Just Hold On // L.T. ✓

2

~Feels like you're standing on the edge,

Looking at the stars,

And wishing you were them~

"I am on the plane." He said, sending his mother a picture, albeit angrily. No matter what her health issues were, he was not to cancel his trip to New York at the end of March, more than a month after her initial diagnosis.

In between then and now, his dad had gotten him a phone, just in time for the trip, and this way, he was able to take lots of pictures to send back to his family. Lottie was jealous - ever the teenage girl, but Louis was older, and was grateful to have his first phone for his first trip.

He was also terrified to fly overseas. He had flown when they were younger - they had gone to France on holiday many times, but this was definitely a longer flight, and he wasn't going to have his family with him. But he was determined to enjoy his holiday - he was twenty, for god's sake, and had never been somewhere without his family.

But, he went, determined to have fun and find himself.

---

Louis coughed, and then continued the conversation with his mother. "The hotel is bad, but enough. I won't be here a lot, just exploring. I saw the Empire State Building today, and the Statue of Liberty. It was amazing, mum. I just wish that you and the girls could see it all."

"We will. One day." Jay told him.

Louis looked down at his barefeet on the hotel room floor, and bit his lip for a second before releasing it. "Get some rest, mum. I'll be fine."

After hanging up the phone, Louis angrily put on some shoes and grabbed his expensive jacket. He was going clubbing, even if he wasn't old enough.

After a while, he found one place in a shady part of town that didn't card him, and he went inside and got some shots. He was definitely going to go broke from this trip, but alcohol was definitely going to loosen him up and let him have fun.

The lights swirled overhead, and Louis lost himself in the trashy music that the DJ was playing on a Friday night. He let his body control his movements. His hair was soaked through with sweat, and his jacket was covered in booze from his own and others jerky movements with their drinks.

After a while, he stops feeling happy. He just feels angry. So he leaves the club, runs down the road, trying to let out some emotion, talking to himself as he does so. "How can I believe in God when he does things like this? He blesses us with life, but makes us poor. He makes my mother beautiful and strong, but takes away her health, when she has six children depending on her. Why does this happen?"

Louis fell to his knees in front of a street light. He clung to it, sobbing. Alcohol didn't make him feel better, suprisingly. He felt worse, and started questioning everything. "I want everything to be okay. I want my mum to be okay." While Louis sat there, wishing for normalcy and everything else he couldn't have, he didn't get that.

He was kidnapped instead.

---

He didn't hear the footsteps come up behind him, but he felt the hands reach around his neck and push a cloth to his mouth. He had seen this happen in enough movies to know what it was, and he tried to not breathe. Louis pulled his body forward, falling off the curb, and then he pushed back, to the left, to the right.

And then he breathed.

It all went cloudy. His arm felt like a twenty pound bag of potatoes, and he fell to the sidewalk, unconcious, a moment later.

The next morning, when he woke up, he wasn't in a dank warehouse with limited lighting and tied to a chair. Instead, he was sitting in a comfy armchair in an office.

It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the overhead lights, and how comfy the chair was shocked him. He felt how puffy his eyes were from crying, and his nose was all stuffed up. After he noticed all of this, he noticed the desk and the man sitting behind it, who finally turned his attention to Louis in the chair.

He stood, extending his hand over the desk to shake Louis' hand. "Hi, Louis. I'm Simon Cowell."