One for the Ages // Book One

Chapter 3

I all but steamrolled over anyone in my way on the way back to my room.  This was ridiculous.  I'd come here to relax and try and figure out a few things in my life and here some 22 year old kid was trying to psychoanalyze me. 

Hell no.

I wasn't about to go down this route.  I slammed my door once inside my hotel room and paced as my breathing ramped up.

I had spent my whole life running from this kind of crap.  People who thought they knew me or wanted to get inside my head.  My head was not a place where Harry Styles was going to set up shop that's for sure.  He could go find some other 22 year old and try to figure out her deepest darkest secrets.

I let out a huff after I sat down on the bed and folded my arms over my chest.  That's when I heard the knock at my door,

"Elizabeth, can we talk about this?"

I stared at the door, staying silent in the hopes he'd go away.  I heard him sigh through the flimsy wood,

"I know you're in there, you left a path of scorched earth on your way.  I can also hear you breathing...or should I say I can hear you fuming."

"Go away!"  I yelled back like a six year old. 

I heard him sigh again, this time through his nose,

"Alright.  I'm sorry.  I crossed a line.  I shouldn't have asked you that."  I stood up off the bed, blinking a few times as I stared at the door, he almost sounded like he really meant that.  No one ever apologized to me before and really meant it so I wasn't sure. 

"I understand now.  I see the boundary.  I won't cross it again, I promise."  I took a few steps towards the door when I heard him pitifully say, "I just wanna know you."  Under his breath.  I stopped dead in my tracks, "I swear on my singing voice that I won't touch you again unless you say it's ok."  When I stayed rooted to my spot he finished with, "Please open the door?"

I don't know why I decided to let him in.  But I had already pulled the door open before I could stop myself.  He looked a little sad, a little exasperated and a little sheepish.  I shook my hair out of my face and straightened up in an attempt to show I wasn't dealing with any of his bullshit,

"What do you want Harry?"

He gestured into the room,

"Can I come in?"  When I shot him a look his shoulders slumped, "Look, as much as I'd like to talk to you, there is a shitload of people coming down this hallway and I'd rather not do this with an audience.  Something tells me you don't want that either."

He had a point.  I stepped back from the door and let him in.  He walked past me, careful to make sure nothing, not even his shirt, touched any part of me.  I closed the door and folded my arms over my chest.  I was closed for business and he was damn sure going to know it,

"What do you want?"

He stared back at me incredulously,

"See?  I don't get that.  I haven't done anything to you and yet you stare daggers into my head."

"Just because you haven't doesn't mean you won't."

His mouth set in a tight line as he pulled his hands up onto his hips,

"Is this how you approach every relationship?  Like whoever you're speaking to is going to hurt you before they ever do?"

I nodded gently,

"It's usually the safe way to go."

He threw his arms out,

"You make everything so much harder than it needs to be."