Lush Corruption | Harry Styles AU | BOOK 2 ✓

17

Harry Styles

It was hard for me to see her like this - so fragile and broken. I hadn't seen her act like this since that day at V's, when I told her we couldn't be together. She hadn't acted like this when she confronted me at the party, she was just angry then. As the pieces of William and Carmen's sabotage pieced together in my mind, I become enraged. I knew that their little game wouldn't have worked if I had been more open and honest with Vicky, but William knew me and he knew that I would think the worst of her before I confronted her.

Trust, that is what Vicky and I lacked right now. I knew she missed me, I could feel it in the way she made love to me last night, but she didn't trust me and there would be no hope of fixing anything until she did. I had done this to us, this had been my fault, so I needed to earn her trust - I needed to fix us, to fix her.

We had decided to be honest with each other, but complete honesty had consequences because sometimes the truth was more damaging than a lie. There were things I purposely kept from Vicky to protect her, the way I hid my past with William in the beginning, and it wasn't out of malice - I did it because I loved her. If complete honesty is what she wanted from me, then I owed her that especially after everything that I've done.

After wiping her tears away, and making sure she was okay, I told her I'd spend the day with her. I wasn't going to the club, and neither was she - today, we were going to work on us. I suggested we stay in, order some take-out, and watch movies; I didn't really want to go anywhere, her apartment felt like home to me, and I had spent too long away from here.

I ordered a couple pizzas, while Vicky insisted she tidy up... It was a good thing she hadn't seen my house, if she thought this place was dirty. I insisted on helping her, but she pleaded me to just sit down. She had this habit of cleaning when she was stressed, she said it added order to her chaotic universe, so I sat back and watched her. The longer I watched her the harder it was to keep myself from telling her I loved her, she was so languid and graceful in the way she moved, but I knew that forcing my feelings on her would make her uncomfortable. I knew her reaction would be to push me away, I had known the deep-rooted sense of preservation she had the moment I met her, and I didn't want her to push me away anymore.

I was growing frustrated with myself, if I had just trusted her then we would be fine - we'd be perfect; William and Carmen wouldn't matter, Red and Marcel wouldn't hate me, and Vicky would be by my side every day. I wanted her so bad, my body yearned for her in a way that physically hurt me, but I could never tell her any of that because she didn't need to feel guilty, I did; this is the pain I would have to live with for what I had done to her.

Getting back together wasn't an option for Vicky, but being away from her made me realize just how much I had taken for granted. I wanted her for real this time, as my girlfriend, but right now I would have her in any way she would let me - I just needed to be close to her. My timing was all fucked up, it shouldn't have to take this much for me to realize how intense my feelings for her really were, but she needed to know. There would never be a day in my life that I wouldn't regret what I had done to Vicky, but I could live with that, I couldn't live with the idea that I let her get away.

I continued to stare at her until she had cleaned the entire kitchen and moved on to the living room, the sound of the doorbell eventually pulled me out of my revere. I opened the door and came face-to-face with a teenage boy who stared past me at the beautiful girl naively bent over to pick up a magazine she had dropped, I smirked at him and grabbed the pizzas before slipping a hundred dollar bill in the breast pocket of his button-down and shutting the door on his gawking face. I chuckled to myself at his inability to hide his amazement, none of us could - Vicky had something about her that made all males, and even some women, gawk at her as if they'd never seen anything so beautiful because most of us hadn't.