Moonstruck // Harry Styles

chapter-31

“Why are you doing this?” Jane asked him. He was holding her by her wrist, twisting it every now and then, but she didn’t make a noise. Time was stopped all around me. Henley seemed marginally bored with the situation, as if he was waiting for me to compose. Jane tried to leave his grasp one time, but he only laughed. She huffed, defeated and unable and looking at me with sorry eyes.

“I am guessing that I don’t have to ask you to not run away or scream or do anything stupid,” Henley mumbled after I got up. He glanced at his knife for a moment, frisking the sharp edge. “I prefer using knives. They’re so… so much more delicate.”

“Why did you kill them?” Jane asked again. I bit my lips, not knowing what to do or think.

Henley shrugged at her as if she’d said something stupid. “Because I hate them, of course.”

“Just that?” She gulped nervously.

“I couldn’t find another better reason, missy,” he said, almost whistling out his words.

Jane closed her eyes. My hand reached unknowingly for her. It was stupid but I wondered about the feeling when my fingers would find her waist as I’d pull herself to me. God, I wanted to say I was sorry, but didn’t know how. I still couldn’t believe whatever had been happening around me was real and becoming. I shivered from the cold. Nothing was right. Everything around me was upside down.

“All the women you killed,” Jane said breathily, “they had lives. They had relatives, people who were—”

“Oh, honey–” He chuckled – “don’t. I’m past these pathetic, generic lines, I can assure you.”

“I won’t let you harm her,” I told him, finally. Air seemed to make its journey back to my trachea, my lungs were full and everything I said were some giant exhale.

He chuckled amusedly at me. “I suspected as much. But see what happens.”

“Oh, fuck you,” I spat. He laughed again.

“What happens now?” Jane asked.

He seemed happy answering that question, smiling maddeningly. “Oh, well, well, well. I have had thought about this for a long time, darling.”

“Why?”

“It’s for Harry,” he replied, looking at me, smiling. I stopped breathing, a heavy clutter of mud stuck on my throat.

“Why?” she asked again, panic striking her voice. “Why do you—”

“I know him, darling. He is one of a kind. He reckons he’s ordinary, but he is so far more than that. From the moment I saw him… I knew he was just like me.”

Just like me, a voice clicked in my head. It was way too familiar. I didn’t like how his voice worked, how he said that sounded like he owned me. I hated it.

“I’m nothing like you,” I said, or rather hissed. He didn’t hear me, but he knew what I said.

“You’re just like me,” he said, chuckling. “More than you might think you know.”

I tried to think and act controlling, calm in the current situation, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t a cup of tea – especially, my cup of tea. “Leave her be, Henley,” I said loudly. Goddamn it, my legs were shaking.

“Do you know,” he started, ignoring me, “how hard it is to watch on someone without revealing one little thing about himself – the person who is doing the watches? It is impossible. Following you has revealed so much of me to myself. To be dreadfully honest, I would not be able to do all I have done without you. When you first came to my house, Harry, I knew there was something so common in us, so familiar. You didn’t know it, of course, but could I blame you? Could I, really? You want to forget it so much…”