***

“How’d you get that on your head?”

Furrowing my eyebrows in confusion, I glance up from my plate to look at Niall. He gestures with his fork to my forehead and, almost instantly, I feel my eyes widen a little. I’d forgotten about my forehead. It didn’t look as bad as the night of the incident, but it was still healing, colored in a yellow-blue bruise that I can’t cover up that well because it’s still sore.

I swallow down the bite I’d been chewing, cast a sidelong glance over at Harry, and start to open my mouth when the curly haired brunette cuts me off.

“She fell the other day,” he easily says.

Seconds whirl by as I struggle to recompose myself so not to give away Harrys’ lie. I’d been preparing to say something false myself, but Harry had beaten me to it, and as I unloosen my joints and slink back into my seat, I feel Harrys’ knee scrape against my thigh. He sends me another quick look out of the corner of his eye, a sort of lopsided smile paired with glinting emerald orbs, then spears some lettuce and tosses it into his mouth as he slowly drags his gaze down to his plain white salad plate.

When I look back over at Niall, it’s clear that he’s bought the quick fib. He’s looking at me in sort of a grimace while his eyes rake over the discolored portion of my forehead.

“Why’d you fall?”

“Wore the wrong shoes,” I shrug.

The waiter sweeps in then and his arms are laden down with everything the three of us had ordered as main courses. I take this to let out the bubble of air that I’d inhaled upon Niall’s first question, relaxing a bit more because I’m sure it will be easy to divert the conversation now.

A nudge from Harry comes on my left where he’s sitting and when I look over, he winks, another lopsided grin taking a place on his red lips while the warm skin of his bicep skims over my back. I smile too, blushing again because that seemed to be what I do whenever any part of Harry came in contact with my body. I hear him let out a deep, rumbling chuckle and feel as my smile widens.

“Oi! You two—quit flirting and help me figure out what in the fuck I just ordered.”

At this, I blush even harder, but Harry just leans closer to where Niall is sitting across from him, pulling his arm from around me. I watch as he wrinkles his nose a little while he inspects the dish of unnamed food that his friend has ordered.

“I dunno know, mate,” he drawls, eyebrows furrowing. “Maybe it’s some sort of tofu.”

“What the hell is tofu?”

I laugh at this because Niall is now poking at a piece of what looks like cubed tofu, a replacement for the chicken in his Chinese dish, and his expression is contorted into one of slight disgust.

“I’m not sure,” Harry says.

Niall’s blue eyes flicker up from his plate and narrow on Harry. “I am never letting you pick the place to eat again. Always some adventurous nut house that leaves me starving!”

Harry just lets out a laugh, falling back next to me while Niall continues to glare at him. When the waiter swings back by, Niall asks for more salad and another soda, his nose still crinkled while Harry laughs hard into his hand. I can’t help but chuckle too, because Niall seems to be truly upset with the fact that his dish isn’t what he’d predicted. But soon he’s gorging himself with salad and all the vegetable spreads that are resting on the table.

I turn to my plate and start to cut a small square out of the large rectangle of vegetarian lasagna that I’d picked off the menu. The forkful I manage to spear melts in my mouth, further filling it with salvia as my taste buds sting a little in pleasure at finally tasting one of the delicious smells that filled this restaurant.

For a few seconds the only sounds from the three of us are forks scraping against glass, Niall mumbling the title of the butter-like spreads he seems content with, and the crunch of food being chewed. Every once in a while Harry will ask his Irish friend a question that he hadn’t gotten the chance to ask him earlier in the hotel room, or ask me how I like my food and if I want more; but for the most part, it’s just a comfortable quiet that none of us seem bent on disrupting.

By the time I’m cleaning off the last bite of my lasagna from my fork, Niall has started a game of tick-tack-toe with himself and the salt shaker, and Harry keeps blowing away the fine lines that he draws, which makes him curse. We’ve been sitting here for what feels like a solid hour, but when I look up to the plain clock that rests on a tan wall, I realize it’s only been forty or so minutes.

People have started to notice the two Europeans I’m seated with, though. A few girls two tables ahead have been leaning out of their booth and giggling like mad when one of us notices. One even got brave enough to wave to Niall when he turned at Harry’s indication to them. Obviously they’re getting recognized as two out of the five that make up the famous boyband that Harry had told me about, and I can see that it’s making Niall uncomfortable. He fidgets a little as he pours some more salt to fix one of the lines that Harry’s breath has messed up, and sends slightly uneasy looks to both of us.

“Alright then,” Harry sighs, pulling something shiningly gold from the black book that the waiter had just returned. “Let’s get out of here before they get a group together.” He turns to me after he says this and smiles gently. “Ready?”

I nod and slip out after him, checking over my shoulder to see Niall quickly following us. As we walk by the table of peeping girls, they start laughing again and say the boys’ names, to which they offer charming smiles and faint waves.

Harry winds his arm back around my waist after we get passed them, but his touch is different. It’s not rough like the others I’ve experienced from the men that have swept in and out of my life, but tense, like maybe all this has made him uncomfortable.

“God, I hate when that happens,” Niall mutters as we all file out into the warm L.A. air.

“Me, too,” agrees Harry. “But we can’t be rude.”

Niall sighs.” I know, I know…”

For a second I think to make a quip about boys wanting attention from girls, but Niall’s expression and the way Harrys’ fingertips are gently protruding into my hip stop me.

Harry pulls out his keys once his shiny little car comes into view and I hear as the locks click. He releases his hold around my waist and eats up the pavement with his long legs as Niall opens the passenger door. But the Irishman doesn’t get in; instead, he offers me a wink that slightly bewilders me and motions towards the leather interior.

“Here ya go, Delly,” he grins.

Ignoring the new nickname, I crease my forehead while frowning in confusion. “Aren’t you getting in?”

“Nah, I want to hit up some of the shops.”

“What’re you doin’, mate?” Harry asks, popping his curly mop up over the roof of the black sports automobile.

Niall chuckles and I wonder if he knows that I caught the wink he threw at Harry. “Gonna do some shoppin’, is all. You and Delly have fun.”

“You don’t have to do-“

“-oh, it’s fine. See ya!” And with that, he’s striding off down the boulevard.

A few seconds pass in which I watch his tall figure disappear within the crowd this night has brought out, then a few gentle fingers running over my back makes me snap my head over to where Harry has taken his friends place. He grins at me, a smile that I truly will never get tired of or used to seeing, and holds my door open.

“Want to go to the park?”

“Sure,” I murmur, my face heating up again because he’s just swiped his red tongue over his equally crimson lips.

He nods at my agreement rather happily, then helps me in to the passenger side before heading back over to the driver’s seat. The car purrs to a start once he’s closed his door and he eases out of the parking spot easily before going in the opposite direction that Niall had headed in.

I think that the previous silence that had filled the little car on the way down to the restaurant might pick up again, but Harry seems to have other plans.

“So, what do you think of Niall?”

When I look over at him, he’s grinning wide again. “He’s hilarious! Are all your friends like that?”

“No,” he laughs, head thrown back and curls bouncing as his chest shakes. “Niall’s just that type of person who doesn’t really give a damn, you know? He’s pretty confident in himself, so he says whatever he wants and just gets lucky about the fact that it’s funny.”

This makes me laugh and Harry’s eyes sparkle when he gets a chance to sweep them over to me. I lean my head back against the headrest on the seat, picking up a piece of my slightly tangled hair in order to begin fiddling with it.

“Tell me about the others, then.”

He nods, conceding to my wish. “Alright… Well, there’s Liam and he’s one of those super nice blokes. Then you have Zayn and he’s the one who got me on tattoos, and, uhm… Louis, he’s funny too, I guess.”

The way he says that Louis persons’ name reminds me of earlier, when Niall brought him up and Harrys’ expression had darkened. Obviously something’s happened between the two of them and I want to ask, but again, like before, I figure it’s best to not approach that subject yet.

“You do have a lot of tattoos,” I muse, poking at the one I can see on his collarbone while switching topics.

“And you don’t have any.” As he says this, he swings into the parking lot of the widespread park, and cuts the engine off once he’s found a proper spot to place the car.

“Not a one,” I grin, opening my door as he does.

He just grins and meets me at the hood, shoving his hands in his pockets. A breeze blows through and ruffles our hair, blowing pieces into my eyes. I make a move to push the strands out of my eyes, but one of his massive hands comes up from his pants.

“Here,” he murmurs, sweeping them away from my eyes and tucking the red pieces behind my ear.

His fingertips trail over my cheek and for a few seconds I think he might entirely form his hand over that portion of my face, but then he’s dropping the hand in favor of hiding it in his jeans again. I sigh, somewhat dreamily, and move closer to him.

I don’t know what I want to happen at this moment. He’s looking down at my face, his orbs roaming over my features while I just stare at the jewels his has for eyes. A thought pricks my mind about a kiss, but I’m not too sure how I’d react. Of course I wanted him to and I know he’d be gentle, but still, something stops me. It could be that I’m not ready, that all those past experiences with men who were far less kinder than Harry have permanently made me afraid of any kind of physical interaction. I mean, I knew they had some kind of hold over me, but I didn’t think it was this extreme.

“I like being with you,” he softly says, moving even closer.

I smile. “I like being with you too.”

He swallows thickly and I see as his eyes pause on my lips finally. I know he wants to kiss me, I can read it in his expression when he looks up to my gaze, but I’m too frightened. The fact that I know Harry is different than any other man I’ve ever been in such close proximity with makes this irrational and me angry. But I can’t help it and as he leans in a little, I seize up.

“Harry, I-“

“-don’t worry,” he whispers, voice husky and thick. “I wouldn’t dare kiss you unless you wanted me to.”

At that, I relax a little, but notice he’s still leaning in. His eyes lull shut once he gets close enough and he presses his forehead against mine gently. A deep breath files out of his mouth, washing over my face as the heat from his body seems to slip into my cropped top. I shiver, though, because just the way we’re sort of leaning against each other makes my body surge with adrenaline.

Harry brings up his hand from his pocket again and rubs my forearm gently, and, for a while, we just stay like that. Every once in a while he might slip that hand to the small of my back or take the liberty of threading it through my windblown hair, but I don’t mind. His touches are soft and I sink in to them each time, no longer scared as I’d been at the beginning of the night.

The kiss would have to wait, but I could have Harry touch me now and not be afraid that he was going to damage me like all the others before.