*JUST A WARNING FOR THE CHAPTER: does contain some abusive themes*

Mia Miles

  I didn't know what I had been expecting. Did I really think Harry was just going to take me in with open arms and listen to what I had to say? Maybe I was so blinded by the desperate need to escape Matthew that I forgot how much Harry really hated me. I was stupid, I was foolish, and now there was hardly any hope left for me to ever get back together with Harry. I only hoped that Harry's bandmate, Niall, delivered the document that I had given him. That document was the last strand of hope that I had before I completely gave up. 

  The ceremony had dragged on for far too long. The entire time it lasted Matthew had his hands all over me. One hand was always firmly rested on my thigh, or wrapped around my waist, or around my shoulders. His touch was enough to make me afraid for what would come later, when we were back home and by ourselves, because I knew what I had said about him in our trailer had made him upset, even if he tried his hardest not to show it. 

  There was a brief moment in the night when I caught a glimpse of Harry. He was no longer with Niall, instead he was standing next to a middle aged man, engaged in a conversation and laughing. Maybe he felt my eyes wandering over toward him or maybe he just happened to look in my direction, but without warning he was turned toward me and our eyes were locked. Before I could blush and look away, Matthew was pulling me toward a group of his friends to introduce me to. It would be impossible for me to forget that desperate look of longing that Harry's eyes held. Couldn't he see them in mine, too?

  There was an after party following the gala, but Matthew decided that we would skip it and leave. I was disappointed that I wouldn't be able to see Harry anymore and scared that Matthew would do something to me. His grip on my hand was intensely tight as we wove back through the red carpet, skipping any questions and politely telling interviewers that we couldn't stay long. It probably looked like we were rushing out of the venue for other reasons, but it was really just to come home and endure more abuse from my husband.

  The drive home was completely silent. I wanted to jump out of the car and run back to the after party and demand that Harry would listen to me, but instead I sat in the back of a limo with my entitled husband. He didn't provide me with any reassurance, he didn't say a word to me, and that scared me even more. We had sent every staff member home when we had left for the gala, so nobody would be able to save me. 

  "I'm disappointed in you, Mia," Matthew sighed. "I give you everything, and then you make a fool out of me in front of an audience while we were getting ready. What was that all about?"

  "I didn't mean it, I wasn't thinking." I was skittish now, just trying to talk myself out of the situation. 

  "You weren't thinking," Matthew chuckled. "You really think that's a good enough excuse?" 

  "Shouldn't it be?" I cried out, exasperated. "You keep expecting me to be loving to you and want to have a relationship with you but you treat me horribly! Can't you see that nothing will ever work out between us unless you treat me nicely?"

  "Respect is all I ask for, Mia," Matthew said. 

  "Respect is a two way street, Matthew."

  A half an hour later, I sat by myself in the dim light of our enormous kitchen with a bag of peas held to my now swollen, black eye. The first thing Matthew had done when we entered the house was briefly look at me before hitting me straight in the eye. I didn't even have time to think about it or process what he had done, because right afterward he retreated to our room without giving me a single look. 

  I paced back and forth in the kitchen, now wearing my pajamas. My eye was in so much pain to the point where it felt like the entire left side of my face was throbbing. The bag of peas that I had pulled out of the freezer was now starting to drip from the melting ice and was providing no comfort to my pain. After my bag of peas were no longer frozen, I found a wash cloth and compressed my eye with warm water. If I had any access to a computer or cell phone, I would have used Google to figure out how to treat my eye, but this was as good as it was going to get for now. 

  Getting into bed next to Matthew was absolutely not going to be happening. There was no way that I could slip under the sheets next to him after he had hurt me so badly, so I went to our living room and made myself a makeshift bed with the pillows and blanket on the couches. Throughout the night, I tossed and turned and every now and then got up to get more warm water for the washcloth that sat on my eye. Each time I woke up I was reminded of the rejection that I had received from Harry. It was still so raw and fresh in my mind that I broke down in tears each time. 

  Finally, at around four in the morning, I decided that sleeping was just going to be impossible. My eye was still throbbing and my heart ached for a man that didn't love me and I was undeniably trapped with a man who I would never have feelings for. I turned on the television and watched HGTV until seven in the morning, when all the staff arrived. 

  Rosita walked through the doors, saw me, and I cried. I broke down and cried in front of herself and the other staff, and she quickly ushered me to the kitchen while shushing me and rubbing my shoulders. 

  "Mi hija, what happened to you?" She asked, tilting my face up into the light so that she could get a good look at my eye. 

  "Harry completely rejected me," I bawled. "I couldn't even explain myself to him, he just told me to go back to my husband and-"

  "But what happened to your eye!? Voy a matar a ese hijo de puta!"

  "Matthew got angry." I stifled out a small chuckle at Rosita's outburst. I didn't know much Spanish, but I knew what hijo de puta meant. 

  For the next hour, I sat on the kitchen counter as Rosita put cream on my eye and listened to me explain the entire situation. Every now and then she would gasp or curse in Spanish or offer me a comforting hug. 

  "Just because Harry did not listen to you does not mean that you will give up," Rosita said sternly. "I will get you out of here, somehow. I cannot bear to see you continue to go through this."

  "I did give Harry's friend the document," I said hopefully. "When he wouldn't listen to me, I panicked and handed it off to his friend, Niall. I told him to give it to Harry, and now I'm just hoping that he actually goes through with it. The document should explain everything that I didn't have the chance to tell him." 

  Before Rosita had the chance to respond to me, Matthew emerged from across the room in his business suit. My heart stopped at the possibility that he might have heard us talking, but as he sipped on his coffee and grabbed a banana from the kitchen table nonchalantly I sighed with relief. He only turned to look at us briefly and his eyes nearly bugged out of his skull when he saw how bad my eye look. Within seconds he had regained his composure.

  "I'm off to work." He said, his voice faltering nervously. 

  "You should be ashamed of yourself." Rosita nearly growled. I had never seen her be so upfront and mean toward Matthew. I expected him to lash out on her and fire her on the spot, but instead he gulped as his face turned a light pink. He said nothing as he turned around in his spot and walked back out of the swinging kitchen doors.

  "Come on, you can help me pick strawberries in the garden." She said once he had left, completely disregarding her sudden confrontation with Matthew. I nodded, still speechless. My left eye might have been completely swollen shut but I had clearly seen Matthew look genuinely afraid.

  I followed Rosita out into the back garden. Occasionally we had gone out into the garden together to pick flowers or fruits or vegetables, and I couldn't help but feel a pang of sadness as the realization that I might be staying here for a long time finally hit me. The last time that I had gone out to the garden with her I was under the impression that it would be my last. I had hoped that once I met Harry at the gala everything would have worked out fine and everything would have gone exactly how I had planned it. 

  Oh, how wrong I was. 

  "Make sure to dig under the leaves so we don't miss any of the ripe ones," Rosita reminded me. "Otherwise they will get eaten by bugs."

  I nodded, still too overcome with sadness to speak.  

  An hour later, the police were at my door. 

Harry Styles

The night before

  Finally seeing Mia after so long made me feel many different mixed emotions. For half a year I had tried my best to forget about her and move on. I had tried to get close with my old flame, Kendall Jenner, in hopes that she would help me forget about Mia. I had turned to a new acting job and completely absorbed myself into my work to help me forget about Mia. I had begun to work on solo singing projects to help me forget about her, but every damn song that I wrote ended up being about her. There was no getting past her. 

  She was still a mystery to me. The time that we had spent together seemed so real, but after hearing about her lie to me and then marrying the man she claimed to hate, I was wildly confused. In the beginning, I had tried to hard to get into contact with her, but after her father put a restraining order against me there wasn't much more that I could do that was legal. I had tried to get into contact with people that she was friends with, but they all turned me away. Even my own friends thought I was crazy for pursuing her so much, so I gave up and began to try and remove any good memories of her from my mind, replacing them with the memory of the night she completely broke my heart. Now I was as cold as ever. 

  It was complete bullshit that I had to come to this thing. I knew Mia was going to be in here and I pleaded with management to let me skip out on this gala, but I had agreed months ago to be in attendance. Louis and Liam had gone to the Brit awards together, so Niall and I had to go to this event.

  "Are you alright, mate?" Niall asked me once I turned Mia away. 

  "Fine." I pursed my lips in a thin line. 

  "You don't seem fine." Niall said. "Hey, look at what-"

  "We need to take our seats," Jeff, a new friend of mine whose label I was signed to for the time being, announced. "The show is set to start in about ten minutes and our table is near the front."

  Whatever Niall had to tell me would just have to wait. Besides, I really didn't want to talk about her. I had spent the past few months trying to forget about Mia and I really did not want to bring up past feelings and memories. I put on a smile and followed behind Jeff into the venue and took my seat, trying hard to forget about her but finding myself scanning the crowd for her. 

  The ceremony had dragged on for far too long. The speeches were mediocre, the champagne was mediocre, the company was mediocre. Every so often I would sneak a glance at Mia and her table. Her husband was all over her, rubbing her arm and whispering into her ear. To me, she looked bored out of her mind. I smirked and chuckled at his attempts and remembered how easy it was for me to get her to crack a smile. 

  Suddenly, her eyes were on me. Almost as soon as we had locked eyes, she was blushing and looking away. It was so crazy to me that I still had this strange effect on her while she was with another man. But still, I couldn't let her get to me. I had to keep reminding myself that I had to leave her in my past. I had to remind myself of how badly she hurt me. She was still the reason I had trouble trusting people, because she had broken my trust so badly.

  After the gala, there was an after party. Niall had suggested that we left right after the ceremony, so we ushered ourselves out a back door and got into a black SUV that would take us to the hotel we were staying at in Philadelphia. It was ironic how I had gone to such lengths to avoid Mia and now I was in the city that she lived in, attending an event that she was at with her husband. Surely this night would consist of me laying in my hotel bed, alone, binge drinking to try and forget about her again. In the morning I would fly to my home in London, get my cat, and then be back in Dunkirk where I would focus on my work to help me forget all over again. 

  "Thanks for goin' to this thing with me, mate," Niall hugged me as we stood in the hallway of our hotel, almost ready to part ways. I wouldn't see him for a while because I had to leave so early to catch my flight to London, then Dunkirk, to drown myself into my work. 

  "Anytime." I chuckled. 

  "Before you go, erm, I, uh, wanted to tell you that I talked to Mia today," Niall looked at me a little nervously. I raised an eyebrow at him. "After you left her, she came up to me. She was kinda frantic and told me to tell you that she loved you still."

  "Niall, save it." I stopped him. "I've worked so hard to try and push those feelings away, I can't let them back in now." It was like putting salt in an open wound. Hearing him say that made me realize how crazy I still was for her, but I couldn't show it. I couldn't forget how badly she hurt me. 

  "That isn't all," Niall scratched the back of his neck. "I know you might not want to hear this, but I told her I would give this to you." He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a small piece of paper. I tried to keep my composure but my heart was beating a million times a minute. 

  "What is this?" I asked, taking the paper in my hands. 

  "I didn't open it," He admitted. "Seemed wrong of me to do. I assumed it was a letter from her." 

  "Why would she tell you that she loved me?" I ran my fingers through my short hair. "What game is she playing at? She's married!" 

  "I don't know what to tell you," Niall shrugged. "But whatever that is, it seemed important to her. I think you should open it." I nodded.

  "Thanks, Niall. I'll talk to you soon." 

  We parted ways. My mind was spinning and I felt dizzy with all of this new information that Niall had given me. I was itching to read the letter from her, but a part of me was holding back. I had worked so, so hard to forget about her and now I was letting her open up the floodgates and seep her way back into my life. Was I about to throw away those months of blocking her out for this? 

  I decided that, deep down, I still loved her too deeply to let this go. I still couldn't let her go.

  My eyebrows shot up in surprise when I opened the letter to find that it wasn't really a letter at all. It seemed to be some sort of document, with fine bold print written all along the top and a few signatures at the bottom. I quickly recognized the signatures to be belonging to Mia, Matthew Miles, and Mia's father. 

  THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENT CONCERNS THE MARRIAGE OF MATTHEW MILES AND MIA RODEN.

  I kept reading down the page, my eyes not believing what I was reading as my trembling hands clutched the piece of paper. There were several paragraphs stating that the marriage between Matthew and Mia was completely arranged and strictly platonic. I gritted my teeth as it went into details of how nobody should know that the marriage wasn't real and that nobody was allowed to disclose any information about the document. By the time I got to the bottom of the page to where Mia had signed her name in shaky, sloppy lettering, I was seeing red. I could not believe what I had been reading. 

  It took me about ten minutes to process everything. The strange conversation that Mia had with her father on the yacht, the restraining order that she probably knew nothing about, her confessing that she still loved me, how unhappy she looked with Matthew at the gala. Everything was starting to piece together right in front of me, and on the yacht and at the gala she had tried to tell me everything and I wouldn't listen to her. 

  I immediately jumped up from the bed that I was sitting on and grabbed my cellphone from the coffee table, not hesitating to ring the police as my hands shook with fury. 

  a/n: O SNAP 

  question: what do you think will happen next???

  this chapter literally took me three hours to write and chapters never take me that long lol i was struggling so much but HERE IT IS. hope you guys are having a fantastic summer (or not summer, if it's not summer wherever you are. it's summer here and i am lovin' it.) 

  follow me on twitter at _delilahmae_ and don't forget to read the summary of the Motel 6 sequel "Home" that i've published on my page !! :-)

  also for some reason this story (or at least this part of the story) really seems to remind me of the song "ease" by troye sivan, does anyone know the song?? 

  - del