Hold Me Close (Sequel To Take Me Home and Keep Me Safe)

Chapter Eleven

Two weeks passed by.

Louis wished he could say they had gone quickly, but in honesty, they had been the longest weeks of his life. Being in bed or on the couch and watching daytime TV was only fun for so long. His friends had come around and stuff, but he was beyond bored out of his brains.

Then the doctor came around and said he was allowed to start using crutches so long as he was careful. At first, he was excited. Then he realised just how seriously his Dad was taking the word 'careful', because he might as well have still been on bed rest.

He was starting to get fed up. Well, in reality, he'd been fed up since the moment he had woken up with the cast on his leg - but now he was really fed up of keeping up a façade of convincing himself that he'd be back to normal by Christmas. There were only four weeks to go and he knew deep down, there was no way he'd be playing football again by then.

A couple members of the team had reached out to him to say that they missed him. His coach had even come around and brought chocolates and a bunch of old movies. All it had done was made him feel worse, more useless. He knew he wasn't useless really, not entirely. It was just hard when he had so much energy built up inside him that he couldn't burn down. And it was really hard knowing that his parents and the doctors and his brothers were all right - he wouldn't be back with his team any time soon.

And until he was, he was going to be fed up. He wanted to make sure everyone knew it too, constantly huffing and sighing so his family knew he wasn't happy with lazing about on the couch all day.

Without football, he didn't know what else to do. It was all he ever did before, and now he had nothing, nothing else he was good at. It made him feel bad about himself, and he had to swallow down the emotion.

Dad entered his bedroom at some point. It was around three in the afternoon, Niall would be back from school soon but Papa wasn't getting home from work until late again. Louis barely saw him anymore, but it wasn't like they could do a lot together anyway when they were still insisting he stay in bed as much as possible.

"Alright, sweetie?" he asked, glancing around the otherwise empty and quiet room. Louis glanced up from his phone where he was watching a replay of a football match that he had seen a bajillion times before.

He wanted to huff and shake his head, but instead he rolled his eyes and nodded. "M'fine, Dad," he muttered, and Liam held his hands up as if in surrender.

"Just asking. Don't you want to come downstairs, sit on the couch for a while?" he offered, gently.

Louis scoffed. "What, and just be bored in another room? I'll pass," he huffed, and Dad pressed his lips together, tapping his hand against the doorframe he was leaning against.

"I know it sucks, bud. But you only need to take it easy for a little while longer, until your leg's fixed up -"

"The doctor said I could stop taking it easy now," he argued, hating how his voice sounded dangerously close to a whine. He just wanted his father to listen to him, to understand where he was coming from and allow him to do something, anything, other than rest.

But Dad just furrowed his brows at that. "No, the doctor said you could use crutches instead of the wheelchair. Not that you could go back to running around and knocking into things..." then he let out a small sigh. "C'mon, Lou. I'm not the bad guy here. I just want you to be as good as new."

"You're practically holding me hostage," he muttered under his breath, and either his Dad didn't hear or just pretended not to, because he pushed away from the doorframe and tried to force a smile.

"I have to run down to the corner shop and grab a few things, will you be okay on your own?" he asked, and Louis just glared up at the man in reply. Liam didn't flinch. "Cooper's at the bottom of the stairs waiting for Ni to get back like usual. Did you want me to grab you anything while I'm out?"