***

“Are kings wild?”

Harry laughs at my question, his emerald orbs flickering up and to my eyes. My nose is crinkled in confusion as I wait for him to answer because I can’t remember all the rules that he and I had laid out for this card game a little less than an hour ago. There’d been too much candy and lemonade around and I hadn’t been able to help myself; needless to say, I hadn’t caught half the things Harry had said.

“No, jacks are, love,” he says, chuckling softly.

I nod, smiling in thanks while I glance away from his intoxicating gaze. But looking down to the hand I have makes me frown, as I realize that no jacks reside in my clutches and that Harry would probably win. Sighing quietly, I bite down my lip, chewing the side of the cherry-tasting skin that rests there while mentally trying to figure out a way for me to beat the genius curly head sitting across from me.

Suddenly, I wish Niall was here. I know the Irish fellow would be whispering ways for me to beat his friend if he hadn’t left us a few hours ago to go and drink with a few friends. He said it would be a while before he’d get back to L.A. and that he was leaving tomorrow, so tonight was all he had. But he made both of us promise that we’d play at least one game with him when he got back later on.

Just as I’m going to cave, planning to give into Harry’s jeweled gaze and admit that I have no idea what I’m doing, his phone starts to chime with a ringtone of some song that I don’t know. His eyebrows furrow as he whirls around and I try not to peak at his hand. But as he gets up, I can’t help it; I lean over and snatch his cards up from where he’d thrown them down on the carpet. Two jacks.

“How did you get both jacks?” I exclaim, bewildered and awed.

He only smirks at me while fishing around in the pocket of his jacket. Then, as I drop back down to where I was sitting and pick up the glass of lemonade I’d been drinking, his face contorts into confusion and slight anger. His lips come together in a ruby red pout that makes his mouth look delicious, his forehead wrinkles as he draws his eyebrows together tightly, and his big hands nearly turn white as he grips his black phone.

I wonder if I should ask him who’s calling, if he needs me to answer, but think better of it when he tells me he’ll be right back and strides to his room.

While he’s gone, I jump from between gathering the cards up and shuffling them, sipping at my glass of nearly-gone lemon sweetness, and flipping through the television channels. I find a movie full of drama and an obvious murderer that snags my attention, and end up watching it for the majority of the time that he’s gone.

But I soon find that I’m not as engrossed in the LMN movie as I’d thought because my thoughts start to noticeably thump at the front of my brain till I can’t ignore them and have to start evaluating things, thinking stuff over. For a while, I think about what will happen when, like Niall, Harry leaves. I wonder if I’ll be able to go back to the streets, go back to letting strange men kiss me and take off my underwear while calling me some other name that I told as a safety precaution. I doubted I’d be able to and this makes me angry.

Maybe it was because I liked Harry so much now that I couldn’t even properly remember how one lived life as a prostitute. He’d healed the bruises and cuts and scars, both physically and mentally, just enough now that I seemed to cower away at the lifestyle that had given them to me instead of shrinking away from his touch like I had when I’d first let him help me. Now I melted into him, allowing him to run his fingers through the ends of my hair while taking note of the rhythm of his heartbeat.

I think it happened too fast, he’s healing of me, and maybe that makes me foolish, but he was one of the nicest people who’d ever touched me, who’d ever really cared for me. And I know, as I sit on the floor of his hotel room and hear as he talks in a deep voice two rooms down, that I haven’t developed this infatuation because he didn’t abuse me. I suspected everyone who ever came in contact with Harry fell for him in more ways than one because you just couldn’t help it.

He was sweet and caring and funny and not full of himself like you’d think a teen popstar would be. He’d blown all of my expectations out of the water, completely smashed them the first night I’d stayed in this hotel room, and then he’d showed me what it’s really like, to live and be friends with people and have someone who truly cares.

This all swirls into my brain till I’m sitting the sweating, empty class on the coffee table and falling back to lie on the carpeted floor. For a second I consider begging him to take me with him when he leaves, but then scowl at how ridiculous that idea is. Me? Moving to London? I wasn’t a call girl, a sex toy that you loaded up and took with you wherever you went, and, besides, what would I do in London?

But I can’t deny that I grow incredibly sad at the idea of being left behind. In fact, it makes me tear up, makes my heart clench so painfully that I have to roll over and half stuff my face in the soft floor.

You’re being silly, the voice in my head whispers. He isn’t going to take you with him, so just get it all out of your system while he’s here. Love him while he’s here, then move on.

Again, I scowl, but end up getting strings from the carpet in my mouth because I’ve got it shoved into the stuff. Sputtering, I sit up and try to clean off my tongue and lips as I see the bedroom door open and hear his feet pounding against the hardwood that lines the hall.

He smiles a little, timidly, when he reappears. His face is still tight, full of the confusion and anger and slight sadness that I’d seen before he’d left with his phone. I want to stand up and go to him, but, like before with all my questions, think better of it.

Quietly, with just a hint of a sigh, he takes his seat across from me again. He doesn’t look up as he threads his long fingers together and crosses his legs. I pick the deck of cards up and start to deal out the amount he’d instructed were necessary for his new game, looking up at him every once in a while as I do.

“Are you alright, Harry?”

He gathers the cards I’d dealt out to him before he lets his eyes flick up to me. I smile softly.

“Yea,” he murmurs.

I frown. “You’re not,” I gently say.

He stares at me for a while after that, just looking between my eyes and maybe my lips every once in a while. I try to keep his gaze for as long as I can, but he’s better at that game than I am and so I have to look away, down to my cards. I hear him sigh once more before he starts talking.

“That was Louis.”

“One of the guys in your band,” I state.

He nods. “Yea. We use to be close, but… Anyway, he just called to tell me about something, let me know a few things that have happened since I’ve been here.”

I bite down on my lip as I wonder whether or not I should press him more. His face is still tight, so I think I should, telling myself that I’ll be able to see when I’m pushing him too far.

“And where they good things? … Bad things? … ‘Who cares’ things?”

“Not so good things,” he mutters.

“Ah,” I said, biting down on my lip a little more.

For a few seconds I look back up at him, not caring if he’s able to see the hand I hold in my hands or if he catches me. He’s looked away since I’ve asked for more and now is frowning down at his own cards. The way his eyes are shimmering, so sad and like he feels helpless, hurt beyond repair… I can’t take it. Maybe I’m foolish and stupid and shouldn’t have allowed him to win me over so easily, but I don’t care about that now.

Throwing my hand down, I stand and walk over to him, extending my hand out when he looks up at me in confusion. It takes a few seconds before he drops his own cards and places his massive, cool hand in mine. Then he stands, towering over me so much that I’m right at his lips and have to ignore the heat that pools into the bottom of my stomach.

I grab a blanket off a chair as I pass by it and start to lead us out to the balcony that we’d never used before.

His fingers are threaded through mine for the very first time. He’s wrapped his arms around me plenty of times and I’ve buried my face in his chest, but our touches have never went beyond that, and even those were innocent, little things that stopped at my hip or where his heartbeat deafened out. But never have we been connected in such a way, and, again, I have to ignore the arousal heat that fills the place between my thighs.

When I get the doors open and my bare toes hit the cool stone, I find a chair and wait for him to sit down in it before I brazenly take a seat in his lap. My heart stutters quickly in my chest as I stare at him and my hands shake a little while I cover us both with the blanket. But he just wraps his arms around me, till they’re both overlapping each other, and slowly draws me into his chest. He stops when I’m within mere inches of his lips.

“Now,” I whisper, allowing my breasts to press against his warm chest and my eyes to roam over his handsome face. “Stop shutting me out.”

His lips twitch at that and he chuckles a little. I smile because it’s the first time he’s allowed his face to break from the ruined expression since he left his bedroom.

“You’ll leave,” he mutters, smile slipping off his lips.

“I won’t.”

He just looks at me for a time, as if studying to see if what I’d said was actually a lie. I just press myself closer to him.

“Okay,” he sighs. “Alright. But, you have left to me finish. It won’t make sense and you might not believe me, and I don’t want you to leave before I’m able to explain it all.” I just nod. “Louis and I were best mates. Like, I couldn’t go anywhere by myself because he said he couldn’t stand to be apart, and I didn’t want to go anywhere without him because he was such a funny person. Seriously, Delaney. You would like Louis so much… Or, at least, the old Louis…

“Anyways, we were inseparable for months. He was my best mate and I was his and we told each other everything. He helped me get over so many things—I can’t even name them all, that’s how much he was there for me… But, as we got more and more famous, as more and more people paid us to go to this event or as we were nominated for this award, he changed. Zayn did, too—I mean, we all did. Louis’ change was different though.”

He has to stop here, seemingly to collect himself because his eyes have started to water. I wipe away the tears as they streak down his cheeks. He holds me tighter and clears his throat.

“So Louis changed,” he begins again, letting out a long, deep breath that starts up from his chest and expels out from his nose and mouth. “He was a complete asshole after we won our Brit award. It didn’t get worse, though, till we went on tour this summer. God, I thought I was going to murder him! Every day it was the same ol’ bullshit—the same stuff only said a thousand different ways. Then he let the rumors get to him… We all told him not to, that no one believed him and that it was fine. But he told us that his sisters were getting bullied in school and…

“And he just couldn’t take it. Looking back now, I guess I can see what he was doing with all of the fighting. I know his sisters mean the world to him and that he’d do absolutely anything for them, but… I don’t think any of us expected him to just stop with me. Even Liam was mad at him for doing that.”

The tears are fast now, scaling so quickly down his cheeks that I’ve given up using my fingers and have picked up the corner of the blanket. When he doesn’t speak for a while again, I push him again.

“What did he do, Harry?”

“He said he hated me,” he croaks, and I can tell he’s repressing a loud sob. “He said that he wished he’d never met me, never got in this group because it had destroyed his life and hurt his family. Then he hit me, broke my nose and his hand. The others, Liam, Zayn, and Niall, they got him off me. I was just lying there, Delaney… Trying to cover my face because I wasn’t going to hit my best friend, no matter what he’s done.

“Then management was brought in because everyone was starting to tell what was happening. They threatened to throw him out of the group and almost made me get a fuckin’ nose job, but Liam stepped in and talked everything out and we were given a break. That’s why I’m here. I had to get away or else I think I would’ve just drank myself to death.”

I wipe his face clean, push pieces of his curly hair out of his eyes, and curl up into his chest when I feel him pulling me even closer. Licking my lips, I hesitate for a few seconds, but decide that getting everything out now is better than dragging it up later.

So I ask him, “What were the rumors, Harry?”

He looks up at me and I feel him crumble a little more.

“That’s the part I’m scared to tell you.”

I frown and take his face in my hands. “Harry, I’m not going to leave you. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

I notice that he tries to smile at this and he manages to laugh a little, but then he’s frowning and his eyes well up again.

“They all thought Louis and I were gay together, that me and my best friend were fucking and that his girlfriend, Eleanor, was some ‘beard’ or some shit. I love my fans and I’ll never be ugly to them, but they nearly killed everything with that, Delaney.”

I don’t know what to say, so I just press my forehead against his and slowly stroke my fingertips over his cheekbones. He cries, sobs shaking his shoulders as he clutches onto me, and I let him. I don’t try to get him to talk anymore or ask more questions or attempt to wipe his tears; I just hold his face gently and let him do something that he’d helped me do: heal.