A Shot of Reality [Harry Styles]

XV. Hushed

A/N: I'm not too thrilled with this chapter, so I can only hope my dear readers are. But what I am thrilled about is that ASOR has hit 10,000k+ reads. Thank you all a ton :) xx

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April 1st, 2001

“Des, think about your children for a second.”

“I am thinking about them Anne; us staying together isn’t going to benefit Harry or Gemma in any way if we’re fighting all the time!”

“Des, please…”

A seven year-old Harry sat against the wall that was muffling his parent’s altercation alongside his sister. Bringing his cold knees to his chest, he blinked back tears that threatened to make a sound against the hardwood floor as Gemma tried to console her sobbing brother.

“This has to be an April fool’s joke, right Gemma?” His hoarse voice scratched under his misery, leaving his older sister saddened in heartache for her brother’s innocence among a very adult situation.

“Shh, Harry,” she whispered into the ear of Harry, but she couldn’t withhold the shaky uncertainty within her tone.

“It’s okay, they're just talking. It’s all talk, it's always all talk.”

“Dad’s leaving, Gem,” he wept amongst the unfortunately familiar sounds of his mother’s wails and his father’s screams. 

He raised his head out of the safety of his arms, one’s that his tears now glossed over, and looked into his sister’s similar green eyes that were wide in frenzied tears and miserable realization.

“We’re alone. I’m alone..."

Harry furiously kicked and rearranged the gravel beneath his feet at the memory of his haunting words, as the birds tweeted and cooed in the oak tree above him. The sound of pebbles flying against one another frightened the birds, driving them to fly from the tree under the distraught boy and to one yards away. After his less than modest scene with Modest he had stormed out in a full rage, metaphoric steam pouring out of his nostrils and ears as he somehow dodged the paparazzi by seeking the refuge of shop’s awnings and dirty alleyways. The fact that Modest thought they could control every aspect of his schedule annoyed him, but the even more damning fact that they actually could had him grown livid in the most miserable way.

When the tour was set in October, Harry had been fine with it, even after Sydney’s attack. He had anchored onto the idea that John would be apprehended, Sydney would heal and Harry could possibly utter the three words he had ached to tell her for so long. Call it insane, but at least he would have an ample amount of time to consider and follow through with this detrimental idea. But the dry month of August was less than a month away, and with the Police having no sufficient leads on John’s whereabouts it was clear Sydney would have zero time to heal fully before Harry could whisk away to America.

In his hateful vendetta, he had stumbled onto a world of complete serenity and tranquility.

The park he had found was secluded, no words being spoken unless it was the calls of the wild nature or his own self mutterings. The plethora of trees shaded and protected Harry from the outside city folk, sunlight peeping in from the crevices of leaves and their branches. A pond pooled nearby, its darkened waters glistened under the scorch of the summer sun as the timely drips and rushes of the water sounded off by the pond’s miniature waterfall. A yellow duck waddled out of the water as paler ducklings followed suit, shaking their small bodies to rid of the excess of water in their feathers as the mother nipped and comforted them.