You Can Let It Go [ZARRY]

Nine

Zayn:

Holy shit, what just happened?

I strode quickly to the west wing of the estate, to the rooms belonging to the maids and other nurses. My shift with Desmond Styles was over until Sunday morning.

“Time enough to evaluate my questionable employment choices,” I muttered.

I unlocked the door with a keycard Cesar had given me. My new room was sparse and neat, like a small but elegant hotel room. It had an en suite bathroom and a window overlooking the sprawling backyard: tennis courts, pool, garden, and an entire forest beyond.

I pressed my burning forehead to the glass and shut my eyes, willing my blood to
cool.

Hayden the Hot Gangster. Here. Under the same roof.

God, when he strode into his father’s chambers, I’d thought I was seeing a mirage or that someone was playing an elaborate prank.

When he cornered me in the closet, anger and surprise warred with a flood of heat. An electricity I hadn’t felt with anyone in a long time. I hadn’t let myself feel for anyone. My
breath caught thinking of how our bodies had been briefly pressed together so that I felt the hard angles and planes of him.

And in that moment before I left him, how he’d looked at me, as if he were seeing me for the first time. Or seeing himself.

Like I had with Liam.

The chaos of feelings carried me on a tide to seven years ago. To the summer I had everything and lost everything. To the last time I had felt something for someone and had it ripped away.

Liam was older. Nineteen to my sixteen. I met him when he came to pick up his little sister my friend Kayla from a party. Instead of dragging Kayla home, he and I ended up
talking until the party ended, until the sun rose on the start of a new day.

After that, Kayla became my new best friend. Liam was home from college for the summer. I’d come over looking for Kayla, when I knew she wasn’t home, and Liam would invite me in anyway. “Since you came all this way.”

I practically lived at their house during that summer. My last summer, it turns out, in my own home.

Liam and I didn’t dare touch each other the way we wanted to. We touched how guys do. Little punches on the shoulder, a hand
on the back, fist bumps and handshakes.

The pretending finally ended the late summer night when we kissed, and something that had been loose and jangling inside me clicked into place. A wildly spinning compass finally found its true north. The kiss was the first thing that
made sense in my long, anguished, and confusing puberty.

I finally made sense.

When Dad kicked Liam out of my life and then kicked me out of mine, the compass needle wobbled and wavered again.

Until today.

Harry Styles walked straight into that room like the answer to a question I hadn’t known I’d been asking.

A strange thought had battered itself around my heart: There he is.

For a split second, before his own panic took over, Harry had been happy—no, relieved to see me too.

“That’s crazy,” I said to the empty room.

Harry was an asshole. A bully like his father. A straight, rich guy who’d made a mistake with pills and was now petrified that his privileged lifestyle would be disrupted if
the secret got out.

But that summary wouldn’t stick. Instead, the sense memory of Harry’s power, the solidity of his body and the sheer masculine perfection of him in that expensive suit, stayed with me like the remnants of his cologne.