uninfluenced by Niall's words.

“You're in denial,” the blond stated, his eyes wandering to the tennis court, staring at nothing. “If we were talking of substance addiction, it would be the first symptom. You deny it, you deny that you have a problem.”

Guilt tightened its grip on Harry's chest, this time, with the help of denial.

“I don't have a problem.”

Of course, Harry wouldn't admit. Because frankly, to him, it wasn't a problem.

She wasn't a problem.

Harry didn't have a problem, Harry was fine. Utterly and absolutely.

Niall scoffed. “Denial,” he repeated again. “But whatever you say, big boy.”

Denial, denial, denial.

Was Harry in denial? He didn't think so.

He let out a derisive laugh at Niall's statement—because seriously, it was rather stupid of his best friend to even thought that he was in denial—and then diverted his attention to his camera, while constantly assuring himself that he wasn't in denial.

Just like he told himself that he wouldn't cheat on his lover-for-one-and-a-half-year.

Not today.

He set his focus on the woman with the golden hair, and cold shivers travelled down his spine in an instant, temporarily making his steady photographer hands lose their stability.

Perfection was what she was made of: her flaxen-coloured hair was tied in a simple ponytail, her lean, slender body was clad in an all-white tennis dress, her face almost completely bare, and her skin glistening like fucking diamonds.

God, she looked so gorgeous under this light. How the rays of sunlight casted shadow upon her skin, generating highlights that contoured the ivory of her epidermis to utter perfection; heat and exhaustion motivating perspiration to erupt, making her skin seemed—oddly enough—shining under the England sun.

Harry found himself once again entangled in the distraction that was Jean Franco, and how her flawless skin looked so touchable and how he thought about touching it in the least platonic way.

There she was again, sneaking into his head, planting seeds of lust and sin.

How was it possible to push her away when

          the thought of h e r

              was more exciting than a n y t h i n g

                    he had ever experienced?

Harry's stomach felt weak, as Jean's Ukrainian opponent whose hair was braided skillfully (and played so as well) was about to score her first (easy) game.

Fatigue was starting to consume Jean's features, Harry observed—which was rather odd, because surely, she was a world-ranked tennis player, and fatigue on her just seemed odd, especially this early on a match.

Ukrainian girl swung her racket so quickly that you couldn't even tell if she hit the ball or not, but she did. Swift and agile, Jean ran up to the net and gave the incoming ball a smash hit, but it wasn't enough. Somehow, the golden-haired woman who made Harry's masculine hormones rage had miscalculated the whole thing.

Everything about this was wrong.

Even Harry's presence there was wrong.

In a split second, his green eyes widened with pure, hard shock.

Effortlessly, Ukrainian girl deflected the easy shot and aimed straight to the right corner. Jean Franco gave all her might to run, in hope to at least send the ball to a drive, but futile was written in front of her very eyes. And futile was what she get.

The distance was just too large and the velocity of the flying ball was just too high. She couldn't reach it in time, so the ball bounced off the grass surface and flew further away from the court, along with all hope that was left in Harry's system.

Turns out, a bruise was not just a bruise. Especially not bruises created from fluctuating rage and loss of control. Specifically, the ones Harry Styles left on Jean Franco's wrists.

Very risky, very risky.

He shouldn't have gone for the risky.