Witness

The headlines in the morning were enough to make me want to vomit. But the stories beneath them were almost worse.

Who is this new mystery girl spotted out last night in London with One Direction’s own Harry Styles? The popstar was caught holding hands with a nameless brunette while going to dinner. Seems it’s serious enough – she’s met the family already! The One Direction family that is! Sources say that the pair met the rest of the lads of 1D inside for a quiet dinner.

So we want to ask you – who has the details on this quiet mistress of Britain’s sweetheart? We’ll pay a pretty penny if you do! We talked to Harry’s publicist and they chose not to comment. Cheeky lad, trying to keep his privacy! Doesn’t he know that won’t fly with the fans?

We’ll wait on baited breath for answers, as surely you will too, to find out: do we have reason to be broken hearted? Is Harry Styles truly off the market? Check later for more details!

“Christ,” I muttered, closing the lid of Harry’s laptop before burying my head under the lush blankets covering his bed. Few things I had read were as awful as that article. I never put much time into celebrity gossip really, until I became one too.

Ugh. Who even talks like that?

I sighed into the Egyptian cotton, feeling Harry roll over next to me and poke his head beneath the blankets next to mine.

“Come on,” he prodded, wrapping his arms around my bare torso and pulling my body to his. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. Let me make you breakfast and take you to see some of the city.”

I turned my head to glare at him, but upon seeing him could only smile. His hair was a mess, eyes still sleepy, lips parted just slightly in a hopeful grin. I had signed up for this when I agreed to date him after find out he was a member of a successful pop band. It was coming eventually, and I had known. And Damien was gone. The imminent danger the paparazzi brought with them was no longer an issue.

Now, I just had to deal with the rest of the world.

Great.

“I’m only getting out of this bed if your famous toad-in-the-hole on the stove when I get to the kitchen,” I stated firmly, though my smile gave me away. In moments, Harry had ripped the covers from our bodies, throwing on a hoodie and sweatpants before jogging downstairs to start breakfast, shouting something to me about being a breakfast genie as he went.

I shook my head, sitting naked in a pile of blankets in one of the most luxurious bedrooms I’d ever seen. Harry’s house certainly was a departure from my apartment in Alphabet City, the rats and roaches traded for lavish fabrics and hardwood flooring. The water even felt opulent as I readied myself for the day, stepping into my comparatively modest clothes from my comparatively modest collection.

I let out a low whistle before I exited the room, looking back on where I had just slept. That was how the other half had been living all that time. And suddenly, as the press was stating for everyone to know, I had joined that other half. Surreal.

I wandered through the house, admittedly a little lost, until I found the kitchen – outrageously large and well equipped, even without Harry grinning devilishly behind the stovetop on the island counter, a LeCruset pan in his hand. He looked good when he wasn’t trying, and that was one of the most infuriatingly attractive things about him. Even when the band’s hairstylist, Lou, hadn’t taken a comb to his hair, he was still devastating. The same way the was half awake on the plane the night we first met.

“Breakfast is served,” he announced in a bad French accent, sliding a plate of toad-in-the-hole and neatly sliced fruit (likely came that way from the grocer, I have to admit despite my obligation to defend my boyfriend) across the counter as I sat down. “Eat quick. We have a city to explore.”

And explore we did. As soon as we wolfed down breakfast, Harry went and changed into some clothes that he deemed acceptable to be spotted in while I tried to wrestle with the fact that anywhere I went with Harry, there was a possibility that we would end up being photographed. For someone who had never been the center of any kind of attention before moving to Holmes Chapel (and even then, that hardly counted), it was a lot to take on all at once.

But for Harry, I’d do it.

Mary was right. We totally were puke worthy.

“There’s a million places I want to take you,” Harry sighed in a combination of frustration and excitement as he held the door open for me to get into the car. “I mean, we have to do some of the tourist stuff, right? It’s not really the season for it anymore so it should be okay. And maybe we should go shopping? You would like Portobello Road, I think.”

“That sounds glamorous,” I hummed, a little more dreamily than I would have liked. Harry broke out in a smile.

“Well, that’s where we’ll start then.”

Oh, was it glamorous. Just like New York – all the people, all the buildings – only with the biggest collection of antiques I’d ever seen. We rummaged for hours, making stories to go behind nearly everything we picked up – a tin soldier once owned by a boy who lived with his father at a naval base in Fiji, a gramophone that had once lived in Ella Fitzgerald’s parlor, a teakettle that had made it’s way all the way from China by the Silk Road. We lost each other in the sea of people and found each other again by chance, wandering aimlessly because we knew that like life, our paths would cross again. And not a photographer was in sight.

And nor were they for the rest of our day. Only fans stopped to snap pictures with Harry, and usually I was left out because no one wants the popstar’s girlfriend in the picture, much to my relief. We traipsed relatively unscathed around London, to Big Ben and the London Eye, to a café for lunch, to places I’d never heard before but Harry loved quite dearly, to a glamorous penthouse restaurant for dinner with a killer view of the skyline.

Harry did always have a penchant for skylines.

“So what do you think?” he asked, twirling up his spaghetti as I stared out the window, my eyes heavy-lidded from the beauty.

What did I think?

I thought London was possibly the most wonderful city I’d ever been to. Everyone was pleasant, which I found remarkable for a city of that size – I didn’t realize at the time that not everyone who lived in a big city was as much of an asshole as New Yorkers. The food was delicious. The sights were spectacular. The architecture was to die for. And last, but certainly not least, it had Harry.

“I think I’m in love,” I breathed softly.

“What?” Harry asked, a little startled.

“With London,” I corrected hastily, gesturing out the window. There would be no mistakes made about that.

“Right,” Harry confirmed with a nod. “Good. I swear to God, it was made for you. And I don’t know New York as well as I know you or London, but I think you were in the wrong place for all those years.”

“Maybe,” I hummed, unable to take my eyes of the glittering surface of the Themes. I could be happy in London, I decided. With the people, the lights, the noise… Maybe, when the new semester started…

“I was thinking,” Harry began again. “That maybe, when the new semester starts, you would maybe want to come to school here. I know people at UAL who would be more than happy to look at your portfolio. And with your experience at the Red Lion, I’m sure you’d be able to get a job here in no time. And you could maybe stay at my place until you got on your feet, I mean I’m gone so much anyway it would practically be your own…”

Harry was babbling but I was grinning. “You just want me all to yourself, Styles.”

He snapped out of his thoughts and grinned back. “Is that such a crime?”

And I would think about it. I thought about it while Harry took pictures with fans outside the restaurant. I thought about it on the way to the car. I thought about it all the way back to his house. And I would have kept thinking about it had there not been a suspiciously familiar car parked outside when we arrived.

“Who is that?” Harry asked as we pulled through the gate, glancing over his shoulder cuttingly as we went. My gut was turning into a knot. I’d ridden in that car once before, the very first day I moved to Holmes Chapel.

“I know him,” I murmured.

It was Hector, the agent stationed in London.

Which could not mean good news.

As soon as the car was parked in the garage, I was marching down the drive to meet Hector, who once again wore a red poppy in the breast pocket of his black sport coat. My heart began to pound involuntarily as I approached him, my knees weak as I walked.

“Hector,” I greeted tentatively, wrapping the tall, brown man in a hug. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Harry trotted up beside us at that very moment looking very confused. “Can I help you, sir?” he asked.

“Mister Styles, I presume” Hector greeted, extending his hand to Harry once we broke apart. “Hector Pruitt, with the Office of Enforcement Operations. I preside over Lilia’s case on the European end of things.”

“No need to call me Lilia now,” I corrected him, more fishing for a confirmation than anything else. “Not with Damien gone, right?”

Hector gave no change in expression to give his intentions away. “Can we go inside to talk?” he requested, though it sounded like more of a command in his tone.

My heart sunk further. “If this is about the news this morning, I really can explain,” I insisted as Hector began to walk towards the house without our permission anyway. Harry looked at me worriedly, an expression I returned to him before going after Hector into the house. Harry followed too.

“I really didn’t know he was famous, Hector,” I defended as we went through the front door. “I swear to God, no one warned me. I was dating him before I knew. How could I go back to not after being with him? And since Damien is dead, why does it matter? There’s nothing to worry about, right?”

Agent Pruitt sat down on the couch in the living room, hands grasped together neatly but seriously between his legs. He leaned forward a bit, the way you do when something is weighing on you too heavily. And nervously, I took a seat next to him, and Harry took a seat next to me.

It was becoming increasingly clear that there was, in fact, something to worry about.

The silence between the three of us was endless, it seemed - Harry’s eyes on me, my eyes on Hector, Hector’s eyes on the floor. There was something that needed to be said, I could feel it hanging in the air among us, waiting to be released. The anxiety was pumping through my veins, so much so that I could feel myself struggling to breathe. Finally, Hector’s eyes returned to me and I discovered why.

“Amelia’s dead,” Hector said, shamefully.

And immediately, everything fell apart.

I was sobbing. I was convulsing. I was hysterical. He didn’t need to say anything more. They wouldn’t have sent an O.E.O. agent if she had died in an accident, or if her health had suddenly gone south, or if it was an incident unrelated.

No, they sent and O.E.O. agent because Amelia was dead and Damien Trask was not.

“That’s not possible,” I managed to eek out, my voice trembling with tears. “He’s dead. You all said he was dead. Commissioner Kelly said he was dead. I watched the press release.”

Hector Pruitt shook his head. “We thought we had him. We really did.”

The sobs worsened. Harry tried to wrap his arms around me, out of comfort and an effort to get me to stop shaking, but I shoved him away. “No!” I shouted, standing up from the couch to just barely tower over Agent Pruitt. “Hudson was supposed to protect her! You were all supposed to protect her!"

“Lilia,” Hector murmured to calm me, his dark eyes sad with the news. But I took no comfort in the fact that he was simply the messenger. The messenger had just shot my entire world to shit.

“My name is Mara!” I cried, crumpling to my knees. “My name is Mara!”

I cried it over and over, sobbing into my hands. My brain forgot how to do anything else. It was stuck on a loop, like a broken record player, skipping to the same place every time.

My best friend was dead and it was all my fault.

And, more than likely, I was next.