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13. What a Feeling

13. What a Feeling

Once the door shut behind him, Harry fought against taking out his frustration on the wall outside of Scott's room.

He emitted a low growl instead.

He had never met somebody so damn frustrating.

He went back to his room and decided to do some more... investigating. It was bordering on obsession, Harry was pretty sure, and it had become something more along the lines of actual stalking in the past few days.

He saw the small "Live" icon within Mark's circle at the top of Instagram, and his blood boiled as he clicked on it.

The man's pretty yet masculine features aggravated him immediately again. His eyes held a sadness, and Harry knew that there was no possible way that this man was holding it together much better than Scott must be.

"Thanks for joining me," Mark said, softly. "I wanted to... talk to you all. I know that this must be surprising. Lives aren't really my thing. But I needed to set the record straight, you know?"

Harry watched the chat fill up with hearts and words of comfort, and he was relieved to see that any words of hatred towards Scott were few and far between.

"As you know, I posted something on here earlier. And since I did it, I've seen some... not-so-nice comments?"

Harry noticed Mark's voice wavering and cracking slightly. The look in his eyes held an even deeper sadness as he held up his left hand to the camera.

"I called off the engagement. I did it a while ago, I promise. It didn't happen recently, okay?" The tone sounded aggravated now. "And it was my choice. My doing. My decision. There was no cheating, no fighting, nothing. It was simply a matter of me not being ready to be loved in the way that marriage entails. Scott has so much love to give, and I felt like I was someone he was just.. wasting it on." Mark's eyes welled with tears.

"Scott Hoying deserves someone who loves themselves. I did love, and I still do love him. What I didn't love was who I was becoming with him. He has the ability to stay humble. Sweet. The pace of his lifestyle made me angry, sad... moody. I couldn't do it. I have to work on myself. Does that make sense?"

He fell silent, clearly reading the comments that continued to filter in. Harry watched in amazement at how honest and kind he was being towards his ex. It's always easy to blame the other. To take the blame entirely upon yourself? That's what love is all about. His respect for the man increased tenfold.

But that certainly didn't change the fact that he hated his guts.

He closed out of the live, wishing that Scott could have seen it. Hopefully, social media would be kind to him now. He went over to Twitter, and found that there was a flood of supportive comments for the baritone.

His heart warmed up as he read them. Perhaps it was time for Scott to have his phone back.

The next day was full of travel. Travel typically meant that everyone was varying levels of cranky and tired.

But Scott looked like he might actually keel over and die as they approached the tour buses.

"You guys wanna all ride on ours for the first part?" Niall asked. "Maybe we can write the song we were all talking about."

Some of their eyes brightened in response, but they turned to look at Scott, who might actually have fallen asleep standing up.

"Scott? Want to?" Matt urged, gently.