Cross My Heart // Harry Styles

25

HARRY'S POV:

Sitting there, hunched over Gwen, trying to keep my screams of mental pain and anger inside of me so as not to scare her, I was losing. I wanted her to think it was alright now. That she was safe in my arms now. I wanted her to just feel me holding her and be ok. But I was losing the game of keeping myself contained.

When I finally looked down at her, she was....out.

Dried, dirt smeared tear trails covered her face. Immediately I checked her chest to make sure it was moving up and down with breaths. It was. Ok.

I had to get a handle on myself.

But I couldn't.

Gwen was just rap.ed. I'd seen it. I'd seen her getting rap.ed. I'd seen the view between her struggling legs as I ran up to help her. I'd seen a pen.is.....her mouth.....her head held back too far....I'd seen all of this, and I couldn't get the images out of my head. They taunted me. Over and over and over. And I was losing it. These images were bad enough by themselves. But my mind was making it worse, by putting all the stories she'd told me about her past, in my head together with what I'd just seen.

It was making me able to actually see what she would have looked like the morning she got rap.ed by the two guys in the basement before she was beaten senseless. It was making me be able to imagine what she looked like with her various clients she'd told me about. It was making me "see" it all.

And though I'd thought it was all so terrible before.....this was now taking it all to a new level. Everything she'd been through. And then thinking it was over forever. And now....having it happen again.....my mind was torturing me horribly, and I couldn't stop seeing her being used. Over and over again. By monsters, calling themselves men. And then I saw myself. As if I were watching from across the room. Only the room was now a forest. The bed was now ground covered in leaves....

I saw myself between her legs that one night and I lost it completely.

I became weak with grief. Weak with sorrow, that was swallowing my entire soul. I knew I had trauma saved up in my head. I knew it. It had never fully been dealt with. Now, I was remembering back.

I couldn't hold her anymore. I had to lay her down, or I was going to drop her.

Shaking and seeing only through a blur of tears, I laid her as gently as I could, on the ground. I noticed her shorts out of the corner of my eye, just out of my reach. I leaned across her, and reached for them, just reaching them with the tip of my two fingers.

I grabbed them and put them under her head, and held her face as my tears fell onto her. I rubbed the hairs out of her face, and arranged her hands on her stomach, and backed up from her quickly.

I was freaking out. It was happening. I was surprised I'd had enough control and strength to put her down before my body gave out and I went from kneeling on my knees, to kneeling on my knees with the top of my body leaned over forward, with my head on the ground and my arms up next to it, holding my hair in the back, pulling. Squeezing. Hitting myself on the back of the head.

Crying hysterically into the leaves and dirt. Guilt eating at me each time I'd see myself over top of her, instead of the guy laying just over there on the ground, blood coming from his head.

Each time I saw myself thrusting into her, her back against the wall.

Overwhelming sadness hitting me in the stomach with the images of various clients......

She'd endured so fvcking much, for so long. And I pitied her for it. I had so much empathy for her, but until I'd actually SEEN her being f0rced, right in front of me...I'd never been able to truly realize what it must have been like for her, every single day...for seven years. Seven years of people taking her body. Using it however they wanted.....I was surprised she actually had the capacity left in her, to love me. I was surprised she'd even let me in to begin with. I was surprised that after all she'd been through at the hands of men, that she could actually trust me in the first place. Find comfort in my arms. I was surprised I could be her savior. I was surprised this girl could love at all. Smile at all. Keep going, day in and day out, with all that she had stored in her head. How did she do it? Because just IMAGINING it, was making me crazy. Like, post traumatic stress crazy. Full on fucking crazy. I was growling cries out, sobbing, crying as I knealt here, curled up towards the ground.