roses | styles

CHAPTER V

"I'm sorry, I didn't think he'd pry," Anna sighs deeply with regret, "he mentioned his worries about me walking alone, but I tried assuring him that I was fine since I don't go very far. It's rich of him to be distrustful about my whereabouts and who I'm with like he wasn't literally sleeping with his personal assistant for months behind my back. Fair enough, I suppose I'm no better than he was," she murmurs, glancing at Harry with a small smile. "Am I a bad person for loving you?" She asks Harry with a timid voice. It's so soft that Harry's heart nearly breaks from how genuinely mournful she sounds.

"I don't think you are a bad person," Harry says.

"I think I am," Anna admits, "not because I think it's wrong to love you, but I feel like I'm betraying him by not loving him."

"That doesn't make you a bad person, it makes you a hypocrite," Harry points out. He looks at her with an expression that says, 'so what if we're hypocrites, I LOVE YOU'; his eyes smirk at her as he absentmindedly laces their fingers together and gives her hand a reassuring squeeze.

"Yeah, thanks," Anna sighs, groaning, "God, this is all very complicated, and from here on out it'll only be difficult if Norman remains skeptical of me. He'll probably want to sleep with me just to appease his fragile ego." Her expression twists into one of distaste. It's so sudden that Harry chuckles as he pulls her towards his chest in an embrace that he hopes would comfort her, though he feels unsettled by the image of Anna and Norman being intimate. He scolds his brain, reminding himself who Norman was and who he is. "He's still your fiancé," Harry reminds her (and himself), "I can't necessarily keep you from him. I'm merely me," Harry sighs. "I don't have much to offer you."

"You're plenty enough. You have my whole heart Harry Styles," Anna pouts before kissing him.

"Thank you for reminding me, Ms. Rose, but what of your status as a hypocrite?" He teases her as she sighs deeply. "Honestly, I don't give a fuck. I'll embrace that title if it means I don't have to surrender my happiness to please a man whose heart I probably don't even have anymore," she mutters, "and perhaps, never had in the first place."

"You'll always have my whole heart, Anna," Harry says, "among other things. When things are a little less hectic, we should go out on a real date. Somewhere nice where no one knows us, and we can just forget for a while."

"That sounds real nice," Anna sighs, "I can't wait."

Their noses touch as they lean into each other with the same starry-eyed expression: it is certainly love.

...

Anna is distrustful of Norman's sudden change of demeanour.

Usually, after an argument, he'll mope around her for a few days before he eventually fucks her forgiveness out of her. It certainly never fixed their problems, but kept them on low heat; Norman only enjoyed the slow burn of their afflictions as it usually leads to great sex no matter the outcome; he's masochistic in that way. But where Norman couldn't see an issue, Anna could see that the rift between Norman's sexuality and her own couldn't be more obvious. His sexual prowess spawned from years of experience and experimentation, meanwhile, as Anna fell several years short of his senior, her experience was limited to just Norman (not counting her on-screen romantic partners of course because they don't necessarily count). She knew Norman had never been in a serious relationship prior to her, as he'd never been looking for one; he wasn't interested in monogamy either, but once he met Anna he vowed to change. In other words, she knew what she was getting into when they began their relationship, though, she'd argue, that she didn't fully understand what a relationship with a man of his nature would entail for her.