Chapter 4: The Rooftop Reckoning
a
The text came at 2:17 AM, a white-hot brand against the dark screen of my phone. I was staring at the ceiling, Zayn’s track still a ghost in my ears, the angry riff of our collaboration a pulse in my blood.
Harry: I need to see you.Rooftop.Please.
A part of me, the part that had walked off that stage and built something new from the wreckage, wanted to delete it. To block the number.To let the quiet after remain quiet. But another part, older and damaged and stupidly soft, remembered the feel of rain-soaked curls under my fingers, the green eyes that used to look at me like I was a secret he was thrilled to know.
I got dressed in the dark.Jeans, a thin sweater, boots.I didn’t think. Thinking would have stopped me.The frat house was a silent monolith, everyone asleep or passed out. I knew the code for the roof door, a leftover from a different life. The cold metal stairwell echoed with each step, a lonely percussion to my climb.
He was there, a silhouette against the sprawl of city lights, the fairy lights they’d strung for some party buzzing faintly overhead. He turned as the door creaked shut.He looked wrecked. Beautiful and ruined, his curls damp not from rain tonight but from his own restless hands, his eyes hollowed out.
“You came,” he said, his voice scraped raw.
“You said please.” I stayed by the door, the iron railing cold against my back. “What do you want, Harry?”
He took a step forward, then stopped, running a hand over his face.“Kendall left.Tonight. For good.”
The news landed, but it didn’t stir me. It was a fact, distant and irrelevant. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” A harsh laugh escaped him.“She said I was never really there. That my head, my heart… was always somewhere else.” He looked at me, and the desperation in his gaze was a physical weight in the thick air between us.“She was right. It was always with you.”
I shook my head, a sharp, denial.“Don’t.”
“It’s the truth. Being with her… it was a performance.A fucking perfect, polished act. Empty.” He closed the distance, his hands finding my waist, pulling me from the shadow of the doorframe. The touch was electric, a familiar current that short-circuited my resolve.“But you… you feel like home. Even when you hate me.Especially when you hate me.It’s real. I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t fucking breathe.”
His words were a poison I’d craved, and they melted my bones. Before I could speak, his mouth was on mine.It wasn’t gentle.It was a desperate, hungry reclaiming. The taste of him—spearmint and cheap whiskey and a deeper, familiar heat—unlocked every cell in my body.All the anger, the months of pain, ignited into a different, more dangerous fire. I shoved him back, his shoulder blades hitting the rough brick wall with a thud. I kissed him back with a fury that felt like vengeance, my teeth scraping his lip, my hands fisting in his shirt.He groaned into my mouth, the sound vibrating through my core. “I need you, Nikki.I’ve always needed you.”
Something snapped. The careful control, the new quiet, it all shattered. I dropped to my knees on the cold tar paper, my fingers fumbling with the button of his jeans, the zipper grating loudly in the quiet. He was already hard, his cock springing free, thick and hot against my freezing hand.I didn’t hesitate. I took him into my mouth, deep, swallowing him until my throat constricted.
“Fuck,” he gasped, his head thudding back against the brick. His fingers tunneled into my curls, not guiding, just holding on. “Jesus Christ.”
I worked him with a fury born of every lonely night, every tear shed, every pathetic text ignored. I used my tongue, my lips, the flat of my teeth, wanting to consume him, to erase him and brand him all at once. His hips jerked, shallow thrusts, his breaths coming in ragged pants that clouded in the cold air.“Stop,” he choked out, not meaning it. He pulled me up by my hair, my mouth popping off him with a wet sound. He spun me around, bent me over the cold iron railing. The city yawned below, a thousand glittering windows indifferent to our collapse. One hand yanked my jeans and underwear down to my thighs, the other pressed between my shoulder blades.I was exposed, arching, wet for him in a way that shamed and thrilled me.
He didn’t ask. He just pushed inside, a single, brutal stroke that tore a scream from my lungs.He clamped his hand over my mouth, muffling the sound into his palm. My cry was swallowed by the city’s hum.
“This is what you wanted,” he hissed in my ear, his breath hot. He pulled out and slammed back in, a punishing rhythm that shook the railing.“To be my dirty little secret.” Each word was a thrust, cruel and true. I was his secret.His mistake.His desperate, filthy solution.
Tears streamed down my cheeks, hot against his hand. The pleasure was a razor’s edge, slicing through the self-loathing, the grief, the rage. It built, a coiling, intolerable pressure where our bodies joined, raw and slick and too much. He fucked me harder, his own control splintering, his groans guttural against my ear.
I came with a shuddering sob, my muscles clamping around him in violent waves, the orgasm wrenched from me like a confession. He followed moments later, a sharp, pained cry torn from his throat as he pulsed deep inside me, his weight sagging against my back.
For a minute, there was only the sound of our wrecked breathing, the distant sirens, the faint buzz of the lights. He pulled out, and the cold air was a shock against my skin. He helped me stand, my legs trembling, and pulled my clothes back up with a tenderness that felt like another violation.
Without a word, he took my hand and led me back inside, down the silent stairs, to his room. The familiar space smelled like him, like laundry and boy and us. The door clicked shut, and the privacy felt even more exposing than the rooftop.
His hands were on his belt before the latch settled, the buckle clinking.He pushed me onto the bed, the comforter cold through my sweater. He yanked my jeans and panties down again, off this time, tossing them aside. He spread my legs wide, his gaze dark and hungry.He went down on me without a word.
His tongue was brutal, precise, and utterly focused. He lapped at my clit, still sensitive and throbbing from the rooftop, with a relentless intensity that had me arching off the bed. He didn’t tease.He devoured. He pushed two fingers inside me, curling them, scissoring them, stretching me where I was still stretched from him, mixing his own release back into me.The filthiness of it, the profound intimacy, made me whimper. He sucked my clit into his mouth, his tongue flicking mercilessly, and I bucked against his face, my hands twisting in his sheets.
“Come again,” he muttered, his voice muffled against me. “Come on my fucking tongue.”
I did, violently, my vision whiting out, a silent scream locked in my throat.
Before the tremors subsided, he was pulling me up.“On top,” he commanded, his voice thick. He lay back, his cock hard again, jutting against his stomach. I straddled him, lowering myself onto him, watching his eyes roll back as he filled me once more.
“Ride me,” he said, his hands gripping my hips. “Look at me.”
His green eyes were wide, vulnerable, pleading in the dim lamplight. My hips began to move, a slow, deliberate roll that made him suck in a sharp breath. I felt every inch of him inside me, a familiar fullness that was now a weapon in my hands.
I leaned forward, bracing my palms on his chest, my purple hair falling around our faces like a curtain. I set the pace, a deep, grinding rhythm that had him shuddering. His hands slid from my hips to my ass, fingers digging into the flesh, trying to guide me, to take control back.I slapped his hands away.
“No,” I said, my voice low and rough. “You don’t get to steer this.” I sat up straight, my inner muscles clenching around him deliberately, and began to ride him in earnest.My thighs burned with the effort, each downward stroke a punctuation of my anger.
This is for every time I checked my phone, I thought, driving myself onto him.
This is for the hollow sound of your excuses.
This is for the Instagram post, you pathetic fucking liar.The slapping of our skin was a crude, wet sound in the quiet room. His mouth fell open, a broken “ahh” escaping with each of my thrusts. I watched him come apart beneath me, his abs tight, his knuckles white where he gripped the sheets.
“Nikki,” he gasped.I didn’t let up. I pinned his wrists above his head with one hand, leaning my weight into it.The new angle was devastating. He cried out, his back arching off the bed.Ride him until he screams your name.
I focused on the spot that made my vision blur, that coiled the pleasure deep in my belly into a white-hot wire.My breath hitched.His pleas became a chant. “Fuck, please, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I can’t–”
I rode him harder, the bedframe knocking against the wall in a steady, desperate drumbeat.The friction was exquisite torture. Sweat dripped from my chin onto his chest. The world narrowed to the feeling of him stretching me, filling me, to the raw need on his face.
“Look at me,” I demanded, my voice a stranger’s.He forced his eyes open, glazed and desperate.His control shattered. His hips bucked wildly to meet mine, his movements turning frantic and uncoordinated. “Nikki!” he yelled, the word ripped from him. “Nikki, god, I made a mistake! It was all a fucking mistake!”
He was sobbing, tears mixing with the sweat on his temples.“You… you were never… second.She was.You’re it. You’re all of it.”
His confession broke something open in my chest. My own orgasm ripped through me with silent, violent intensity, my cunt clamping around him in wave after wave of brutal release. The sensation pushed him over the edge. With a final, shuddering cry of my name, he came inside me, his body convulsing under mine.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of our ragged breathing.The air smelled of sex and salt and regret. I slowly released his wrists, which were marked with red lines from my fingers. I lifted myself off him, the separation feeling more profound than any physical act.The cold reality of the room rushed back in. I stood on unsteady legs, gathered my discarded clothes from the floor. He lay still, an arm thrown over his face, his chest rising and falling rapidly.
The sticky warmth between my thighs had already begun to cool. I stood there in the center of his room, the foreign feeling of his release leaking down my leg, holding my bundled clothes against my chest like a shield. My body hummed, a live wire stripped bare and sparking.
He moved his arm from his face. His eyes were red-rimmed, wrecked. He watched me, not speaking, just drinking in the sight of me standing in his space, marked by him all over again.
“Don’t go,” he said, the words a hoarse scratch in the quiet.
“I have to.” My own voice sounded distant. I needed a shower. I needed to scrub the smell of him and my own complicity from my skin.
“Please.” He sat up, the sheet pooling at his waist. The lamplight caught the sheen of sweat on his chest, the faint red trails my nails had left. “Just… stay. For a little while. Just lie here.”
I stared at him. Every rational thought screamed to walk out, to descend the fire escape of this disaster and never look back. The new version of me, the one who sang truth under neon lights, demanded it. But the old version, the one whose bones still remembered the shape of him next to her in this bed, ached.
SHE STAYS BECAUSE HE ASKED HER TO.
I let my clothes fall to the floor. A soft, defeated sound. I walked to the edge of the bed and slid under the sheets, my back to him. The mattress dipped as he lay back down. He didn’t touch me at first. The space between our bodies was a charged void.
Then his fingers, tentative, brushed a curl from the nape of my neck. His palm settled on my waist, his heat seeping into my skin. I didn’t shrug it off. We lay in the dark, listening to each other breathe, the city’s murmur a constant through the window.
“The song,” he whispered into my hair, his voice ragged. “The one from the open mic. The ‘paper kingdom’ line. It cut me in half.”
I stayed silent, my eyes open in the dark.
“I listen to the recording Liam took on his phone. I listen to it until my ears ring.” His thumb stroked a slow arc on my hip. “You sounded like a goddamn prophet. And I was just… the fool who burned the scriptures.”
“You’re mixing metaphors,” I murmured, because feeling was too dangerous.
A choked laugh vibrated through his chest against my back. “See? You’re still you. Even now.” He pressed closer, his erection, half-hard again, nudging against the base of my spine. A shudder ran through me. “I can’t fucking believe I let you go.”
He shifted, rolling me onto my back. He loomed over me, his face shadowed. “Tell me you hate me.”
I looked up at him. “I do.”
“Good.” He kissed me, softer this time, a slow, searching press of lips that tasted like salt and regret. “Hate me so much it feels like this.”
His hand slid between my legs, his fingers finding me wet and swollen. I gasped into his mouth. He pushed two fingers inside, a slow, deep penetration that made my hips jerk. “So much it makes you this soaked for me.” He curled his fingers, rubbing that spot with a torturous precision learned over months of memorizing my body.
My back arched. A low moan escaped my throat, unbidden. He swallowed the sound, his kiss turning hungry again.
“You feel that?” he breathed, scissoring his fingers, stretching me. “That’s all the shit we never said. It’s a fucking flood.” He replaced his fingers with his tongue, lapping at me with a focused intensity that had my fists clutching the sheets. He ate me like a man starving, like he could drink the hurt right out of me.
When I came, it was a silent, trembling convulsion that left me weak. He moved up my body, his cock dragging through the wetness he’d drawn out of me. He positioned himself at my entrance, his eyes locked on mine.
“This is mine,” he said, not a question, a raw statement. “This heat. This tight, perfect cunt. It’s always been mine.” He pushed in, one relentless, inch-by-inch claim until he was buried to the hilt. We both cried out, a ragged duet.
He set a slow, grinding rhythm, each deep stroke a physical apology, a punishment, a plea. He kissed the tears from my cheeks. “I’m so sorry,” he chanted against my skin with every thrust. “I’m so fucking sorry, Nikki.”
I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, answering with my body what my voice couldn’t. The pleasure was a thick, syrupy tide, pulling me under. It wasn’t the sharp, violent catharsis of the rooftop. This was drowning. This was surrender.
His pace increased, his breath coming in hot gasps against my neck. “Look at me,” he begged. I opened my eyes. His expression was utterly shattered. “I love you. I’ve loved you the whole damn time.”
The words, finally spoken, detonated between us. My orgasm tore through me, a seismic, blinding rupture that clenched around him viciously. He shouted, his body seizing as he pumped his release deep inside me, his weight collapsing atop me as we both fractured.
Time bled. The room came back in increments: the feel of his sweat-slick skin on mine, the frantic hammering of his heart against my chest, the wet, hot mess between us. He rolled off, pulling me against him, my head on his shoulder. His fingers traced idle patterns on my arm.
“Stay the night,” he whispered into the crown of my head. “Just sleep here. With me.”
I was already there, my limbs heavy, my mind a static haze. The clean, quiet aftermath I’d built with music and distance was now smeared with the familiar, addictive toxin of him. I closed my eyes. The last thing I felt was the press of his lips against my forehead, a brand in the dark.
Outside, the first faint gray light of morning began to bleed at the edges of the blinds. My phone, buried in the pile of clothes on the floor, buzzed once. A notification. Then the screen went dark, unseen.
The gray light hardened into something sharper, carving the unfamiliar angles of his room. I woke with a start, my body a catalogue of aches—the deep, pleasant throb between my legs, the sting of scraped skin on my back from the rooftop bricks, the soreness in my jaw. His arm was a dead weight across my ribs, his breathing even and deep in sleep. For one suspended moment, I let the warmth of him, the familiar scent on his pillow, lull me into the old fantasy. This was the morning after. This was the start.
Then my brain, cold and logical, flickered on. The wetness on my thighs had dried into a tight, uncomfortable film. The empty condom wrapper from the second time lay on the floor like a discarded skin. My phone, still buried in my jeans, buzzed again, a persistent, angry insect.
Carefully, I slid out from under his arm. He murmured, smacking his lips, but didn’t wake. I found my clothes in the gloom and dressed silently, each piece of fabric feeling like a lie. The sweater smelled like night air and sex. I dug for my phone, the screen blinding in the dim room.
Three missed calls from Hanna.
Five texts, the most recent from ten minutes ago.
Hanna: Where the actual fuck are you.
Hanna: Aria saw you leave the dorm at 2:30. Your bed is empty.
Hanna: If you’re with him I swear to god I will set his hair on fire.
Hanna: Nikki. Answer me.
Hanna: Zayn’s been asking if you wanna work on the track today. I didn’t know what to say. What do I say?
The last message was a gut punch. The track. KINGDOM_COLLAPSE.WAV. The clean, angry sound we’d forged in the studio. It felt like a artefact from another life, a life where I had clarity and purpose. I looked at Harry, peaceful in his tangled sheets, and a wave of nausea, hot and sour, rose in my throat.
I opened the SoundStream app. A new message from ZAYN_M, sent at 4:47 AM.
ZAYN_M: Couldn’t sleep. Built a bridge out of the rubble. Listen.
There was a new file attached. I fumbled for my earbuds, plugged them in, and pressed play. It started with the distorted synth growl from our session, then abruptly cut into a space of near-silence—just a single, clean piano note repeating. Then my guitar riff from last night, the angry one, filtered and echoed, woven through with a new, mournful cello line. It was beautiful. It was devastation given order. It was everything the last few hours were not.
The bedroom door creaked. I ripped the earbuds out, shoving the phone into my pocket. Harry stood in the doorway to the connected bathroom, shirtless, his hair a magnificent ruin. A sleepy, possessive smile spread across his face.
“Hey,” he said, his voice gravelly with sleep. “Thought you’d run out on me.”
I couldn’t speak. I just stared at him, the ghost of Zayn’s music still haunting the space behind my eyes.
His smile faltered. He crossed the room, his bare feet silent on the wood floor. He cupped my face, his thumb stroking my cheek. “Last night,” he started, but I flinched.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t talk about it?” His grip tightened slightly. “It happened, Nikki. It fucking happened, and it was… it was everything. You felt it.”
“I felt a lot of things.” My voice was flat. “Most of them stupid.”
He kissed me then, a soft, persuasive press meant to gentle me. It tasted like morning and regret. My body responded instinctively, a traitorous lean into his warmth. He made a low sound of approval, his hands sliding down to my waist, pulling my hips against his. He was already hard.
“See?” he whispered against my mouth, grinding himself against me. “You still want me. Your body doesn’t lie.”
A cold fury ignited in my chest. I broke the kiss. “Is that your metric? My fucking wetness? That’s all you ever understood.”
His eyes flashed, a spark of the old arrogance. “I understand it’s still here. This.” He grabbed my hand, pressed it against the erection straining his boxers. “And that.” He shoved his other hand roughly between my legs, palming me through my jeans. “So stop pretending.”
He walked me backwards until my knees hit the bed, and I fell onto it. He peeled my jeans and underwear down in one rough tug, leaving them around my ankles like shackles. He didn’t bother taking off his boxers, just pushed the fabric aside and positioned himself at my entrance. He was looking right at me, his green eyes hard.
“Tell me you don’t want this,” he challenged, the head of his cock pressing, insistently.
My cunt, slick and shamefully ready, betrayed me. A small, slick sound. He smirked, a cruel twist of his beautiful mouth, and pushed in.
It wasn’t like last night. There was no desperate passion, no shattered confession. This was a transaction. A reassertion. He fucked me with a steady, mechanical rhythm, his hands pinning my shoulders to the mattress. The pleasure was a dull, distant throb, completely separate from the ice in my veins.
“You’re mine,” he grunted, each thrust a period at the end of the sentence. “You can be pissed. You can hate me. But this pussy remembers. It fucking knows.”
I turned my head to the side, staring at the wall. I dissociated. I thought about the cello line in Zayn’s track. I counted the cracks in the ceiling plaster. Harry’s breathing grew ragged, his pace faltering. He was chasing his own release, using my body to find it. With a final, strained groan, he came, his body shuddering over mine.
He collapsed beside me, spent. The room was silent except for our breathing. The smell of sex, once thrilling, now just felt stale. I lay there, jeans around my ankles, feeling the slow, warm trickle of his come leak out of me.
After a minute, he propped himself up on an elbow. His expression had softened again, back to pleading boy. “Nikki,” he said, his fingers tracing a pattern on my bare stomach.
I sat up. I pulled my underwear and jeans back up, the denim abrading my sensitive skin. I stood, my legs steady now.
“Where are you going?” Panic edged his voice.
“Home.” I found my boots, sat on the edge of the bed to pull them on.
“Stay. Let’s get breakfast. Talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” I stood, finally looking at him fully. He looked young and confused, a kid who’d broken his favorite toy and was now surprised it wouldn’t work. “You got what you needed. Again. We’re even.”
“That’s not what this was!” He scrambled off the bed, grabbing for my arm. I yanked it away. “I love you. I said it. I meant it!”
“You said a lot of things last night.” I walked to the door. “Most of them were just a different kind of fuck.”
I left him standing there, naked and slack-jawed. The frat house hallway was still quiet, littered with red solo cups and the ghost of last night’s laughter. I walked out into the morning.
The cold air was a slap. A cleansing burn. I walked without direction for a while, the events of the night playing in a sick loop. The rooftop. His tears. The studio-born anger twisted into cheap, physical catharsis. The hollow, morning-after claiming. My phone buzzed. Hanna again.
I stopped walking, leaned against the cold brick of a library wall, and called her.
She answered on the first ring. “Talk. Now.”
“I was with him.”
A long, vibrating silence. “Are you safe? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.” The words tasted like ash. “I’m… outside. Walking.”
“Where?”
I looked around. “Near the science building.”
“Stay there. Don’t move. I’m coming.”
Ten minutes later, Hanna’s car screeched to the curb. Aria was in the passenger seat, her face pale with concern. I got in the back. The heater was blasting. The car smelled of coffee and Hanna’s perfume.
Without a word, Hanna reached back and handed me a large to-go cup. I took it. The coffee was hot and bitter. I took a sip, and something in me cracked. A single, hot tear tracked down my cheek. Then another.
“Oh, honey,” Aria said softly, turning in her seat.
“Don’t,” I choked out, wiping angrily at my face. “I don’t deserve sympathy. I’m an idiot.”
“You’re a human,” Hanna said, her voice tight. She met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “What did he do?”
I told them. Not in graphic detail, but the shape of it. The 2 AM text. The rooftop. The confessions. The sex. The morning after. The other sex. When I finished, the car was silent.
“Okay,” Hanna finally said, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Okay. So you fucked him. You fucked the sadness out, or into, or whatever. It’s done.”
“It felt done last week,” I whispered. “After the song. I felt clean. Now I just feel… dirty.”
“Because he didn’t see you,” Aria said, her voice quiet but firm. “He saw a tool. For his guilt. For his ego. For his dick. The song, what you created with Zayn… that was you seeing yourself. That’s the real thing.”
Zayn’s name hung in the warm air of the car. My phone, in my lap, buzzed with another SoundStream notification. I didn’t look.
“What do you need?” Hanna asked, pulling away from the curb. “We can go get shitfaced. We can egg his car. We can watch bad TV until our brains melt.”
I looked out the window. The city was waking up. “Can you just drive? Anywhere.”
Hanna nodded. She turned up the music, something loud and wordless, and drove. I leaned my head against the cool glass, the coffee cup warming my hands. The physical sensations were vivid: the ache, the stickiness, the soreness. The memory of his hands. The sound of his voice saying love.
But over it, like a clearer signal cutting through static, I heard the piano note from Zayn’s track. A single, clean tone in the rubble. I closed my eyes. The car moved forward, and for the first time all morning, so did I.