fight for control ↠ harry styles [b1] ✓

CHAPTER 69

Harry Styles

My birthday was next weekend and I knew my friends were planning something. They never let me have one normal, chill birthday. That was nothing to complain about, I was aware. But at the same time, I wished I could just wake up and stay in bed all day as I turn a year older.

Not that thinking about my birthday is what I should have been doing. I was at work and preparing for a meeting with the Gucci team. Just because Renleigh and I solved things, my business still needed to survive and my hunger for success was more apparent than ever before. I was excited to have this meeting because it had been a long while since we scheduled it.

In some ways, I was prepared for an unsuccessful outcome which was not much like me. Usually, I went for everything with a positive mindset so it could reflect on the final result. But thankfully, everything's worked out just fine. The last goodbye to the team happened with a happy grin on all of our faces and a secured appointment for something cool happening very soon.

Now, I had a lunch with my cousin. She came back from her travels a couple of days ago and usually, we always meet up for a lunch or dinner to just talk about whatever happened with us whilst we haven't seen each other. The relationship I had with Gemma was close and I trusted her. Perhaps I was closest to her out of all of my cousins.

"You look happier," she said after a while. I felt her observe me, she always did. She had this thing where she looked at people and just knew there was something different about them.

"I do?"

"Mhm," she hummed as she lifted her fork with the chips on it that she ordered with her steak. "It's a good look on you, hun."

"It feels good too," I smiled.

"Tell me abut them," she encouraged me and that was all I needed.

"It's Renleigh," I smiled. "I guess you could say we're together. But we don't do labels. I love her. She is- she is amazing, you know?" I looked at her and she already had her eyes set on me. A fond smile on her face, eyes interested in every word I had to say. "Yeah... she's amazing. A bit crazy. But she's wonderful."

"She sounds like an angel," she chuckled and I swear I blushed. "I'd love to meet her."

"Yes, you have to, my god," I laughed as I grabbed my drink. "She's kind of terrible at meeting new people. She does this thing where she tells herself how to act around new people until she overthinks the situation too much and just decides on acting like a boss. By boss, I mean literally how she acts when she has meetings or conferences. And then we're there, with the people around, and she turns into this shy little ball of pretty sunshine and all I can do is smirk because I know she is trying to overcome her slight social anxiety but it's actually beating her ass and that bothers her."

"She sounds adorable," Gemma smiled and I hummed. "You seem completely smitten, Harry! Is she the same person you briefly mentioned a few times?"

"Yes. The same person," I nodded. I didn't go into too much detail at the time, everything was so new and risky. Now, I knew better and was more aware of how Renleigh felt. Confirming that we were together—without labels, of course—felt so nice. "I could talk about her for hours."

"I'm not going to stop you," she chuckled and anyone would be insane to think I held back.

I poured everything out onto the table. Like I said, Gemma was someone I trusted so much. She knew things about me that my closest friends didn't, things that my parents or my own siblings didn't. She was my safety net in some senses. Whenever it all got too much, I just passed it onto her and whenever she got fed up, she let it all out to me.