HARRY

I chewed on my bottom lip as I sit back, a Pink Floyd song plays on my radio and I look ahead, scoping out the place. Beside me was Zayn, the annoying sound of his keyboard clicking from his texting makes me turn to him. I stare at him until he notices. "What?" He feigns confusion.

"You've got anything better to do?" I retort, finding another position to sit in that won't have my ass cramping. We've been in this dark parking lot for the past hour and a half. Boring would be an understatement but this is what comes with the job, a lot of money yes but usually a lot of waiting.

"Actually, I do." He says, putting his phone away. "I'm meeting Raven later."

"Surprised you could even get her off of you for you to tell me that. It's annoying so see someone be so clingy." I toy with the ripped strands of my jeans on my knees.

"I think it's cute." I make a disgusted face and Zayn chuckles as if that's the reaction he knew he'd get. "Don't hate alright?"

"Not that I give a shit, but where'd you even leave her?"

"At yours with Emmaline." He says nonchalantly. It seems everyone has been dropping off their problems at my place lately. "They're getting to be really good friends."

"I don't give a shit about Pansy Parkinson or the problem that you left off at my doorstep. Which by the way, why is she staying at my place and not at yours? You were the one that brought her in, she should be staying with you."

Zayn shakes his head and lights a cigarette. "Because you're a good friend of mine." He mocks and I roll my eyes. "Ah shit, someone's a bit tense about Emmaline." Zayn blows out the smoke with a smirk.

"Yeah, so?"

He shrugs. "Does someone have a little crush?"

"Are you incoherent?" I argued, a furrow between my brows. "Clearly you don't know what you're talking about." I look down to my phone, dismissing the stupid grin Zayn held.

1:30 AM.

"Come on, you must like her a little." Zayn nudges my arm on the glove compartment making it fall and I suck my teeth in annoyance. "What's there not to like?"

"Do you have something you wanna say? Cause you know, if you wanna fool around with Emmaline, I won't say a word to Raven." I turn the tables and he looks taken aback.

"Wait, what?" He furrows his eyebrows in confusion, probably wondering how I switched up the spotlight so quick. "No, that's not what I'm—"

"Hey, it's okay." I pat his knee twice. "Your secret's safe with me." Zayn doesn't get a chance to correct himself because my phone vibrates with a text message.

luke
Subaru WRX STI, all black.
must change license plate before u take it.

"Alright," I sit up and put my black hood over my head, slipping my phone into the front pocket of my black skinny jeans. "Stay close." Zayn nods and I exit the old taxi cab we currently sat in. He slides in the drivers side and starts the cab while I quietly go towards the targeted car.

I look both ways before I kneel down and remove the plates both front and back and discreetly go towards the door. Before I could pick at the lock, I notice that it is already unlocked. "Fucking idiots." I mumble to myself while opening the door and sliding in. I look around. If they were stupid enough to leave the car unlocked, they're stupid enough to leave the keys in here.

With just a quick search, I find the keys under the seat and start the engine. Serves them right for being this fucking stupid, this is why you don't leave your expensive car in an airport parking lot.
I flash the LED lights at Zayn and he pulls away from the parking lot and drives off, I follow just behind.

I rev the engine and with a quick push of the pedal, I am driving past Zayn. I pull out my phone and dial Luke.

"It's done," I say into the receiver. "What now?"

"Tomorrow night drop it off at the docks, there will be someone picking up for Marcus."

"Got it." I set my phone aside and continue driving until I get to my street, my shop at the very end. I go around the back and get out of the car momentarily to push the fence open. I drive inside the old shed and cover the car with a blue tarp.

After a while, Zayn drives in and I close the fence behind him. He parks the taxi beside the shed so it isn't visible and joins me, a grin on his face. "Saw you speed past me back there," Zayn snickers. "Craving a bit more thrill in your life, huh?"

I push him. "Don't even think about it." Racing was put behind me for a reason. I am much more happy stealing luxury cars and conning rich fucks that prefer to bring their cars here for a cheaper estimate. We walk inside the warehouse through the back door to see the group sitting around the table, music playing from a stereo.

"Took you guys a while." Louis says, noticing us come in. They had beers in their hands and were playing some card game.

"How easy was it?" Niall asks, standing up to grab another beer.

"Oh, it was easy." Zayn says. "The waiting's what I fucking hate though." I grab a beer from the cooler and look around, not noticing the two girls around. "Where are the girls?" Zayn asks as if he read my mind.

"Upstairs." Theo says, nonchalantly, looking at his cards. At this, Zayn looks at me.

"And who the hell let them up there?" I chided, already annoyed.

"Emmaline," Of-fucking-course. I walk away from the group and make my way up the stairs, hearing faint girlish laughter from inside my apartment. When I open the door, both of the girls are sitting on the couch, some sort of pink toe divider in between their toes as they painted their nails. There was a yellow bowl of half eaten popcorn on the coffee table along with some beers and some popcorn thrown on the floor carelessly.

They both turn to me as if I had just wondered in the women's bathroom. "What is she doing up here?" I ask, looking at Emmaline, Raven rolls her eyes from beside her and continues to paint Emmaline's toes. "Just because I let you stay here doesn't mean you can bring people in."

"Relax, will you? We wanted to get away from the testosterone downstairs." Emmaline remarks, she sounded tipsy or maybe drunk somewhere in between. She turns to her hands and blows on her nails, they were a pale pink color.

"Yeah, relax!" Raven retorts, now she looked high. She reaches in the bowl of popcorn once she's done panting Emmaline's toes and throws some at me, they bounce off my chest and on the floor. I bite back my tongue from lashing out at them when Zayn appears by the doorway. He leans on the doorframe and stares at the two girls with a grin. "Hi, love bug!" Raven squeals and does a jog towards him, I move to the side in disgust.

"Woah," Zayn says. "What were you smoking up here?" Raven holds up her purple vape and kisses Zayn. "Right, well I think it's time we left." Emmaline and Raven both hug before she leaves and now it was just Emmaline and I.

It's quiet for a while, Emmaline ignores me as I walk towards the kitchen for nothing in particular but this is my home and I can do whatever the fuck I want to do. "So," She begins. "Where were you off to tonight?"

I walk out of the kitchen and watch as she tries to paint her left toes that Raven didn't finish but she clearly struggles. "I was working." I keep it short. Not like she needs an explanation, what I do isn't any of her business.

"Working on what?" She challenges, probably trying to annoy me like I annoyed her yesterday at Ripley's 8.

"I believe that is none of your concern, now is it?" She mocks me by sticking out her tongue childishlike. She seemed much more relaxed now than when she did when I first met her, but that's probably because she's drunk or maybe possibly high. Maybe both. When I look down to her hands, her ring is missing. "Where's your ring? I thought it was sacred or some shit."

She looks up at me from her toes. "What?" She looks down at her hand. I expected to see her panic almost but she just stared at her hand for a moment before going back to painting her toes. "It's...probably just in the bathroom somewhere."

"For such a big ass ring you sure are reckless." I go over to sit on the couch, leaving space between us. She gives a throaty laugh.

"I'm just not materialistic," She says and I look down to my beer, the condensation wets my hands and leaves a ring on my thigh where I placed it. "I guess I've just been doing some thinking now that I'm away from home. I'm seeing things I've never seen before."

I furrow my eyebrows. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She shrugs. "Being away from a place with shitty people does put some things into perspective for me. I mean it's like when you finally open your eyes and realize that maybe it wasn't all that happy as you thought it was. I was too stuck into my own world that any shitty thing done to me was brushed aside." She looks up. "But now it's like, what the fuck was that about?"

When she turns to me, she appeared relaxed and maybe she was looking for an answer on my face that tells her I understand what she's going through. But I think it's just drunk babble, maybe she doesn't know what she's talking about. I'm not so sure what she's talking about either.

I purse my lips and look away. "My husband's great, I guess." She continues. "When he wants to be. To be completely honest, I'm starting to wonder if getting married was a good idea. But then again, a shooting the day of my wedding doesn't exactly sound like good luck to me."

I peer over at her. "Who shot up your wedding?" I've never heard this before. To be fair, I have never heard her talk about herself at all since she has been here. She looks down at her toes and frowns.

"Can you do my pinkie? I can't seem to reach it." She turns her body around to face me and puts her foot on my thigh. I look down to it before she's pushing the pale pink nail polish towards me. I stare in hesitation for a while before I take it, seeing as I had no choice in the way she pushed the nail polish into my hand.

What the fuck am I supposed to do in this situation? Where'd she even get the nail polish from? Emmaline reclines back on the couch and closes her eyes and I am left with my mouth dry. I swallow back and try my best at painting her pinkie toe. Once it's done, she smiles. "Thank you." She seemed sleepy and uncomfortable on this couch.

To be honest, I would hate to sleep on this couch. I've done so a few times and I've woken up feeling arthritic, I can't imagine how she must feel having slept on this couch all these weeks. For fucks sake, sometimes I hate myself for being too kind. "You can take my bed if you want." I say and she opens one eye. "Only for tonight." I add.

"Are you sure?" She asks.

No, not really. Where the hell am I gonna sleep?

"Sure." I nod and purse my lips as I stand up. She does as well as we both walk into my bedroom. I clear out some clothes on the bed and throw them in the closet not caring if they were clean or dirty. She plops down on the bed and almost immediately falls asleep. It's always cold in my bedroom so I throw the blanket over her carelessly.

I grab an extra pillow from my bed and exit. When my eye catches the couch, I stop myself. No fucking way am I sleeping on that. So I go downstairs, kick the guys out and shut off all the lights.

I go into my office, the blue light from Onyx's aquarium will be enough to put me to sleep. I place the pillow on the desk and sit on my chair. Onyx was asleep and shortly after, I fell asleep as well.

—

EMMALINE

"Ah fuck," I look up to see Zayn holding a metal rod in his hand. When he catches me looking, he calls me over. "Can you do me a favor?"

"Sure," I nod.

"In the backyard, there should be another one of these." He points to the very old looking scissor jack under the car. "Can you bring it over? I'd do it myself but I need to make sure this doesn't give out." I comply and go towards the backyard where he told me to. There was old cars all over, some missing hoods, others wheels. It was like a junk yard. It seemed like they came over here to pick out whatever they might need for car parts.

I look around for the scissor jack and after a while of searching, I fail to find it. I walk across some more cars until I reach a run down shed with chipped paint on the outside. When I open it, I see exactly what I was looking for. It was leaning against the side with some stacked tires and tool chests.

I pick it up and just as I was about to leave, I notice a blue tarp covering something in the middle. A car. Why would they keep a car in here? Stashed away? I set down the scissor jack and walk towards it, my hands reaching for the tarp and I pull it off.

Because I am that kind of person.

I almost gasp at how beautiful this car was. My hands lightly touch the side of its glossy paint job. "What are you doing in here?" I look towards the door, Harry stood there with a disapproving look on his face but not angry. If anything, he looked curious as well.

"Where did you get this car?" Is this what him and Zayn were off doing last night? It doesn't look like this car has been here for too long.

"I stole it." Harry says, answering my assumptions. He walks forwards and stands in front of me to where I actually have to take a small step back from how close he was. Our eyes lock for a moment before he reaches over and pulls the blue tarp back over the beautiful sports car. "What's it to you?"

I look away and put my hand over the blue tarp. "Nothing," I say. "It's impressive if anything."

"That I stole a car?"

"That you managed to steal this car," I elaborate. "Did you check for any tracking devices?" My father always had tracking devices on all of his luxury cars.

"Of course I did."

"Did you check for any recognizable features? A personalized engraving or something the cars owner would easily recognize?"

"I am not keeping this car, who cares?" He retorts and looks under the tarp momentarily.

"Wait," I say. "So you stole this car but you're not planning to keep it?" What was the whole point?

"This car is merely a job," Harry says. "It's a supply and demand thing. Not something that you would understand, as a matter of fact none of this should concern you. Just get back to work." He looked annoyed now. I smile and walk away towards the scissor jack. "What the hell are you smiling at?"

I turn and shrug. "It's just fun how angry you get," I use his same words that he said to me last time. "Lighten up, Harry." I pick up the scissor jack and walk away towards the shop.

Something tells me I'm going to have a lot of fun annoying him.