(No Control | Holding Me Ransom - 8 - Impossible To Resist)

We play Gothenburg on Tuesday, and as soon as I board the jet at Heathrow Louis is on my case.

"What's up with your face?"

I scowl at him. "Why do you do that?"

"Do what?" he asks, innocently.

"Say stuff like that. It immediately pisses me off, even if I wasn't pissed off before."

"Sorry," he grins, unapologetically. "But what is up with your face?"

"Nothing is up with my face," I answer as neutrally as I can, leaning back in my seat and closing my eyes.

Silence.

"You look like a bulldog chewing a wasp," he says, his lips practically touching my ear, making me jump out of my skin. He cracks up laughing as I throw my aircraft safety card at him, narrowly missing one of the cabin crew as she carries a spare life vest to the back of the jet.

"Sorry," I apologise hastily, smiling at her, and she smiles back flirtily as she continues to the rear section. Louis and I exchange amused looks, and I sit back in my seat again.

"So are you gonna tell me what the deal is?" Louis asks.

I sigh in annoyance. "Will you fųck off and leave me alone if I do?"

"Can't promise that," he replies with a smirk, and I roll my eyes.

"Nadine tried to set me up, in New York," I mutter. "But it backfired pretty spectacularly. She lost a friend in Sara, and I lost Jess. So everyone's a loser."

"What do you mean, she set you up?" Louis frowns.

"Long story," I sigh.

"It's a long flight."

"It's two hours... fine!" I relent, when I realise there is no getting away from this. "The Speed I took in New York was mixed with something. It was some kind of libido enhancer, and it made me horny. I ended up in bed with Sara, and it turns out Nadine engineered it all. Well, the drugs part anyway. It was my choice to hook up with Sara."

Louis is staring at me with a mixture of confusion and scepticism.

"A libido enhancer?" he echoes.

"Don't ask," I say, flatly. "I'd never heard of this stuff, but Jeff did his homework, and when I confronted Nadine she confirmed it. If I'd not taken it, I probably wouldn't have cheated. So that's where we are with it."

"Fuckiņg hell," Louis breathes. "Does Jess know?"

"No."

"Why not?!" he exclaims. "This explains everything! This will get you off the hook!"

"It's not that simple," I mutter.

"For fuçk's sake," he sighs, rolling his eyes. "And what ways have you found to complicate it this time?"

"I'm not complicating anything," I defend. "Me and Jess... we're over. All we did was hurt each other. I'm no good for her, I just end up ruining everything. She's better off without me."

"So noble," Louis says shaking his head in mock admiration.

"Fucķ off," I tell him.

"You're being a ţwąt again," he says, matter-of-factly. "You love her, she loves you. Why are you so determined to fucķ it up?"

"I don't love her," I mutter.

"You do, you prick. You're fooling no one. Least of all yourself. Just call her and tell her what really happened. She deserves to know that, at least."

"I know she does," I mumble.

And deep down, I want to see her. I want to see her so badly. But I'm afraid that if or when I do, I will crumble and beg her to take me back, and I can't drag her down again (pardon the pun.) She deserves someone who will treat her properly, not someone whose private life is regularly splashed across the internet; whose every movement is followed and reported by dedicated Twitter accounts; who can't resist temptation in the form of drugs and models; who falls at the first hurdle.

"Finally!" Louis rejoices. "So what are you waiting for?!"

"I dunno, I haven't come to terms with it all myself, yet," I answer, staring out of the plane window watching Liam walking up the steps. "I feel drained by it all. I don't know who to trust anymore. I feel fuckiņg violated."

"You can trust me," he says immediately. "And Liam and Nialler. You know that. Your family, too. And you can trust Jess."

"I know," I mumble, rubbing my hands over my face. "This is all such a mess. I don't know what to do. It makes it worse that I can still trust Jess after the way I let her down. She threatened Karen with the press the other day, right before she stormed out of the office. Karen wanted me to go after her, but I refused, because I knew Jess was just angry and lashing out. I just feel so fuckıng guilty about everything."

"Tell Jess what happened," he urges. "Tell her everything, including how you're feeling. If you don't, I will."

"No you fuckinģ won't," I snap, looking at him furiously. "Don't interfere. If I tell her, I'll do it in my own time, on my own terms. I'm so sick of everyone meddling in my relationship. Karen, you, Nadine... it's fucking endless."

"Alright," he snaps back. "I was only trying to help. Fųcking hurry up and tell her, then. What have you got to lose?"

"Nothing," I sigh, and I realise just how shit my life is at the moment if I honestly have nothing to lose. "Absolutely nothing."

....

Karen texts me before the show in Gothenburg, simply saying, If I didn't need her to play ball, I'd be sending your fiesty little squeeze a bill for £500 for the suit she ruined.

Take it from my account, I text back, not because I want to keep Jess on side, but because I don't want Karen holding this over my head for the rest of my life. I'll never hear the end of it.

That won't be necessary, comes the response, and I show Louis the messages as I know it will amuse him, and it does. He informs me that Jess's name has come up several times in conversations between him and Karen, and that she hasn't given up on the idea of us being pictured out together, or engineering some sort of reconciliation.

I stress yet again that it isn't what I want, but I can tell he is losing patience with me so I quickly move away from the subject.

We attend the launch of our new fragrance in London the day after Gothenburg, and even though the venue is nowhere near Jess's office, I find myself looking out for her in the crowd, half expecting to see her face amongst the fans.

Wishful thinking, I suppose.

I feel even worse when I get back home, knowing I am only ten minutes away from her flat. I wonder what she is doing. Is she watching TV on her sofa, or curled up in bed on her phone? Is she having a cup of tea, or is she lying in the bath? Is she thinking of me, or has she moved on?

A couple of times I pull my phone out to text her, only to put it away again. It isn't fair on her to contact her again, not after everything I did. It would be selfish, and purely for my own peace of mind. I can't bear the idea of her hating me, but I know she probably does and she has every right to feel that way.

Even as I contemplate all this, the other half of my mind is thinking up excuses to text her. I could say thanks for not selling her story. I could ask her if she's sending my stuff back, or if she just binned it all. I could ask her if she enjoyed her night out last weekend, and tell her Grimmy said he'd seen her, and see if she volunteers any information about this Adam guy that kissed her.

I mean, her friend Callie tried to set him up with her before, but she wasn't interested back then because we were together. What if she's interested now?

She said in Karen's office that she'd come for answers about what happened in New York. Well, now I have them. Don't I owe it to her to tell her the truth?

I open up our message thread. Hi, how are you? I type.

For fucķ's sake, I can't send that. She wouldn't reply.

Sorry for texting, but can I see you?

I delete the letters immediately. Sorry for texting? What the hell is that?

Hey, I was wondering if we could meet up this week, if you're free?

Delete. She'll probably set fire to her phone if she gets a message like that from me.

Nadine tampered with my drugs in New York and slipped me an aphrodisiac in an attempt to get me back. But Sara got to me first so I ended up with her instead.

I actually contemplate pressing send, before I delete this one too. I can't tell her something like that over text. And it's a slight embellishment of the truth. I wasn't drugged into unconsciousness. I still gave consent. I chose to do what I did, and I can't abdicate all responsibility.

I love you and I miss you and my heart is breaking without you. I'm sorry for what I did and I wish could turn back the clock xxx

I sigh and hold my finger on the backspace button until the letters have all disappeared, and then lock my phone and throw it on the sofa.

What's the point? Even if I tell her the truth about New York, I can't get back together with her, no matter how much I may or may not want to. I have to let her go, it's the fairest thing for everyone.

I need to stop this pathetic pining over someone I've known barely five minutes. It's not healthy, and it isn't going to get me anywhere. I need to look forward, not back.

Of course, that's easier said than done. It seems like as soon as I have decided I need to make a concentrated effort to move on, Jess becomes a permanent fixture in my mind.

I'm due to spend some time in the studio writing with the other boys on Thursday and Friday, but all I can do is relate every lyric that comes to mind to Jess, and because my mood is so dour, it influences the tone of my writing so I am neither use nor ornament to anyone. The words to If I Could Fly are going round and round in my head, but I keep them to myself. The words are so personal to me and reflect my innermost thoughts and feelings. I don't feel ready to share the depths of my misery with the others, especially as I know Louis' response will just be, 'For fucķ's sake, call her!'

They leave me be, mostly, and as we are leaving the studio on Friday after contributing to a great track that John and Julian have written in the back of a taxi driving round London called A.M., Louis invites me out that night with him and Niall (Liam has plans with Sophia.)

"I don't really feel in the mood, and we've got a show tomorrow night," I tell him. "Thanks for the invitation though.

"Come on, Harry, it'll do you good to go out and get drunk," Niall wheedles. "The show isn't for over twenty four hours, you'll be fine. We've done it before, loads of times."

"Yeah, not tonight though, thanks," I mutter, and Louis shrugs at Niall and struts towards the door.

"I'll text you later," he calls over his shoulder. "See if you've changed your mind."

There is nothing on this earth that is going to convince me to change my mind, I think to myself as I slip into the driver's seat of my Range Rover to head home.

But of course, I am to be proved wrong. I swear sometimes the universe conspires against me, usually with Louis Tomlinson as its partner in crime.