Bucket List - [ H . S ]

Chapter Seventeen

Harry Styles

The sun shone through the large floor to celling windows I had fitted around the house. The heat from the early morning sun began to beat against my cheek, causing me to stir in annoyance of being woken up. The white cotton sheets I was tangled in messily were weighing me down, holding me in place like it didn't went to let me get up just yet. Truthfully, I didn't want to get out of bed.

I missed mornings like this.

Waking up on my own accord without being yelled at by Liam, in a bed that was mine and not on the inside of some luxury hotel our management had given us. This is what I craved.

My job was the best thing to ever happen to me but it was the little things that I missed the most. Touring the country and all around the world was exhausting. So, mornings like this one where I could just curl into the sheets for an extra 5 minutes were little luxuries I could afford to take.

This morning, though...she was on my mind. Invading my thoughts and painting stupid pictures in my head about her and our encounter last night. I don't know why but Quinn was slowly beginning to creep her way into the very back of my head, coaxing that stupid little voice in my head to make dumb decisions. Like the car ride yesterday.

I groaned in irritation.

She got under my skin that day on the bus. Getting all fucking sappy about American tv shows and stupid bucket lists. I was annoyed at her that morning.

Rolling my eyes at the thought, I lifted the free pillow from beside me and covered my face with it. Groaning loudly in annoyance into the pillow.

She had her legs wrapped around my waist and her finger grazed against parts of my skin, touching me in a way that I wasn't necessarily used to. Women that I've slept with in the past usually want to get down to fucking so fast that I barely have time to get fucking hard anymore. Anything to have a chance to say they've fucked a celebrity I guess. In reality, I liked to take my time. I was all about the tease, the build up, having my partner so rilled up beneath me that my name is pouring from their lips like thick sticky sweet honey.

She was different. I know it was only a stupid game but I hadn't had someone touch my arm or jaw like that, I hadn't had someone touch the swallow tattoos on my chest so delicately like that before. It sounded pathetic when you thought about it.

My thoughts drew back to the other day on the bus. I heard her scream that morning. I was sitting in the living room half asleep and half in my own thoughts but I heard her.

My first instinct was to check if she was okay that morning, find the source for her screaming. Instead, I turned the corner and was met with her hand clutching desperately onto the back of Zayn's back, her head pressed into his neck...and not mine.

Pathetic, Harry.

You know better than this.

Elijah told you not to get close to her, it was dangerous if I did. She couldn't know the evil that really lay beneath the facade that was her family and...me. I didn't want her to know that part. I've hidden it well, it was a mistake and I know that. It wasn't my fault. She just couldn't know.

The difficulty in this was that she felt so pure. The raw emotion that she showed me on the bus and during our little moment on the beach yesterday was a show for it. She was a broken soul, leaking nothing but pain and sorrow that she covered up with her sweet smile. I didn't like being an accomplice to that broken side of her and maybe that's why I was so magnetically attracted to her.