This Thing Upon Me [Order The eBook] [Harry Styles]

Chapter 57

(DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. It's important to remember this is all totally fabricated, embellished, and exaggerated for entertainment purposes.)

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"Honey when you kill the lights...and kiss my eyes."

Hozier | To Be Alone

Darting down the hall in nothing but my briefs and a t-shirt, searching for a place to hide, my bare feet stumbled over each other a few times. He was after me, of that I was certain. I could already hear him calling out my name. His voice sounded distorted, like he was submerged underwater and speaking to me from the bottom of a pool.

I took a few turns to lose him and wound up at a dead end with nothing to offer but a fire exit. As a last resort, I slipped into the stairwell, allowing the icy floors to jar me awake. There, I crouched on the second step and watched the door (like a hawk ready to pounce); my back facing the steep drop that waited to swallow me the second I fell.

What day was it? What time was it? Probably after midnight, if memory served me correctly. I remembered seeing the clock strike 30-after before falling asleep. Now I was high out of my mind and couldn't remember whose room I'd been in. Whose clock marked the hour. If someone asked me my own name right now, I'd struggle to remember even the first initial.

"Harreh?" someone called warily from the other side of the door. It was the guy with the weird accent. He had found me immediately, almost like he knew me better than I knew myself. Apparently he thought in moves ahead and anticipated what I would do next. He had stopped me from doing several harmful things tonight before I'd even began.

I laughed hysterically at how angry I had made him a few hours ago, and unfortunately my laughter brought him right upon me. The door to the stairwell flung open, so I started down the stairs, stumbling in my haste to get away. But he was quicker than me. He was fully clothed and wore big dark boots that helped him plod down the steps two at a time. When he accidentally stepped on my foot, I howled hoarsely and doubled over onto the first landing

"M'sorry baby. C'mon. C'mon, Harreh. Stop it." He pulled me up the steps by my gangly arms, and back into the carpeted hall. It was a relief for my feet to escape the frigid floors, although it also meant I was once again under his control. I tried to take off and escape him at the first elevator, but he held me fast, pulling me directly in front of him and wrapping his arms around my waist. Now we moved as one. Step for step, we made a slow progress back his room, stopping occasionally because I kept getting distracted by shiny things.

Once inside, he undressed, trying his damnedest to stifle his exasperation. By the time he'd finished, I was outside on the balcony, standing on the stone balustrade and ready to take a swan dive into the pretty lights. They were calling my name, a multitude of demanding voices. He ran out to collect me in a panic, hollering my name and snatching me down by the wrist so hard it felt like it snapped.

As I landed on my knees on the warm concrete, I flicked my head around like it was surrounded by bees, struggling to come to my senses. There was no wind here. The air stood still, exacerbating the heat to the point of suffocation. I ignored the pain in my wrist and opted for rubbing my eyes until they burned. Wake up, I demanded. Wake up. My caretaker said something off-handedly. He was still underwater. He still sounded a world away and didn't bother to make sure I understood. When he squatted before me on the balcony floor, all I could do was laugh at his concern. He was so worried it seemed comical. Eventually he laughed too.