The Time Capsule (Harry Styles Fanfic)

Prologue

Madeline- 23 years old

    How was I supposed to be smiling in a room full of people that were congratulating me on my recent engagement, when it was to the wrong man?

   My fiancé stood by my side and proudly smiled and shook hands and hugged everyone who came up to speak to us and to wish us well in our future endeavors together. I hardly knew the people surrounding me, none of this even felt like an actual congratulatory party for me.

   How did no one realize how close I was to bolting outside or passing out where I was standing? I looked around the room and it was so crowded and full. I felt my breathing become faster, and it was hard for me to pull in new air. I was panicking.

   And suddenly, everything stopped when I laid eyes on him.

   He said he wasn't going to make it. That's what he told his mom when I sent the invitations out 6 weeks earlier.

   God, I hated myself to epic proportions right now. Because when I looked at him, my heart slowed and my fear slithered away. It always had when he was around me.

   Don't ask me why the man who seemed to scare and hate everyone else was the only one who had ever made me feel safe.

   I had secretly been wishing he would come, if not so I could just see him one last time. But I had also been dreading it at the same time. I never was able to handle the emotions he brought out of me, but especially not in front of my future husband.

   Turning to my fiancé, I patted his hand for attention. "I'm going to run to the restroom and get a moment of fresh air, okay?"

   "Okay honey." He replied, and placed a small kiss on my forehead that made his current company start gushing over. "Don't be too long."

   Ugh.

  I didn't need to look in his direction to know he was watching me leave. He was always watching me, it was what he had done his whole life basically. I also knew he would follow me, something else he had always done.

   I stepped around people and offered them fake smiles and thanks for the kind words they were spewing my way as I made my hasty escape. Finally though, I opened the glass double doors and was able to step out onto the wooden deck that had a staircase that led to the beach.

   The sound of waves crashing and the salty tang in the air would always smell like home to me. I had lived on the coast my whole life and the thought of not being here anymore hurt me more than I thought possible. This would forever be home, no matter how many times I tried to run away from it.

    I kicked off my shoes the second I landed in the sand, and then made the walk to ocean, stopping as soon as the waves rolled in and covered my toes.

   The water was still pretty cool in May, but it didn't matter to me. It was what I needed in this moment.

   The ocean and him.

   I felt his presence behind me. I didn't have to look to make sure, my heart and soul just knew him. It always had. We tried like hell over the years to sever this connection between us, but it never happened.

   I feared the only way he and I would never feel this bond for each other would be in death, and even then I wasn't sure.

    "Thought you weren't going to be able to make it." I say still staring out at the ocean, too scared to face him now that it was just him and I.

   "It didn't seem right not to come." He says, and the breeze carries his voice over to me and wraps it around my ears tenderly. I've always loved his voice, something about it had been like a drug to me all these years, and I craved it so much more than I would ever admit.

    "What are you doing, Madeline?" He asks in a hard voice. Madeline he calls me, my nickname he used when we were growing up long forgotten. "You're not happy. You look close to fainting standing in there, and if anyone would stop fucking long enough to actually look at you, they would see that."

    Finally, I turn to face him. "People only see what they want to see Reeves."

   "Is that your way of telling me I don't want to see you happy? Because you know that's not fucking true. I've spent my whole life only ever trying to accomplish that one thing."

    "No, I would never say that about you. I'm saying everyone else is letting themselves believe I'm happy with him, because that's what they want to see."

    "So you even admit you're not happy with him but you're still going to marry him?" He spews at me. Looking down, he takes in the large diamond placed on my ring finger and his expression becomes even darker. "He doesn't even know what kind of ring to actually buy you, Madde-" He cuts himself off, almost calling me by my old name. A name that was dead now.

   I look down at the heavy stone on my finger. "It's a beautiful ring."

   "It's a fucking trophy." Reeves says.

   "He won, right?"

   "Did he?" Reeves smirks and cocks his head to the side. "Because I'm sure if I walked over to you and carried you into that water right now, we'd make love to each other like we have many times before in the past. And the last thing that would be on your mind would be the rick prick inside."

    "That's not fair." I say, and wipe at the water that splashed on my face from a large wave that was now flowing around my calves.

   "Neither is me having to watch this shit, but you don't seem to care about that."

   "You can't blame all of this on me. We both fucked this up, and you know that."

   He says nothing back, just like I knew he wouldn't. He knows I'm right.

   We both have done things in this life that has stopped us from having the love we were actually born to share together.

   If only we hadn't listened to so many people. If only we hadn't hurt each other so many countless times, we would be standing here in this place in a much different position today.

   But you can't go back and change the past or rewrite your history. What's done is done.

   And it breaks my heart to say I know I'm marrying the wrong man, but I can't marry the right one either. And as much as he's tried to deny it, he knows we can't either.