Harry Styles
"Cleo? Cleo, wait!"
The moment I heard the front door opening and then being slammed shut, I felt like I could finally breathe again.
Cleo hadn't been answering her calls since she left and now it was almost nine p.m., which meant I'd been losing my fucking mind picturing all of the things that could've happened to her. Louis kidnapping her again, whoever was behind the list finally getting their hands on her, or simply the fact she could leave me behind any minute.
Yeah... you could say my mind wasn't the healthiest place for the past hours and Zayn had been asleep, which meant I was on my own and Overthinking. He'd woken up only an hour ago and I brought him some water, ordered him something to eat, and I helped him stand up so he could go to the bathroom. And he was much better now.
Just that he was starting to walk again was a fucking relief, but he was taking a lot of painkillers and still putting some ice on his head. I wasn't able to sleep or eat, for that matter. I just paced back and forth, took a shower and changed my bandages, stared at the ceiling, and did some more overthinking... my afternoon was simply awful.
I missed that little stubborn thing and I was so fucking worried, I shouldn't have let her leave on her own like this. It was too dangerous and she couldn't die... that was one of the things I realized today: I needed her alive.
The reason was still unknown, but at least I accepted that. And she had literally just arrived, making her way straight to the kitchen after she walked past me in the living room, holding a bag over her shoulder and a lot of file cases on her hands.
Her blonde hair was loose and dry now, and the way she smelled like my chamomile shampoo and also that unique scent of hers mixed together was making my stomach flutter. It was a soft smell of sandalwood and something so fucking sweet that it was intoxicating, stuck on my pillows and also on my skin.
It was really hard to keep her off my brain when my whole house smelled like her, and now that she was back I followed her to the kitchen without even bothering to glance at the place Zayn was sitting on the couch.
He told me that he had to get out of the bedroom to breathe some different air, and I could relate. He'd been stuck in one place for way too long, so I helped him sit on the couch and we were watching The Notebook. I hoped that would relax me a bit but I was mistaken, clearly.
"Cleo? What happened? Where were you?" I rushed into the kitchen, pushing my hair off my face as I watched her place all the cases on the countertop, and her bag was on the floor.
She didn't look at me and her face was flushed, like it usually was when she was upset. She started to grab the papers from the cases and then spread them all over the marble top, and I realized they were individual files of actual people.
I noticed her hands were shaking slightly as she arranged the papers, and I walked around the kitchen island so I could reach her. I grabbed her hands and held them in mine, which forced her to finally look at me.
Her eyes were watering and bloodshot, as if she'd been holding her tears back for hours. The blue in them was the lightest shade I'd seen, it looked beautiful.
"Baby, what happened?" I asked her, but she quickly pulled her hands away from mine and gripped the edge of the counter, lowering her head and inhaling very deeply.
I glanced at the papers again, reading the many names of several children. Each file had a picture and a description, along with a red stamp saying 'SOLD' right over their pictures. And from what I was seeing, they literally came from all over the world... the U.S., London, Japan, Russia...
