A few days later, Harry and I were sitting on the table, eating microwaved eggo's for dinner since we were running low on groceries. I had milk and he had black coffee as he—per usual—was focused on his laptop, typing and scrolling.
"Do you have anything for me to do?" I ask after I finished off my waffle. He doesn't look at me. "Like, any books? Magazines? Crossword puzzles?"
"I do actually," He says, my heart leaping at actually getting to do something for once before he spoke again. "Stay seated and keep your mouth shut." He says making my face fall.
I sigh in annoyance and pick at my nails that had now grown a few centimeters than I normally had them. "Can I ask you something without you yelling or getting mad?"
"No."
"Well, I'm going to ask you anyways." I say, ignoring the way he propped his head on his hand in annoyance. "How old are you?" I say. He didn't exactly look my age, yet he looked young. He looked like he was at least in his mid 20's. When he doesn't answer, I speak again. "Part of the conversation is you answering me like this—I'm Valentina and I'm 18 years old, what about you?" I say mockingly.
"Twenty six." He mumbles, keeping his gaze on the screen. I nod, humming in response to his answer. I was right.
"So you're not from around are you?" I ask in advance to his foreign accent. "Are you from England?" I was mocking him by this point. "What part of England are you from?"
"Leave me the hell alone." Styles grumbles.
I'm finding myself entertained by how annoyed he easily got. "You are from England. Have you ever had any pets? I have two dogs, well, technically they're not my dogs but my father got them to keep people from trespassing. I wasn't allowed to touch them though and they didn't have names."
"I don't believe I actually asked."
"Yeah I know," I shrug. "I just thought I should tell you."
"Why?" He raises an eyebrow making me shrug once more.
"I'm just trying to make conversation and I've just never had a dog before." I say. "My father never let me keep any animals. I never got to leave the house when I was younger either. I was homeschooled until I graduated early last year, I didn't even go to my own graduation I just received my diploma in the mail."
"That's pretty fucking depressing." Styles mutters, still seeming uninterested in the conversation I was trying to have with him.
"Yeah. I guess that's what happens when you have strict parents, or parent in my case. My mom was always so lenient on my sister and I." I look at him. "What about your parents? Did they ever give you shit for trying to watch cartoons in the middle of the night?" His face falls before he clenches his fists and shuts his laptop abruptly. "Did I say something?"
"You did, that's all you've been doing all this time, saying shit when I've told you to shut the fuck up more than once!" He spits, taking me aback. His mood changes so fast I can't even keep track of it.
"In case you weren't aware, I'm basically held hostage with no source of entertainment. The least you can do is talk to me." I defend myself. "Is that too fucking hard for you?"
"Listen, I don't have to do shit but keep you out of danger, if you don't like it then you can go—" He stops when there are knocks on the front door making us both turn towards it before the doorknob started rattling abruptly. Immediately, Styles grabs his laptop and shoves it inside the duffel bag before grabbing my bag of belongings and opening the window. He looks out the window briefly before he begins to throw the bags out. "Let's go." He says just as I was sipping up my boots and putting on my blue sweater.
"You are out of your mind if you think I'm about to jump out the window." There was no way in hell. Styles puts his gun in the waistband of his jeans. We were in the second floor but it was still pretty high to me. His face turned into a scowl before he harshly grabs my wrists and pushes me towards the window making me push at his chest to get off me. "Fuck off!"
The door slams open making us both look towards it to see men with guns look around before their eyes land on us. Just as they were getting ready to shoot at us, Styles has me in front of him, hugging me towards his chest as we fall onto the hood of a car. The impact makes Styles groan in pain as he broke the fall.
When we got off the shattered windshield, he picked up the bags from the floor and grabbed my hand as we ran down the street to the car. He pushed me inside and threw the bags in before he gets inside the drivers side and drives off. "Fuck." He groaned, holding his hand out to see he had a glass shard stuck inside his palm making me cringe.
"Oh, fuck that looks bad." I squeal. I tried my best not to gag as I watch him holding the wheel in pain with one hand. The glass was a nice chunk carved inside his palm and there was no way he could fix that himself without going to a hospital and getting stitches. "We're definitely going to need more than bandaids." I scrunch my nose.
Styles looks annoyed with me. "You think?" He remarks sarcastically, looking at me and furrowing his eyebrows. "You're bleeding." He points out making me pull down the visor and look into the mirror. Sure enough, I had a big gash across my bottom lip that was sure to leave a scar, it was definitely going to be swollen in a few hours.
Styles hands me a used shirt of his to press onto my lip before he drives around until we find a drug store. Once inside, the clerk instantly gives us a weird look as we made our way to the back, collecting gauze tape, cotton balls, alcohol, Neosporin, sewing needles and thread. Once Styles pays, we made our way to the back of the alley where he parked the car. He takes a deep breath as he tries to take the glass out of his hand but he groans and cusses.
"Let me." I say, taking a cotton ball and damping it in alcohol. He seemed like he wanted to refuse my offer but he honestly wasn't in any position to do so. He hesitantly gave me his arm that was covered in a sleeve tattoo.
I dabbed the cotton ball on the wound around the glass making him flinch. "Sorry." I say. "This is going to hurt." I warn, biting my bottom lip to prevent myself from cringing.
"Just hurry up." He demands, holding the steering wheel tightly. I grabbed the shard before counting to three in my head and pulling it out making him take his arm back, the veins in his neck protruding yet he made no noise, the only noise was his harsh breathing. Immediately more blood begins to overflow in his palm, rolling down to the center console and I dab some more alcohol on it. The wound was pretty deep.
I look at the needle and thread made for sewing fabric. "I don't think this is meant for this." I state the obvious.
"It's just for the meantime," Styles digs inside his pocket and takes out a silver zippo lighter and hands it to me. "Heat up the needle to sterilize it. It's bad enough I'm having some eighteen year old child stitch me up, I don't want to have to deal with an infected hand." I glare at him but do as he says.
I grab the curved needle that is meant for upholstery and try my best to heat it, up until it gets too hot for me to hold. I tie enough thread and breathe in and out, my stomach feeling queasy. "I can't do this." I cringe.
"Yes you can, just stick it in and try your best to close it up without stabbing me. Here," he takes the needle from me, takes a deep breath and pokes the needle through his skin on his palm. I can see him biting down on his lip so I press his shirt to his mouth. He seems hesitant but takes it in his mouth and bites it.
Once he has started it for me, he hands me the needle and leans his head on the seat, still biting down on his shirt. I muster up the courage to continue the stitching, earning groans and moans of pain from Styles. The cut wasn't as big as it was deep so it only required about five stitches. I clean the wound with some more alcohol before I add some Neosporin and wrap his hand in gauze tape.
"And that is what you get for pushing us out of a window." I remark and he glares at me.
Once he recollects himself, he grabs a cotton ball and damps it in alcohol. "Come here." He orders and I put my face to where he can reach. He presses the alcohol covered cotton ball to my bottom lip making me flinch from the sting. As I let him fix my lip, he dabs some Neosporin with his finger and places a small white bandaid over it before relaxing back on his seat.
He now had a gunshot wound on his right forearm and a deep cut on the palm of his hand in just under a month.
"What now?" I say. We were in a poorly lit alleyway and we had nowhere to go.
"Now we just wait." He mumbles, rubbing his jaw which had stubble hair growing around it. When he closed his eyes, my gaze remained on his face.
He had a very nice side profile, prominent pointed nose, cherry red lips, long eyelashes adorning green eyes that turned dark whenever he would glare at me when I did something to piss him off.
How can someone look the way he does and be so vicious?