Tough Love

Chapter 10

Lauren: I was cocooned in Harrys hug, and I didn’t want to let go. It had been so long since I’d seen him, and I didn’t want this to ruin it. I pulled away from him and sniffled, wiped the tears from my eyes and extended my hand for his. He looked at me with a thick expression on his face like, your joking right? Or you have to be flipping kidding me. He slowly took my hands, and we began walking in the other boy’s position. Security guards flocked us, and we could barely see where we were going. They others haven’t noticed yet, but once we got into the car I knew it would be an awkward car ride. “Harry, love.” I said as we continued to walk at a fast pace in the seemingly endless airport. “hmm.” He responded concentrated on where we were going. “I’ll tell you everything, once we are in the car, and you know. The other boys find out.” He nodded and squeezed my hand a little tighter. I knew he was in a daze at the moment and not really aware of what he was doing, so I shrugged and proceeded to walk behind him. We left the airport out of a creepy back door, not so luxurious for the VIP exit, and the two black vans were parked with more guards around them. As we approached the cars it was time for the others to know about me, I sighed and shook my head ready to deal with this. Harry and I were he last ones in the van. When we got in we sat next to each other and all eyes were on us. I shifted my weight in discomfort, and I saw Harry about to open his mouth to speak, but I knew it was my story to tell. I opened my mouth quicker and I told them everything. That when I was 13 I was diagnosed with Leukemia, a blood cancer, and just when they thought I was all healed, four years later I relapsed. Just as my hair grew back, I slowly watched it fall out. I told them how every night I would wake up crying because of a terrible dream of my not getting better, and how I would look down and see little pieces of my hair that were falling out. I knew I was getting too deep into this when I heard Harry make a faint noise when I mentioned the dream, the dream that I had told him about, but not the contents of it. I looked at him, shot him an apologetic look and proceeded to talk again, but he stopped me. “Lauren…this is too much, you’re going too far, stop.” His voice was shattered and faint, and the attention of everyone on me quickly shifted to him. 

Harry: My heart stopped when she explained everything, life was drained from me. This all seemed like a big joke because it was happening so quickly, but it was very true. I saw the look in the boy’s eyes, and there little shifts in position because they felt awkward and didn’t know what to say. We all sat there awkwardly listing to passing cars on the highway when Liam broke the silence. “I know this is going to be hard, love, but you’ll pull through and you are strong. Harry is as well, you’ll have him, and us, for support.” He stopped talking and motioned around the car to the rest of the boys, they shook their head in agreement. A little half smile was all that I could pull of and I directed it to Liam to thank him for what he just said. Next, Niall leaned in and placed his hand on her knee. “You’ve got that right, whatever you need, we are all night here.” He put an emphasis on the ‘all’ and once again they all shook their heads in agreement. For a couple of seconds we sat in silence until she spoke again. “Thanks guys, I really don’t want to put you in a foul mood since you just got here, and were on a long flight. Let’s just forget about it and have a good time ok?” for the last time, we all agreed. We all couldn’t get it off of our minds, I could tell. I didn’t know what to say, or do to her. I sighed and stared out the window hoping we would get to the hotel quickly, the tension in this car was eating me alive. 

Lauren: I wanted them to forget about everything, I was fine. Well not really, but to the point where regular hospital visits for treatment where all I needed. I efficiently scheduled them for around the trips I had with the boys. They all just kind of looked at me like I was an alien with a death sentence. I wanted to remind them that we all were going to eventually die, but I didn’t think that would lighten the mood. So, I just kept my mouth shut until we got to the hotel. My aching body just wanted to get out of these shoes, and just put on something comfy. As we arrived at the hotel, I wondered if the fans had noticed my bald head. The beanie kind of masked it, but I still had no hair line, or the once luscious dirty blonde locks of hair that would normally fall from the hat. I knew the best thing to do was to play it off like everything was fine, which I seemed to be doing a lot of lately. As we exited the car, they did notice. I saw the fans whispering and snickering comments. Frankly, I was so tired from being crammed in a tension filled car I didn’t care what they said.

Harry: We hustled up to the hotel with the rest of 

the boys pretty quickly. I noticed people where talking and I didn’t want her to realize. I guided her lower back to the correct suite that we would all be sharing. I popped in the key card that the desk man had just given us and we entered our assigned room. We entered and I lost my train of thought, of what we were doing. So I just stood there awkwardly in the main living area making everything ten times worse. The tension seemed to follow us up to the suite which I didn’t like. It would make me grumpy, and that is defiantly one thing I didn’t want her to deal with right now. She came up to me with a weary look on her face and asked if we could find our room. I nodded and told her to wait her until I found the room where the bellhop had placed our belongings. I guess Paul trusted us together because we were in a single bed room. I leaned out the door way and motioned for her to come in. Still, she gracefully walked over in the room we would be sharing. “Are we going out? Do you mind if I get changed into something more comfortable?” she looked up at me as she was going through her suit case. I was pretty tired, and I could feel jet lag creeping up on me. “No, im pretty tired from the flight, well stay in tonight.” I smiled back at her. She motioned for me to close the door to our room. I did so and she began sliding off her shoes, sighing in relieve; I chuckled and flopped down on the bed. She turned to me and started to laugh back, “You try wearing wedges for 6 hours, not my best choice.” I felt the tension breaking up; I knew her personality would not alter because of this. I missed that, her carefreeness. She slipped on socks, then picked up a sweatshirt and threw it on the bed. She casually began to take off her shirt, to reveal herself in only in a bran and a under shirt that came up to her belly button. That’s when I saw it, and it all came back to me. At the airport when I hugged her, and she moaned from pain. I stood up violently angered at myself. She stopped what she was doing, shocked. I began pacing and then ran over to her and took her arms, almost shaking her I began to speak. “I did this to you.” I nearly screamed as I pointed to the forming bruises on her waist from where I hugged her tightly.

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