Where Your Heart Is (A Harry Styles Fanfiction) #pfcc2k16 #Wattys2016

Chapter Thirty-Three: The River Has Run Wild.

There's trouble in the heartland. You're drifting your own way.

*****

"Mate! Look alive!"

Louis's voice yanks me out of my own head, and his fingers snapping in front of my face make a loud noise that both startles and annoys me.

"What?" I ask him and I slap his hand away with an uncalled for violence. "Sorry..." I quickly mutter an apology, shaking my head.

"No problem..." He replies, visibly thrown off by my reaction. "It's your turn, here."

He hands me the headphones and points to the corner of the conference room where we set up the recording booth. I slowly reach for it and grab it, nodding my head and patting his shoulder as I walk past him.

"Hey, Harold... Are you alright?" He asks from behind me, and I turn around. "You are unusually quiet and frowning a lot. Even for you."

Again, I nod my head. Even if I wanted to talk about it, there are still five people in this room clearly eager for me to get on with my job and finally wrap this long day up.

I look down to my wrist and read the time from my watch while stepping inside the booth, and I sigh because of how incredibly fast the day went by, and how Lea and I barely spoke to each other since this morning.

After we parted ways, I have spent the rest of the day inside this room, and I only got out one time to grab a bite and another to clear my head. Each time, I had tried to talk to her, but whenever her boss wasn't lurking around, she would make up and excuse and stay as away from me as she could.

Ever since then I have her in my head even more than usual and although I can't really explain it, there is something inside of me telling me that something is just not right.

It is not about what she did or said specifically; it was actually quite the opposite. I was what she didn't do and what she didn't say.

When I got her text this morning I thought it was over. Not us, but me. I honestly thought she was going to kill me. For not telling her what I knew, for not being able to drown the story, for lying to her about what was bothering me.

I was ready for all of that. I was ready for whatever hell was about to break loose in the hands of her wrath.

Instead, I got out of it with nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a couple of not so severe scolding words. And somehow I knew that was way worse.

That is why I can't seem to brush her off and focus on what we are doing here. The awful feeling that this might be the dreadful calm preceding the storm.

"Harry, come on!" Julian shouts from the other side of the glass, motioning his hands for me to step in.

The music has already begun to play and I totally missed my cue.

"Sorry..." I excuse myself once again, quickly eying the lyric sheets before me and trying to place the line I'm supposed to record. "I'm ready now."

The tune blasts in my ears and this time, I manage to step in on time. Whatever ghosts I may have haunting my thoughts; they always seem to surrender when I start to sing.

"Point of no returning now it's just too late to turn around..." I sing along to the music, remembering that day Liam told me he was working on this song. "And I try to forgive you but I struggle 'cause I don't know how..." It is really good. And as I continue to sing the lyrics, I try to remind myself that I need to do more writing of my own. After all, everybody is waiting for me to get something done so we can record it. "We've built it up so high and now we're falling... It's a long way down."