Acting Royal #Wattys2017

Chapter 54

ZAYN

Zayn was freaking the fuck out. Understatement. He'd lost his mind just a bit. His private jet had landed in Cape Town international airport and then he'd to wait to fly to Bloemfontein. He paced the airport. He didn't know what to do. In a few hours he would be meeting his daughter- hopefully. And then Jenny...

"Fuck" he said out loud and a mother and child turned and glared at him. "Sorry. Sorry." he apologized and moved on to pace some more. He passed a shop selling baby things and walked in. He picked stuff up, all the pink stuff anyway. He had no idea what was age appropriate, or what she... Abi... would like. So he bought it all. Literally. He bought one of everything and walked out with an obscene amount of bags.

He then walked over to a jewelry shop. Should he buy Jenny something? A diamond ring? The whole shop, what the hell could he do to prove that he loved her and was more sorry about this than he'd ever been before?

He walked over and looked at all the diamonds- they seemed so dull when he compared them to her.

"Fuck it" he said again and tried to sit still. He tried to hide his face too under the large cap he was wearing, as a few people had recognized him and snapped some pictures.

An hour later he was on his plane, the seats were filed with bags of pink fluffy things and he was wringing his hands. Rafiq had told him not to prepare anything, to speak from the heart, but he wasn't listening and was currently trying to prepare a speech. One of those speeches that the hero gives at the end of the romantic movie that totally wins the heroine's heart.

"Fuck it." He grumbled again and started looking at the cute pink caterpillar that he'd bought. He tossed it back on the chair and then started pacing the aisles of his jet. It felt like a millennium before it touched down and he was in a car. He hadn't bothered to hire a driver, and in all honesty, couldn't really remember the last time he had driven himself anywhere. GPS on. Go North.

He'd donated some of the babies gifts to the people at the car hire place, because the bloody Porsche he's hired didn't have enough room. Why had he hired this car? And why oh why was he driving it like a kid that had just gotten his license?

He followed the GPS voice and everything seemed ok, until he reached the bad, dusty road. It wasn't tarred and it looked rough. He wondered if- in the history of the planet- whether anyone had ever attempted to take a Porsche off road before. He crawled along the road slowly. Every time the car went over a bump is shuddered and he could hear stones flying up and hitting the car on the undercarriage. This wasn't good.

And then, predictably, the tire burst. Zayn climbed out and looked at the spare and all the tools that came with it. He'd never changed a tyre before! Maybe if he Googled it...

But no cell phone signal in this rural place.

He'd walk. No big deal. He'd walk in the country, in the blazing son in his YSL suit. What was he wearing a black suit in the middle of the day for anyway? And so he walked. The son was killing him already and he'd only walked for thirty minutes. At some stage he couldn't take it anymore and pulled his jacket off and dumped it on the side of the road. Water! He needed water!

He pressed on and as he went pulled his shirt out of his pants, unbuttoned most of it and rolled his sleeves up. He was like some wild man trekking through the desert. Finally he saw a small town in the distance and decided to start running. He finally arrived on the road that ran through the town. It looked like this place considered of one road and one road only. He saw a shop ahead, he needed something to drink. He walked inside and it was empty. Such a small town thing, leaving a shop open and totally unmanned. He went straight to the fridge and downed two Cokes in quick succession and then dumped a handful of far to many notes down on the counter. These people could probably do with the extra money, it didn't look like business was booming.

Now what? He had no idea where Jenny was, but this was a small town and people knew everything here. He caught site of a door at the end of the shop and walked through it looking for someone who could help him. He popped out into a small garden that looked more like a Kindergarten, and then he heard it...

The sound of a baby cooing.

He approached cautiously, looked around but there was no one in sight. He walked up to the playpen on the grass, under the shade of a tree and looked in. He froze.

His heart felt like it ripped out of his chest when he saw the green eyes looking back up at him.

He reached down for the baby- his daughter. He tentatively picked her up and she responded instantly by reaching out and touching his face with her small chubby hands. He'd never felt anything like this before. This immediate, rush of massive unconditional love. He pulled his daughter towards him and buried his face in her neck, God she smelt amazing, like flowers or something. He could hold her forever he thought. He'd only known her for a few seconds, and yet, he would die for her if he needed to.

He stood there holding his baby in his arms and he'd never felt happier in his entire life. His eyes teared up. He couldn't help it, these emotions he was experiencing were almost too much to contain inside him. But where was Jenny? She wasn't the kind of person to leave her baby. He looked around and that's when he saw the unfamiliar women sitting on a bench staring at him. She had a look of shock plastered across her face and suddenly he realized she must think he was here to steal a baby or something equally terrible..

"I'm not," he said, "this is, and..."

"I know." The woman said getting up and rushing for the house. "Jenny! Jenny!" The woman called.

"Is something wrong?" He heard a panicked voice answer from inside the house. He looked up just as Jenny came running outside... she looked up and their eyes locked.