V A D A
We left on Sunday morning, making our last stop in Britain to Manchester. After the plane ride, everything went back to how it was just as I thought it would.
As we make our way into the hotel lobby, and by we I mean Tommy and I, all the pap is photographing us.
I already know I'm in such deep shit with James.
Tommy and I quickly make our way to our hotel rooms, saying a quick goodbye. I hear the shower running as I open the door so I just put my bag down in the floor, waiting for Harry to come out.
It didn't take long cause not even 10 minutes later, Harry walked out in only a pair of grey track pants and his damp curls a dark brown mess.
"Hey." He says, pecking my lips.
"Hi." I reply, standing up and opening up my bag to get a charger.
That is until someone knocks on the door. I stand up, leaving my bag open and open the door. There I see a very pissed off James.
"You! I can't even go on vacation for a fucking week without you messing something up!" He shouts in my face.
"Watch yourself James!" Harry warns, not standing behind me.
"Don't you dare, boy!" James shouts.
As Harry opens his mouth, I beat him too it. "It's fine, Harry." I say and then turn my attention back to James.
"Get to the lobby right now! Conference room B!" James angrily growls. "And not you Harry, just your dumb little girlfriend!"
James angrily storms off and Harry shakes his head and sighs.
"Don't sign anything." He tells me. I nod and start walking down the hall with my phone in my hands, hearing the door shut not too long after.
+
After getting yelled at a lot by James and him trying to get me to sign a contract, he finally gives up and lets me go back to my hotel room.
I quickly make my way down the hall, softly opening the door to our hotel room, wanting to be quiet in case Harry was sleeping.
As I open the door though, my heart drops to my feet. Harry is pacing around the small space of the room, his eyebrows furrowed as he reads out of my notebook. The letters.
"Harry no!" I quickly say, shaking my head, mentally begging that he didn't read anything.
"You-what-this-why-" he stumbles over his words, making eye contact with me and then goes back to reading the pages.
"Harry, put the notebook down and please tell me you didn't read anything." I whisper.
If he read any of that I'm actually fucked. I wrote things about my childhood, about my father, about Harry, about my feelings.
"'You make me happy, you really do, but right now I feel so alone.'" He reads out loud from the first letter I wrote.
"Harry stop!" I whisper again, pinching my eyes shut as I hear him flip the page.
"'He makes you feel how you feel when you stare at a really pretty picture.'" He reads again.
"Put it down Harry."
"'If I could fly, it meant I got to escape my life.'" He reads again, his voice cracking as he does and I can hear as he turns the page again.
"'But they keep me from drowning. For now at least'." He reads out from the letter I wrote on Christmas.
"Harry stop!" I shout, not being able to take it anymore. He wasn't supposed to find any of it.
"No! Why-why didn't you tell me about any of this?! Why did you keep it all a secret?!" He shouts back, his eyes red and his lips a deep shade of pink.
"There's nothing to tell about it!" I shout, my chest feeling heavy and my heart thumping rapidly in my chest.
"What do you mean nothing Vada?! 'It was a really nice Christmas, not that I really have anything to compare it too, but it's definitely better than having to sneak out of my window so I wouldn't be hit that day.'" He shouts back, using my own words against me.
"It's not important, ok?" I shout once again, my voice cracking at the end of my sentence and my eyes starting to sting. No, I will not cry.
"It seems pretty important to me, so tell me what you meant when you said 'And right now, I really want to escape my life. But I don't know if I ever want to come back to it.'" He shouts, a tear rolling down his cheeks.
I shake my head and run my hands over my face before letting them rest in my hair, pulling at my roots.
"I can't Harry!" I tell him, back to my whisper.
"Yes, you can." He persist gently. "I can't because then that's the end for me! That's me falling apart!" I shout, sniffling as I take a step back.
"Just tell me, nothing will change." He presses again. I sigh and throw my hands in the air.
"My father used to hit me, ok? And my mother would let it happen and no one would try to help me! No one cares! So I didn't tell anyone and kept getting beat by my father until I was 17 years old! Now can we stop talking about this?!" I shout back, feeling drained and back to my empty state when Harry looks at me.
"We can't just drop it, Vada. Why didn't you tell me anything?" He says, his jaw clenched as he talks normally now.
"I didn't tell anyone about it Harry." I reply flatly, not daring to move my eyes away from his as I subconsciously fidget with my fingers.
"Fair enough. But why did you write the letters instead of telling me how you felt?" He whispers now that he's so close to me, holding up my notebook near his head.
"Look at the end of my very first letter again and you'll understand why." I whisper back, briefly glancing at the notebook before meeting his eyes again.
He furrows his eyebrows but regardlessly does what I told him. He nods and sniffles after reading what I told him to, another tear rolling down his cheek. The stinging in my eyes returns but I try my best to ignore it.
"If you heard me tell you that I think I love you more than 2 weeks ago, why didn't you tell me?" He asks, his voice cracking once again.
"Cause you said you think you love me so I thought if I ignored it, it would go away." I reply honestly.
"What if I told you I loved you right now? What would you do?" He asks, making me freeze and hesitantly shrug my shoulders.
"Are you saying that?" I ask.
"What if I asked you to describe all those things I make you feel with one word, what would that word be?" He asks, not answering my question.
"It wouldn't be love if that's what your expecting." I reply, staring into his emerald green eyes.
"Why not?" He asks.
"Because don't you think I should know what love feels like before I say it to somebody?" I ask him, furrowing my eyebrows as a frown takes over my appearance and I face reality.
No one has loved me before.
"Hate to break it to you Vada, but I have been in love with you since I asked you to come on this tour with me. You know what love feels like, your just scared to admit it. But I won't make you." He whispers, putting the notebook down on the bed before walking to the other side of it and sitting on the edge of it.
"What?" I breath out, but I doubt he heard it.
"I just don't understand it." He suddenly speaks. I continue to stand where I have been the whole time. "Why... why do you think you telling me things, pretty important things, will make you fall apart?"
I close my eyes and lean against the wall, really trying to come up with a good answer for his question.
"When I would go to school, everyone would see the bruises, everyone would see the cuts. But no one would dare ask me about it. No one seemed to care." I explain, furrowing my eyebrows as the memory flashes through my mind while I stare at the floor.
"People don't care about things as long as it benefits them. That's how I grew up." I stated, continuing to stare at the floor. "That was until I was in fourth grade. I had just became best friends with Faith, and our teacher was a new teacher. She was beautiful, curly black hair, dark skin, one of the most gorgeous women I have ever seen."
I slightly smile as the memory I have of her flashes through my mind.
"She was my favourite teacher, by far. Young too, probably in her mid 20's. One day, I went too school and I had a big bruise on the side of my face from the previous night when my father hit me." I internally cringe, my body becoming stiff at just the thought of my father. "She noticed, just like all the other people around me in that school did. But instead of just sitting back and sending me scared glances, she talked to me about it. She brought me into the hall and asked me what happened. So, I told her. I knew that what my father did was wrong cause none of the other kids went to school with bruises on there bodies. I was the only one. I didn't know that me telling her would cause so much trouble."
I close my eyes again before freezing my stare on the floor. I take a deep breath to calm myself down. I can't cry.
"Once I told her my father hit me, she asked me how much he would. I told her he did it everyday and she hugged me. I have never been hugged by an adult before, I've barely been hugged as it is." I explain, a frown taking over my features. I didn't dare look in Harry's direction, I won't be able to finish this story if I look at him. "After school, she told me she would walk me home. I only a lived a few blocks from the school so I usually walked home by myself, but I was so happy to have someone to hold my hand as we crossed the street."
The soft smile came back again, but only for a couple of seconds. I clenched my jaw as the events replayed in my head.
"When we got to my house, my teacher came in with me. My dad was drunk like always, my mom hiding some where in the house. He suddenly started yelling at me, and I didn't know why. I was so scared and confused. I hid behind my teacher, and she asked if they could talk. He then started screaming at her. She tried to calm him down, try to talk to him, but then he slapped her right across the face. I ran across the room, away from the yelling and screaming and violence that was still in front of my eyes."
I took another breath, my eyes staring to sting but I couldn't get it to go away again.
"Then, he hit her again. And again, and again. He hit her so much, right in front of me too. I curled up in the corner, watching as my father beat the only person who has ever cared about me. I starting crying, begging him to stop but he didn't fucking care one bit. He enjoyed it to say the least." I let out a sour chuckle, my insides twisting as I relived the moment in my mind. "He then pinned her against the wall and told her that if she every came in more than thirty feet of him, he would kill her. And he was being dead serious too, he wasn't just trying to scare her. She quickly nodded and walked out of my house with a beaten up face and probably a couple broken bones. I ran so fast that I felt like my legs were going to fall off. But by the time I made it too the door, she got hit by a car, right in front of me too."
I shake my head as I can still feel how my heart dropped when I saw the car hit her and she just fell to the floor.
"She died, right there. And it was my fathers fault. But no one knew about it so the person who hit her ended up going to jail. But if my father didn't beat her so bad, she wouldn't have bled out so quickly and died. It wasn't the person who hit her's fault, it was his. But it was also mine. Because if I didn't tell her anything, my father wouldn't have beat her and she wouldn't have been dead. It was my fault." I continued to stare at the ground but then I heard Harry's soft voice speak.
"It wasn't your fault." He was suddenly a lot closer to me, standing in front of me. I quickly sniffled and blinked away the tears that were threatening to fall.
"It was, and he made sure to remind me of that. But the point is that after that happened, I fell apart. After I told someone what happened to me, I fell apart. So that's why if I tell people things, I fall apart. Cause it always backfires." I quickly explain the reason behind my story. I don't want sympathy, he just wanted the answer to his question so I answered it.
"I'm so-" he starts but I cut him off by shaking my head.
"Don't tell me your sorry." I whisper, placing my hands on his chest.
"Alright, I-I won't." He whispers back.
He then slowly wraps his arms around my waist, bringing me closer to him. He brushes his lips against mine, but slowly retracts his lips away from my face and instead hugs me. I take the hug, I want the hug. He slowly rocks us back and forth, and I could fall asleep just like that. He slowly walks us over to the bed and we lay down. He brings me back to his chest and holds me like he's holding the pieces of me together, which he is. We slowly fall asleep, Harry's warm skin seeming to give me comfort.
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So I wrote the last part like without re-reading so I'm sorry if there are any spelling errors.