DESIRE | Harry Styles AU

Desire - Prologue

Desire - Prologue

I had always been the girl who reveled in her autonomy, seemingly uninterested in being tied down when there was so much I could experience on my own. It was something of a fairy tale I suppose – meeting the love of your life in college, settling down and popping out a few kids by the age of thirty. I wanted no part of it; my fairy tale consisted of wild nights out with my best friend while enjoying being twenty-two.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the attention from those around me. But I never craved it enough to become attached to someone. My best friend kept me occupied enough.

Rose attended the same college as I. However, we weren't following the same course so we didn't see a lot of each other during the week. But we more than made up for it over the weekends.

I lived about ten minutes away from campus, in my childhood home with my mother. Most students would jump at the opportunity to move away when they'd start college, but I preferred not to.

Right now, it was just my mom and I. My brother and father didn't have the same attachment to the city as I did. My father fought in Iraq, while my brother studied abroad – chasing his dreams of seeing the world, something I would never be interested in.

If I needed to be completely honest, my desire to stay in my hometown had less to do with my patriotic devotion or my innate ability to stay close to my mother, even though my troublesome years. No, it wasn't that at all.

It was him.

On the eighteenth of September around three in the morning, I was awoken by obscenely loud noises. My curiosity dragged me out of my soft, warm bed into the slightly cool draft that prickled my skin. The closer I got to the window, the less I understood what was drawing me there.

The window was foggy and the sleep that still blurred my vision wasn't helping me see any clearer. The streetlights were lit, casting shadows across the dark street. Even so, much wasn't visible. A broad man, with a black Volkswagen pick-up truck, was moving into the house across the street. It had been empty for months, despite the previous tenants' futile attempts to fill it.

My eyes followed his muscular body as he paced in and out of the house, grabbing more and more boxes each time he went in. I momentarily wondered how he had managed to fit that much into his truck, but the well-built curve of his body soon carried my thoughts elsewhere.

I wished for the ability to stand here longer, continue to follow his languid movements, but the familiar burn of exhaustion stung my eyes. The realization that I had to get up in the morning to help my mother with groceries sealed my fate and carried me back to my bed.

I woke up whilst subconsciously knowing that I was already extremely late and my mother would be none too pleased with me. I could hear my mom yelling obnoxiously loud from downstairs the entire three minutes it took me to get dressed. But I gave her an unimpressed look when I got to the hallway and saw her standing there with the keys in her hand.

Quickly, I scurried to the passenger side of our Volvo C30 and got in – hoping to hide from the prying eyes of my neighbors in my current state. I sat there for a while dreading the trip to the store before I realized my mom still hadn't gotten in.

I glanced in the rear-view mirror and immediately noticed her talking to the guy who had awoken met last night while he was moving in.

I slid further down the seat and hid myself in my hoodie, hoping to remain invisible – but to no avail. I jumped at the sound of fingers tapping impatiently on the window beside my head; I looked over and glared at my mother as she tried to persuade me out of the car.