(No Control | Holding Me Ransom - 31 - See Things In A Different Light)

"Oh my God," she whispers, her face a picture of disbelief. "Isn't that, like, illegal or something?"

Well I'm not exactly in the best position to judge, am I? I broke the law myself.

"The whole thing was illegal," I sigh. "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."

Her anger seems to have abated temporarily (I'm not stupid enough to think it has magically disappeared for good) and is replaced with shock, horror and disgust.

"Did you confront Nadine?" she asks.

"Well, I asked her what she was playing at, and she just said she told Jason what she was giving him," I reply. "He was fucked, so he didn't remember. It's his word against hers. God knows what else was in it. It could have been anything," I add, a tinge of bitterness creeping into my voice.

I mean, I only could have died or something, if I had been allergic to any of those unknown chemicals. No big deal, Nadine.

"Louis said you hadn't been yourself that night. That's what he meant, isn't it? He knew about the drugs," she murmurs, staring unseeingly at a spot on the carpet.

"Yeah, sort of, probably," I shrug. I'm not really sure exactly what he said to her. "When I found out what I'd taken I told him, but I didn't really go into detail. When did Louis tell you that?"

"The same night I kissed him," she admits, and she has the grace to look ashamed again. "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," I agree. 

I feel another pang of regret at the way I treated Louis over all of this. He was a true friend to me, and I was an arse in return. I feel stupid for even thinking that he might have been trying to make a move on Jess. I was so wrapped up in my own jealousy and insecurity that I lost touch with reality. He would never betray me like that. I make a mental note to apologise to him again when I next see him.

"OK," she says, jolting me out of my thoughts. "OK, I have some questions."

"Shoot."

"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 sigh. This is the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn't it? Why did I insist on keeping it to myself for so long?

"I was ashamed, and embarrassed," I confess, unable to meet her eye. "It was bad enough that I had taken those drugs, never mind their stupid name, or the effects they'd had on me." I steel myself to look at her face, but I can't read her expression. She is watching me, waiting for me to continue. "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..." I sneak another look at her, but she doesn't react to this, so I carry on. "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?" she frowns. "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?"

My heart starts to beat faster as we approach the subject of my feelings for her again. I look down at the floor again and rush through my explanation of Louis' attempt at goading me by saying he would make a play for her, and me rising to the bait as he had known I would.

I daren't look at her. I'm so embarrassed.

"I knew he wasn't really serious, he was just winding me up," I add when I get to the end. "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 fucking John Legend song came on, and he put his arms around you."

I break off, feeling a twist in my stomach at the memory of them dancing together.

"What John Legend song?" she asks, wrinkling her nose in confusion.

"All Of Me," I mutter, without looking at her. "You were slowdancing to it with Gary. It just... it reminds me of you, that's all."

"Wha... what do you mean?!" she squeaks, and I gloss over it again as quickly as I can. 

"Just the lyrics... I can identify with them, is all."

I'm too afraid to admit how I really feel in case she hits the roof again. Even though I'm desperate to tell her, in the hope she will throw her arms around me and say she feels the same. But that's not why I'm here.

"I didn't intend to intrude upon your evening," I explain. "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."

The memory is so vivid I can even smell the scent of her shampoo, feel the softness of her hair brushing against my arm while people danced around us in the middle of a crowded club in London. I squeeze my eyes shut and clench my fists, willing myself to forget how she made me feel... how she makes me feel.

"But straight away I felt guilty for messing with your emotions," I continue, my tone less assertive now. "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 -"

I come to a stop and swallow hard, fighting to control my emotion again.

"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," she interrupts, snapping me back to the present. "We're just friends."

"He wants you."

The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, but she doesn't rise to it. Instead she looks resigned.

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

"You've kissed him before," I blurt.

Seriously, what's wrong with me? It's like I have an innate desire to make a mess of everything.

"I'm not rehashing this again, Harry," she snaps.

"I know - sorry," I apologise. "I'm just trying to explain how I felt."

Luckily for me she lets this go, and I silently vow to try my hardest not to be a knob.

"Being in that close proximity to you again was messing me up," I continue with a sigh. "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..." I pause and shake my head at the mess my life has become these past couple of months. "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," she says flatly.

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

And I wanted to kiss her. I'd be lying to her if I said it wasn't on my mind at the time.

"And what?" she prompts.

"And I wanted to kiss you," I admit. 

No more lies, remember?

"I should have known there would be an ulterior motive," she says, with a shake of her head.

"No - it wasn't like that," I protest. 

I may have wanted to kiss her, but it wasn't like I set out to deceive her.

"I wasn't trying to manipulate you," I promise. "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...." I stop myself from going any further, and look down at my feet. She doesn't say anything.

I think back to arriving at my hotel suite, pushing her against the door roughly, forcefully almost. I was so desperate not to let her inside my head. I thought I could keep her at arm's length while I attempted to drive my demons away with her touch; her kiss. I was wrong.

"I'm sorry I made a move on you like that, when we got into my suite," I begin tentatively. "That honestly wasn't my sole intention. I wanted to tell you everything, but my feelings took over. I fucked everything up, again."

"Yeah, well, I didn't exactly stop you," she concedes, and I recall the burn of humiliation when she pushed me away from her after I practically accused her of sleeping around, and the sting of rejection when she refused to let me touch her again. Not that I blame her. I was being undeniably crass.

"You did after a minute," I remind her.

"You weren't being my Harry," she says, softly. "It seemed like you were just going through the motions. It didn't feel right."

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

"So what was that phone conversation about?" she asks, back to business again. "When you were talking to someone about the paps."

"I was talking to Karen," I answer. "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 smile wryly at the extent of Karen's scheming.

"I do actually think that was part of it," I accept, "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 bitch," Jess hisses.

"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," I explain, needing her to understand that this asinine idea was nothing to do with me. "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 search her face for some kind of indication that she believes me. Surely she knows me well enough to accept I would never have betrayed her in such a cruel way. I may have done some pretty bad things, but I'm not vindictive.

She is quiet for a moment, and a question springs to mind; one that was never answered, and now seems like the perfect opportunity to ask.

"Why did you leave, that night?" 

Her eyes meet mine for a second, and I notice a pink flush tinge her cheeks.

"I couldn't face getting hurt all over again," she says in a small voice, and my stomach drops to my toes. "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?" I ask, confused by what she has just said. That's the second time she's said I told her I didn't love her. I look up at her, frowning, and realise she has tears sliding down her cheeks again. "Oh Jess," I sigh, scooting closer to her to comfort her, but immediately she stands up and glares at me.

"Don't pity me!" she snarls, her voice wracked with emotion. "Don't."

"I'm not," I protest softly. "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..."

How are we ever going to fix this? I can't bear the thought of her being this unhappy, and knowing I caused it. She is quiet for a moment as she turns away from me, and I watch her uncomfortably, torn between wanting to hold her and giving her the space she claims to need.

"What did you mean?" I ask again, when I see her wiping her eyes. "You just said you knew I didn't love you because I said I didn't."

She looks at me with mild confusion and gives a brief nod. My heart begins to pound. 

We shouldn't be going here, but how can I let her believe that she meant nothing to me, when she is everything to me?

"I never said I didn't love you, Jess," I tell her gently, and the tremor in my voice is audible.

"Yes - you did!" she protests breathlessly. "You told me in Brussels! You told me after Libertine! And you said it just now!"

What?!

"What did I say?" I ask, now completely confused.

"That you didn't love me!" she cries in exasperation.

"No, I didn't," I argue, as softly as I can. "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."

She stares at me with her mouth open, now breathing rapidly.

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

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

Not as in, I don't love you. 

"And when I reminded you that you'd told me you were in love with me you said 'I thought I was,'" she stumbles, her eyes wide and wild.

"Exactly - I never said categorically that I wasn't," I explain, my heart pounding harder. The words are on the tip of my tongue, but to blurt them out now would just push her away, and she is so nearly within my reach again.

I love you, I think in my head, wishing life were simple enough for me to be able to say this without making the situation worse.

"I was still trying to make sense of everything," I explain. "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?"

It seems stupid that I doubted myself, now I look back. I wasn't in a good place then. I don't think I even am now, to be honest.

"This was before I knew exactly what I'd taken in New York," I tell her, trying to make her understand that I didn't deliberately lie to her, or try to confuse her. Can't she see I was confused and messed up too? "I was trying to do the right thing," I finish, lamely.

"But - that night in your hotel - I said I couldn't have sex with you because you weren't in love with me, and you said... you said 'you're telling me you've never had sex with someone you're not in love with?'" she stammers.

How could she have misunderstood that? This whole sorry mess is made worse by misunderstandings and lack of communication. 

"Yeah, I was asking you if that really was the case," I reply. "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," I repeat.

"Why not?" she asks me outright, and here it is - the question I've been inwardly leading up to and preparing myself for, and I still have no idea how she will react to the answer.

I look her in the eye and respond as calmly and evenly as I can, even though my heart feels like it is in my mouth, and my whole body is trembling with nerves.

"Because I couldn't lie to you about that. 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."

I know it was my own fault and I brought it on myself by the way I acted, but it still hurt. I'm only human, after all.

"It made me think you'd never known the real me, despite me having thought you did," I say, sadly. "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."

I've barely got these momentous words out of my mouth when she hits me with another question.

"So the instagram picture..."

I'm thrown. I've just admitted I still love her, and she breezed right over it.

"What instagram picture?" I ask, distractedly.

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

Fuck - I wasn't expecting that.

"You saw that?" I ask incredulously.

"Was I not meant to?"

"You unfollowed me," I remind her. (Yes, I'm still bitter.) "I didn't think you would."

"So why did you post it?" she challenges. "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?"

I can't believe she saw it. And I can't believe she didn't realise then, at that precise moment, that I was still spending every waking hour pining over her. But then again, why would she? She thought I set her up and that she meant nothing to me.

"Yes, you are," I confirm with a sigh. "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. It just summed up what I was thinking about, so I posted it. No ulterior motive. Just me and my thoughts."

She still hasn't acknowledged what I'm saying. I don't get it. Is she purposely ignoring me, or is she actually not hearing what I'm saying to her? I want to stand in front of her, wave my arms and shout, "I love you, you silly girl!"   

"I saw a video of you online recently," she says, after a pause. "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? Probably," I shrug. "I say it all the time now. Like I said, it reminds me of you."

"So your random text messages..," she begins again, and I interrupt, impatiently but softly, because she isn't getting it. She's asking the questions but isn't listening properly to the answers. She isn't truly hearing what I'm saying to her. Do I have to spell it out?

"I just missed you so much, Jess. I just wanted to hear from you, to have some form of contact with you," I say desperately, aware how pathetic this sounds. "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?" she squeaks.

Looks like I am going to have to spell it out after all. I look at the floor for a minute, gathering my thoughts and she sits down again opposite me. Although I'm not looking at her I can feel her eyes on me.

"I just wanted you to know exactly what happened," I begin. "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."

My heart is pounding. She must be able to hear it. It's drowning everything out.

"So... did you ever love me?" she asks, and although I am expecting it, this question breaks my heart a little more. The fact that she had to ask is so terribly sad.

I reach across the gulf between us and take her small hands in mine, looking into her eyes in an attempt to project my sincerity, so she can no longer be in any doubt.

"Of course," I emphasise. "I don't know how anyone could spend more than five minutes with you and not love you. You're incredible, you're..." I search for the right words to sum her up, and suddenly my own lyrics are right in front of me. After all, they were written about her. "You're perfect," I smile. 

Of course she doesn't understand the reference, but stares at me, unsure.

"You said you didn't come here to ask me to take you back," she reminds me. Her voice is shaking.

"I didn't," I agree. "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."

Her eyes are fixed hard on me, like she couldn't tear her gaze away even if she wanted to. In this moment, nothing exists except just us two. There is no Nadine, no Sara, no Adam, no Gary. There are no paparazzi, no fans, no nosey onlookers, no friends with benefits. It just us, our emotions, our history. And Christ, we have a whole lot of history.

"And... how do...," she stutters, "how do you feel about me?" 

Well, I promised myself this morning that I would only tell her if she asked me outright. I'm pretty sure I would have broken that promise, but I'm inwardly thankful she has asked, if only for the glimmer of hope it has given me that maybe she might still care about me, after everything that has happened.

I hold her gaze for a moment, taking in her beauty, her depth, her strength, her fire, and for a split second I am not afraid anymore. And in that split second I find the courage to say the words I should have said months ago to this incredible girl sitting before me, who has captured my heart in every way possible.

"I love you," I tell her softly, and a little sadly. "I can't believe you even had to ask."