Lennon.
I jumped when Harry slammed his car door shut with such force the car shook on its wheels. We’d barely shared a single word since he got the phone call, I attempted to ask about what was happening but all I got in reply was a grunt. I sunk down low in the passenger seat, I turned my head to look at him as he swerved onto the road without looking twice.
The empty silence in the car allowed my mind to regain sanity. I was not the sort of person to throw myself at someone but I had just had sex with Harry, twice and in all honesty I don’t know what came over me. I don’t know where we stood, we weren’t in a relationship and we’d never even discussed emotions, let alone feelings. The thought of just being another girl to him made my stomach churn. He made me feel wanted and even though in my head last night I felt special, how did I know he didn’t make every other girl feel like that?
His jaw was tense, I was amazed I couldn’t hear his teeth grinding together. His stare didn’t falter, not even flickering over to me as I sighed heavily. He could have been in a sullen mood because of what ever was happening but I couldn’t help think it was because he was inching on feeling regretful. I chewed on my bottom lip anxiously, how I could I go from feeling on top of the world to the bottom in a matter of minutes.
We arrived back at the house twenty tedious minutes later, not a single word shared between us. I didn’t want to make the effort only to have it thrown back in my face. Harry was out of the car and half way up the drive before I even unbuckled my seat belt. I glared at his tensed back as I dawdled out of the car. I grabbed my bag out of the backseat before following in his footsteps.
The house was manic when I stepped inside. I don’t think I’d ever seen so many people in the house, ever. I moved out of the way as soon as I stepped inside as a group of men I’d never seen before hurried past me down a corridor. I looked around trying to figure out what was going but Harry had long disappeared and I didn’t recognise anyone around.
Not sure what else to do I climbed the staircase speedily and headed towards the bedroom. I was about to open the door when a commotion from the room next door averted my gaze. The door flew open and Perrie and Eleanor stepped out. They were in the middle of a conversation until they spotted me, I didn’t catch on to what they were talking about but they way it ended abruptly at my sight wasn’t very endearing.
Perrie raised her eyebrows before looking at Eleanor, a smirk appearing on both their faces. “Someone took a wild ride down Harry Styles avenue.”
I grumbled and rolled my eyes at their pleasing faces. “What’s going on?”
“You smell like sex.”
“Why are there so many people here?” I asked, hoping to get a reasonable reply but it never came. My body was hauled into my bedroom by Perrie leading the way. She gave me a closer inspection, I swatted her hand away from my neck, not because I was hiding anything but because it was weird.
“What’s going on between you two anyway?” She asked, pouting her lips as she pondered some more about my appearance. I tried to smooth out my hair but it was hopeless and pretty pointless.
“There’s something drastic going on downstairs and all you’re concerned about is my sex life?”
“It’s not our job to tell you what’s going on,” Eleanor spoke up, her cold words weren’t exactly friendly, she refused to meet my eye contact which indicated she didn’t trust me still.
“So I’m supposed to guess?”
“Ask Harry.” Perrie interjected.
“He won’t talk to me.”
“You two are hot and cold, much like a menopausal woman.”
I failed to crack a smile at her description but deep down I did find it oddly amusing but clearly true.
“I don’t understand him, he can me you feel everything one minute to nothing the next.”
“That’s just Harry, no one understands him fully. He’ll have a reason behind his actions, but whether he’ll tell you is a different matter.”
“He doesn’t like to talk about things much does he?” It was hardly a question when I knew the answer anyway.
“He’s a reserved person, it doesn’t make him a bad person but it makes liking him a little harder.” I nodded at Perrie’s word as she spoke the truth so plainly it hit me in the face. “I guess that’s what makes him even more appealing, he’s not an open book and all you want to do is read more.”
“Yeah,” I sighed reluctantly. “I guess.”
“Anyway shower, now. As great as it is, sex is not something you want to smell or look like at half nine in the morning.”
They both left the room after that without a single word more. I closed the door behind them, and caught my breath for a second, taking in what they had said. It wasn’t anything new strictly speaking but it made it feel truer than before. I stopped slumping against the door and headed for the shower. After looking in a mirror it scared me to realise I had been walking around with hair that looked like it had been backcombed to hell and back, and my shirt was inside out after getting changed in a hurry.
My skin could only endure the boiling water for so long, so unwillingly half an hour later I stepped back into the cold air formulating in the bathroom and changed into a set of clean clothes. I dried my hair quickly before going back into the bedroom, which was still empty and showed no signs of ever been occupied whilst I was in the shower. There wasn’t anything else I could do in the bedroom so I sucked it up and left the room, heading downstairs.
The commotion was less apparent than half an hour ago, but it was still a lot noisier than normal. My eyes bulged almost all the way out of my skull when a man walked past with a machine gun gripped in his hands. I took several steps back away from him until he had disappeared.
I searched the kitchen first for a familiar face but the outcome was empty. It was easy to forget how big the house was until it was filled with people spilling out of every room, yet none of the people I actually wanted to see. I could only catch small drifts of conservations, the only key thing I managed to decode was something about The East. If I put two and two together to start with I could have figured it out straight away that it had something to do with them.
I was close to practically invading the office although I felt that was stepping the mark a bit too much, but luckily I saw a face I knew. I watched him as he paced the floor in the hallway, running his hand up and down his face as he spoke on the phone. I stood out of sight of his vision until I heard him hang up.
“Hey!” I called out to him before he had the chance to runaway. He took one look over his shoulder and whipped his head back around so fast I thought his neck might snap. “I’m sorry, it’s Luke right?” I sprinted to catch up with him and grabbed his arm stopping him from moving away. He nodded back wearily. “I didn’t get a chance to apologise for that time I stared at you a couple weeks ago.” I admitted, his face slowly looking less reserved. “In all honesty I didn’t know what I was doing, I thought I was just having a bit of a laugh. Sorry if it scared you.”
“You honestly didn’t know what you were doing?” He replied, raising his eyebrows as if he was fully surprised.
“If I did I wouldn’t have done it. I didn’t pick you on purpose either, you were just there.”
“Where’d you and Harry go last night?”
“His flat, why?” It was my turn to raise any eyebrow now.
“Figured, just checking, Zayn made a bet you two had fled to Paris or Scotland.”
“Unfortunately my life is neither that interesting or spontaneous.” I quipped back with little hesitation. “And Harry doesn’t seem like the guy to whisk me away to Paris.”
“He can be spontaneous when he wants to be.”
“Oh I know.” I didn’t realise how my few words could have been taken until they had left the presence of my lips. “What’s going on? I questioned twice as fast, my words almost coming out so fast they were literally a buzz sounds.
“Harry not tell you?” I had to laugh at his question because he genuinely seemed surprised that Harry hadn’t told me. I sighed and crossed my arms over my chest, shaking my head at him.
“Not a single thing, I’m assuming The East are involved.” My voice rose higher towards the end indicating I wasn’t fully sure and was hoping he would click on and answer the underlying question.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
His answer wasn’t the one I was looking for and he scarpered pretty quickly after that, he had urgent business to attend to apparently. If I rolled my eyes anymore they’d fall out of my head. I wasn’t going to be left questioning things anymore when something serious was happening, if Harry wouldn’t tell and no one else would, then I’d find out for myself.
Eavesdropping was never my forte, in fact I was caught eavesdropping at school on the headmaster and soon discovered he was sleeping with the secretary, although I was caught by a teacher and suffered with detention for two weeks. Apparently listening to a private conversation is more punishable than cheating on your spouse.
The office door wasn’t fully closed, the gap wasn’t big enough to see through but after the noise in the other rooms around the house finally died down I was able to make out some of the muffled words. From what I could gather Paul, Louis, Harry and Zayn were having a debated discussion of some sorts.
My head wasn’t pressed up against the door, I feared it would swing open if I tried so I hovered millimetres away from it. My eyes were constantly fixed on my surroundings in case anyone caught me, then I’d be in a sticky predicament.
“How can we trust them?” Harry’s voice was bellowing loud and full of aggression, I gulped out of fear, I would not want to face him right now.
“Sykes killed fifty of their men in one night. It might not be trust but their ready to seek vengeance.” Paul reasoned.
“And that’s enough to form an alliance with them?”
“We’re not just protecting ourselves anymore, it’s the whole bloody city.” Paul sounded worn out and tired, Harry just sounded spiteful and unwilling to listen.
As they continued to speak my brain rallied with thoughts. The way they describe the amount of people in the gangs made it sound like they were small armies, almost as if this was a war waiting to happen for some time now. I don’t know who had been killed but they weren’t from The South, which peculiarly relieved me to some extent.
“So that’s the plan?” This time it was Louis’s turn to sound unimpressed. “We form an alliance with The West and fight a bloody battle?”
“Do you have any better ideas? This has always been Plan B and you never had a problem with it before.”
“Because I never actually thought we’d need it. There’s too many things at stake. How do we know The East and West aren’t working together?”
“We don’t, we can only assume.”
“Assuming things isn’t good enough.” Harry reiterated sharply at Paul’s comment.
The West had been attacked by The East, Plan B was to form an alliance and fight to get the city back. The one thing I couldn’t understand was what they were fighting over? Were The East really strung up on having that much power? Was one quarter of the city not good enough for them? And what happens after this so-called battle, do we go back to normal or is it a fight till the death to see who reigns over London?
“We don’t have any other options.” Paul spat back, I could imagine him glaring harshly at Harry right now. They didn’t seem like the type to argue with each other, but with everything happening tempers were rising and fuses were being blown. Thankfully not a single soul had passed by to catch me still listening in.
“What happens with Lennon? She still doesn’t know how to control her ability to literally scare people half to death.” My ears perked up at the sound of my name leaving Harry’s lips.
“Didn’t she tell you she scared Sykes? I think she knows how to control it, just not when to use it.”
“When does she need to use it?”
There was silence following Louis’s question, which sent shivers down my spine instantaneously. I could hear someone pacing the room but no sign of them coming anywhere near the door luckily. I was holding my breath, ready to run as soon as the door opened but it didn’t and I could hear voices again.
“No.” Harry’s voice was so sharp it could metaphorically cut glass. “She’s not being thrown into the fight.”
“All she has to do is stare at people and they fall to their knees in fear.”
“And what if she gets killed in the process?”
“They won’t kill her. Sykes wants her.”
“He doesn’t want her, he just wants her eyes. The minute that vile creature he calls a son has her child she’ll be knocking on deaths door.”
They weren’t the words I wanted to hear, I could physically feel my eyes getting wider by the second at the realisation of what could happen. I wasn’t wanted by them, they wanted my ability for their own greed. I balled my hands up into fists, they were becoming clammy for the anger building up inside. Their faces flashed through my mind, as they laughed in my face leaving me tied up in the attic. The memory only infuriated me more and I slammed the door open before I could even comprehend what I was doing.
“I’ll do it.”
“What?” Harry spluttered in disbelief, their eyes widening at my sudden appearance. It didn’t take Paul to click on I had been listening, he stood with his arms folded across his chest, almost looking as if he expected it.
“I’ll help you give them a taste of their own medicine.”