"Oh my God," I breathed, as Harry looked at me miserably. "Isn't that, like, illegal or something?"

"The whole thing was illegal," he said, flatly. "I took that drug willingly, albeit I didn't know exactly what it was mixed with, but I know it's never pure. And Speed isn't legal. I can't exactly plead full ignorance."

"Did you confront Nadine?" I asked, my eyes wide and my mouth hanging open.

"Well, I asked her what she was playing at, and she just said she told Jason what she was giving him. He was fųcked, so he didn't remember. It's his word against hers. God knows what else was in it. It could have been anything."

"Louis said you hadn't been yourself that night... That's what he meant, isn't it? He knew about the drugs," I muttered, spilling my thoughts.

"Yeah, sort of, probably," he said, vaguely. "When I found out what I'd taken I told him, but I didn't really go into detail." He looked at me sharply. "When did Louis tell you that?"

"The same night I kissed him," I sighed. "He was sticking up for you, trying to defend what you did, saying there was more to it than I knew, but he wouldn't go into detail. He said he didn't know the full story."

"Which he didn't," Harry said, with a slight incline of his head.

We sat in silence for a minute while I processed everything he had told me.

"OK," I said, finally. "OK, I have some questions."

"Shoot," he nodded.

"Why has it taken you this long to tell me all this? Why not tell me straight away when you found out about the Bremel-whatsit?"

"I was ashamed, and embarrassed," he said, looking away at the wall. "It was bad enough that I had taken those drugs, never mind their stupid name, or the effects they'd had on me. It sounded ridiculous in my head. And I'd spent the previous few weeks convincing myself I didn't love you, only to find out I'd been influenced by some chemicals... It took me a long time to come to terms with what happened that night. I was scared of messing with you even more than I already had."

"Why did you want me to come back to your hotel that night at Libertine?" I demanded, suddenly angry again as I remembered that whole debacle. "You said earlier today you didn't set me up. But the whole thing - it was so cleverly orchestrated, from the paps taking pictures of me kissing Louis, to them seeing me and you leave together, to the pictures of me leaving your hotel in a taxi. What really happened?"

He hung his head, looking at the floor.

"Louis texted me that night and said you were with him, and he was trying to get me to come down. I told him I wouldn't be joining you because I couldn't face seeing you. It was still too raw. But then he started goading me, saying you looked stunning, and if I didn't show up then there was nothing to stop him going for it. I knew he wasn't really serious, he was just winding me up, but I told him to leave you alone and said I would come. Then when I arrived you were with Gary. I watched you, from a distance, and it broke my heart to see you with someone else. I managed to keep it under control until... until that fųcking John Legend song came on, and he put his arms around you."

"What John Legend song?" I asked, confused.

"All Of Me," he muttered. "You were slowdancing to it with Gary. It just... it reminds me of you, that's all."

I felt like I'd been punched.

"Wha... what do you mean?!" I gasped.

"Just the lyrics... I can identify with them, is all," he mumbled, and then quickly cleared his throat. "I didn't intend to intrude upon your evening. I just came to shut Louis up and maybe say hi to you. But then I saw you in tears when that Ellie Goulding and Ed Sheeran mash up came on. I knew exactly what had upset you, because I was feeling the same way. I couldn't just leave you standing there on your own, crying. I couldn't help myself; I had to come over. I just wanted to comfort you. You relaxed into my arms so easily, it was like New York had never happened. But straight away I felt guilty for messing with your emotions, so I walked away again. I tried not to watch you, but I couldn't take my eyes off you. Gary was being all sympathetic and understanding and I just wanted to punch him, and then when you started swaying in his arms to John Legend -"

He stopped abruptly and I noticed his fists were clenched and his knuckles were white.

"Harry," I said, but my voice failed and it came out a whisper.

"He gave me this smug little smile, over your shoulder, and I was out of my seat so fast... I didn't want him using you to get at me, and that's what it seemed like he was doing. I came over to you on the dancefloor, and he was about to kiss you..."

"I didn't want him to," I said, shaking my head. "We're just friends."

"He wants you."

I sighed. "That doesn't mean he can have me. I don't see him in that way."

"You've kissed him before," Harry said, and his tone was almost accusatory.

"I'm not rehashing this again, Harry," I said, abruptly.

"I know - sorry," he said quickly. "I'm just trying to explain how I felt."

He looked up at me apologetically and I sighed again and nodded.

"Being in that close proximity to you again was messing me up. I was drunk by this point, and suddenly I just wanted to sort things out. I asked you back to my hotel because I wanted to tell you everything - the drugs, Louis' baby, the hiatus... we'd had a sit down with the management and decided we wouldn't be touring the next album, and would be taking a break from the band. I wanted you to know the full story. I knew we couldn't discuss it in Libertine, it was too public, not to mention noisy. We needed privacy."

"You must have known the paps would see us leaving," I scoffed.

"Yeah I did, but I swear it didn't really register properly with me. I was pretty drunk, and I just wanted to get us away from everyone so we could talk, and...."

"And what?" I asked when he didn't continue.

"And I wanted to kiss you," he sighed, and I shook my head in disappointment.

"I should have known there would be an ulterior motive."

"No - it wasn't like that. I wasn't trying to manipulate you," he said, his eyes wide. "I just missed you so much. I wanted you so badly, it was tearing me apart inside. You looked so beautiful, you always look so beautiful...." he trailed off and looked away as my heart gave a lurch.

Why was he talking like this?

No - I didn't want to know.

"I'm sorry I made a move on you like that, when we got into my suite," he said, looking back at me again. "That honestly wasn't my sole intention. I wanted to tell you everything, but my feelings took over. I fucķed everything up, again."

"Yeah, well, I didn't exactly stop you," I muttered.

"You did after a minute," he said, looking away again. His cheeks looked flushed.

"You weren't being my Harry," I said, before I could stop myself. "It seemed like you were just going through the motions. It didn't feel right."

"I tried to switch my feelings off. I don't know why - it was stupid of me. I thought it would be easier, less painful. But it wasn't."

We looked at each other for a moment.

"So what was that phone conversation about? When you were talking to someone about the paps," I challenged.

"I was talking to Karen. She was asking me if I'd been seen with you. It was what she wanted. She'd spoken to Louis earlier in the evening and he'd told her that he'd invited you to Libertine, just so she was in the loop in case the media got the wrong idea. She convinced him to get me there too, under the pretext of helping us sort things out. I do actually think that was part of it, but she also tipped the paps off that we would both be there, so they would be on the look-out for us, in the hope they would get a picture of us together. Which they did."

"Manipulative bıtch," I breathed.

"Yeah, well, on the phone she was trying to convince me to be seen with you again, but I wasn't happy about it so I cut her off. But it was down to her that the paps were on your tail. I didn't set you up, I swear. I would never have done that to you."

I rubbed my temples with my hands. All this information was making my head hurt. I was beginning to see this in a different light. I'd spent so long believing one version of events, and now all of a sudden another version was being presented to me that was even more believable than the first. But believing this version meant my whole perception of Harry had to change again. In this version Harry had taken drugs, but then had been manipulated and set up by people he trusted. He wasn't exactly blameless, but I was beginning to see that I wasn't the only one who had been let down or hurt. I wasn't sure how I felt about him now. My stomach was in knots.

"Why did you leave, that night?" he asked, not meeting my eyes.

I blushed.

"I couldn't face getting hurt all over again," I said. "I stopped things from going any further at first because it felt like it was just sex, and there was no feeling behind it, and that hurt. But then when you kissed me again, and we got carried away... that was worse somehow, because it felt like you loved me again, but I knew you didn't, you said you didn't, and I realised that that hurt even more. I just needed to get away -"

"What do you mean?" he asked, as my voice broke off and I felt the tears coming again. "Oh Jess," he said softly, moving closer to me.

"Don't pity me!" I choked, standing up to move away from him. "Don't."

"I'm not," he protested. "I hate seeing you upset like this. I hate how much I've hurt you. I hate what I've done to us. This is such a mess..."

I turned away from him and wiped my tears away again. I felt like there surely couldn't be any left. My supply must have run dry by now.

"What did you mean?" he asked again. "You just said you knew I didn't love you because I said I didn't."

I turned back to him and nodded.

He pressed his lips together nervously, never breaking eye contact. The familiar expression made my heart ache.

"I never said I didn't love you, Jess."

My stomach dropped so sharply it almost took my breath away.

"Yes - you did!" I squeaked. "You told me in Brussels, you told me after Libertine, and you said it just now!"

"What did I say?"

"That you didn't love me!" I shouted.

"No, I didn't," he said, softly. "I've never said I didn't love you. I've never said those words to you. I just said it made me question everything."

This realisation hit me so hard I felt like I'd been winded.

"You said... you said you didn't want to work things out," I gasped. "In the hotel, in Brussels. You said, I don't."

"Yeah - as in, I don't want to work things out."

"And when I reminded you that you'd told me you were in love with me you said I thought I was."

"Exactly. I never said categorically that I wasn't. I was still trying to make sense of everything. I needed to end things between us before I hurt you any further. I wasn't lying to you - I just didn't understand my own feelings and my own actions. I felt like I loved you, but if I'd loved you, how could I have been tempted by somebody else? This was before I knew exactly what I'd taken in New York." He paused and looked at me sadly. "I was trying to do the right thing."

His words brought with them a flash of a memory of him lying on top of me in the hotel in London after Libertine; of him kissing me so gently, so lovingly. I'm tired of doing the right thing, Jess.

"But - that night in your hotel - I said I couldn't have sex with you because you weren't in love with me," I said, desperately trying to piece this together. "And you said... you said 'you're telling me you've never had sex with someone you're not in love with?'"

"Yeah," he slowly, nodding and looking at me as though this should be obvious. "I was asking you if that really was the case. I mean, I knew you didn't do one night stands, but I didn't know you'd only slept with people you were in love with. And that first night we met you weren't in love with me, but we still slept together. That wasn't me saying I wasn't in love with you. I've never said I wasn't in love with you," he said again.

"Why not?" I asked, bluntly.

"Because I couldn't lie to you about that," he replied. "You never asked me outright how I felt, so I never told you. You seemed to believe so easily that I never had any real feelings for you, and that hurt me. It made me think you'd never known the real me, despite me having thought you did. I tried to stay away from you, to let you go after everything I had put you through, but I guess I am selfish after all, and I just wanted some form of contact with you."

"So the instagram picture," I ploughed on, ignoring the meaning behind what he was saying to me.

"What instagram picture?"

"The one you posted - with the white tshirts. Hey there Delilah."

His face dropped slightly as he stared at me. "You saw that?"

"Was I not meant to?"

"You unfollowed me," he pointed out, a little bitterly. "I didn't think you would."

"So why did you post it?" I asked. "With my Delilah joke? I'm the only person you know who makes that joke when I see a plain white tee. Aren't I?"

"Yes, you are," he sighed. "I was in a shop, and when I saw the tshirts the first thing that came into my head was 'hey there Delilah.' I missed you so much, and the picture was just a reminder of you. I didn't think you'd see it. I didn't even hope that you'd see it. For all I knew you'd moved on. Grimmy had told me about that guy kissing you in the bar, so I assumed you were over me."

Adam!

I looked up at the clock, panicked, and saw that it was just gone seven o'clock. Adam would be here soon. My date with him seemed like it belonged in another life, after spending over an hour with Harry reliving the past.

"It just summed up what I was thinking about, so I posted it," Harry was saying. "No ulterior motive. Just me and my thoughts."

Part of me felt triumphant that I had called this, when Sarah had been so adamant that there had been some sort of secret message behind the picture.

"I saw a video of you, online recently," I told him. "Well - Sarah saw it and showed me. An interview with you and Liam, backstage at a concert I think? Liam was talking to the interviewer and someone walked past wearing a plain white tee, and you said Hey there Delilah to her."

"Did I?" He shrugged. "Probably. I say it all the time now. Like I said, it reminds me of you."

My heart was pounding yet again at these revelations.

"So your random text messages..," I started.

"I just missed you so much, Jess," he said softly. "I just wanted to hear from you, to have some form of contact with you. I knew you'd probably still hate me for what I did. I hated myself. But the longer I spent without you, the more I missed you. I wasn't getting over you like I'd hoped I would. I was just becoming more and more miserable. I was starting to think maybe I should just tell you everything, but then I was torn between not wanting to pull you back into my horrible world, and at the same time needing you in it. In the end I decided I would tell you everything, even if it was too late, because I had nothing to lose."

"So what are you saying?" I asked after a moment, and to my embarrassment my voice came out all squeaky and high-pitched.

He looked at the floor and clasped his hands together, and I sat down on the bed opposite him again.

"I just wanted you to know exactly what happened," he said. "I didn't want you thinking any of this was your fault, or that I had been stringing you along during our relationship. Because that couldn't be further from the truth."

I had to ask him. I had to ask the question I had never asked him. If I'd asked it sooner, maybe we wouldn't be where we were now.

"So... did you ever love me?" I whispered.

He reached between us and took my hands in his.

"Of course," he said softly. "I don't know how anyone could spend more than five minutes with you and not love you. You're incredible, you're..." He seemed to bite back a smile. "You're perfect."

I stared at him, my heart now beating so hard I knew it was visible through my top.

"You said you didn't come here to ask me to take you back," I said, my voice wobbling.

"I didn't," he said. "I know I have no right to ask that, after everything that's happened. But I also needed you to know how I felt about you... how I feel about you."

I was focussed so hard on him that everything else seemed to fade into the background. The blood that had been pounding in my ears moments before suddenly silenced, and the tremor in my stomach had ceased. Even my breathing seemed to have momentarily halted.

"And... how do... how do you feel about me?" I heard myself ask.

It seemed like an eternity passed while he licked his lips nervously and pressed them together, before giving me a sad smile.

"I love you. I can't believe you even had to ask."

----****----

Happy New Year! Thanks for all the votes on comments on the last chapter, I am so overwhelmed! I appreciate everyone's support so much. Next update will be Saturday :) xx