Naomis POV

Louis was already sitting on the bench by the fire inside the coffee shop when I arrived. He was staring at the door intently and seemed to take notice of me immediately when I walked in. He looked good, for someone who'd been abandoned two days prior. His eyes looked tired but his posture was strong where I was withdrawn and his face was expressionless. He had his hair tucked into a beanie and seemed to be going quite unnoticed in the back of the room.

I took a deep breath before making my way into the shop slowly. As I got closer, it became clear to me that Louis was alone. I'd half expected it, but it still stung my heart a little bit to know he hadn't brought Oliver. I'd spent the last two nights agonizing over being away from him but I couldn't argue with Louis when he'd informed me they wouldn't be home. I had no rights to call the shots anymore. I had to work on his time.

As I got closer, Louis face seemed to register how shitty I looked. My hair was choppy, my eyes rimmed red and my face dry and pale. He gestured to the space on the bench before him silently and I sat. He remained on the far end away from me, studying the sight of my unruly appearance.

"He's with Harry," he told me immediately.

"Harry's a babysitter now?" I inquired surprised.

"Who else would do it?" Louis asked me plainly. He wasn't wrong. It was always one of us. I had removed myself from the equation. Someone had to step in. Harry was a year sober now, so it made sense to trust him. I trusted him.

"I agree," I affirmed. "Not that my agreement should matter much to you."

Louis was quiet for a moment. He seemed to be staring at me trying to remember if he had any idea who I was. I could tell, he barely recognized me. He didn't know the woman who had walked out on him. Finally he spoke, "I am trying very hard not to be angry with you."

"You should be angry with me," I replied quickly. "I'm angry with me. Walking out on you was..." I trailed off.

Louis pursed his lips. "I don't care about you walking out on me. I've been dumped before, I can survive that. You walked out on Oliver and that—" Louis cut off. I could see it in his eyes that the thought of Oliver being hurt in my madness was the true thing that infuriated him. He took a deep breath. "What do you plan on doing next? I need to know so that my life doesn't come to a grinding halt again."

"Louis, I wasn't trying to dump you," I started carefully. "And Oliver," my voice cracked and my eyes welled up at the thought. "I just didn't feel..."

"Your feelings don't matter if he's a victim to them," Louis said sternly. He was still speaking in a calm tone but his upset was obvious. I was thankful that the coffee shop was mostly empty. I couldn't imagine this all being public knowledge. Louis seemed to notice how escalated he'd become and took another deep breath. "The conversation about you and I needs to be secondary. I don't care who dumped who. This has to be about him."

That stung a bit although I'd expected it. Still, I had to wonder if he was closing the door to us. Were we done for good? Had I just lost the worlds kindest man? Was I happy with that? I'd thought before that I would be happier without Louis but I'd just spent the last two days distraught and unable to function. Had that all been about Oliver or had the ache in my chest stemmed from Louis too?

"Naomi," Louis stated pulling my attention back out of my own head. "You've been gone for two days and you've barely even asked about him."

I blinked hard. "I knew you would be fine with him."

"That's not good enough," Louis frowned. "You can't just assume I'll handle him. He's ours, not mine."

"I know," I said quickly shaking my head. "I know that, but if he was going to have to be with one of us, you're the obvious choice."

Louis frown deepened. "He should be with both of us."

"Do you really think that? After everything I've done?" I asked him hollowly.

He hesitated and it confirmed he didn't entirely disagree. I had hurt Oliver. I had left him against all maternal instincts. Psychology, what I had done could be traumatic to him. How could Louis risk me doing that to him again? Clearly he thought that too or he would have brought Oliver with him to meet me. Maybe Louis was noticing a pattern of me ghosting him. I'd done it when I'd found out I was pregnant. He was probably getting used to it.

After another moment of silence, Louis spoke in a very calm and measured voice. "Are you starting to believe that you're actually depressed yet?"

I nodded, staring down at the floor.

"I think you need to get help Naomi. I'm not saying that to hurt you, but I don't feel comfortable watching you try to work it out on your own anymore." Louis was staring at me. I could feel his eyes on me even though I wasn't looking up. I had considered he might say something like that. My mum had said it too. Harry had been saying it for weeks or even months.

"Im not okay," I muttered to the floor. "Louis, I haven't been okay for so long and I don't want Oliver to know me like this."

I felt Louis place his hand on my knee and I looked up to see he wasn't sitting all the way at the end of the bench like before. He looked concerned again, like he couldn't help but feel bad for me despite how I'd treated him. "I want you in Oliver's life," he said sternly. "I want you to get help so that you can be in his life. Don't just be someone I have to tell him about because frankly, I'm realizing I don't think I know you that well and I'll do a shoddy job at it."

He smiled softly as if hoping to lighten the mood. Instead I felt tears drop from my eyes. The more Louis spoke, the more I felt like things between the two of us were completely off the table. He just wanted me to be a mum. He wasn't pushing for anything between us. His resignation was heart breaking. I wasn't even sure i wanted there to be any us anymore but I knew that feeling unwanted by Louis didn't feel great either. He wasn't getting anything he wanted out of this deal.

"I will," I said quickly.

"And then what?" He asked. "Oxford?"

"No, you were right. I'm staying in London," I informed him, wiping my eyes. That conversation with Zadie the previous day had not been great, but Zadie understood. "I'm staying with my mum."

"I went to my mums too," Louis confirmed my previous suspicions. The bedsheets beneath Oliver in his photos had been familiar. He seemed happy to hear I wasn't planning to go to a different city.

We were quiet for a long moment.

"I'm going to keep staying with my mum for a while," I added quietly.

Louis nodded.

"We're not going to get back together, are we Louis?" I asked him, finally meeting his blue eyes.

Louis shook his head in the smallest of movements before opening his mouth to speak. "You don't want that," he said carefully. "And I don't want to be someone loved out of obligation."

I cringed. "I don't love you out of obligation."

Louis smiled in a way that looked to be reassuring. "There's a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone," he told me. "I don't think you've been in love with me for a while."

"Louis," I began.

"No, it's okay." He assured me. "I've thought about it a lot, especially this morning and I think you really tried to be in love with me Naomi. I appreciated you trying, but I think we both know it wasn't working."

I blinked hard to keep the tears at bay again. "But you were in love with me?"

His smile faltered only momentarily. "I've been in love with you the entire time. I still am," he replied. He said it so factually. He was sure of himself. Always. "But I'm not interested in forcing you to keep pretending."

"I feel like I'm just wrecking you with this," I admitted.

"Don't," he said softly. "Relationships fail. It happens. I'll be fine. We just need to work together for the baby and we're capable of that. Nobody has to get wrecked."

Louis had clearly given a lot of thought to all of this. He was so self assured and giving. All he wanted was to do right by the baby. He didn't care how any of it affected him personally. How could he be so selfless? I couldn't fathom.

I wanted to say as much but then Louis phone rang. He looked as if he was doing to ignore it, then checked the screen and paused. "That's Harry. I can't ignore him," he said. He put the phone to his ear and then made a face and continued, "Mate I can hear you without you yelling at me, circle down.... Oh." He held his phone to his chest for a moment and looked at me. "I'm sorry, this is off topic but have you seen me in the news today?"

I shook my head.

Very casually he said, "I know we technically just broke up but I feel like I may need to apologize in advance for this one then."

I wanted him to elaborate but he put the phone back to his ear and continued nodding along to Harry. According to his flinching, Harry had not stopped yelling.

Harry's POV

Louis was out of his fucking mind. Leaving me with Oliver was the last thing I expected him to do. How could I possibly be trustworthy for this?

"You better not like die or something fucking crazy," I said to Oliver from my place on the sofa. He was sitting on the floor looking up at me, shaking that stupid cat toy that was quickly becoming his favorite. At least nobody was here to tell me off for my language. "Nobody will ever forgive me if you die."

I hadn't been up to my own flat since we'd returned home. I didn't want to think about what had happened the last time I was there. I didn't want to face my cat, after she'd rejected me. It felt dumb, but Louis home was a place of comfort in a way my home wasn't when Lux was gone.

Oliver smiled up at me and attempted to throw his ball. It went about 7 centimeters before bouncing on the carpet and rolling away. His face morphed like he was going to cry.

I hopped off the couch after it and retrieved it, kneeling down and setting it in front of him again. He ignored it, staring at me instead. He still looked quite sad.

"Why are you grumpy?" I asked him as if he'd answer. Louis had only just left and I'd thought he would be upset when he realized neither of his parents were present but I had expected much more time to pass first.

I scooped Oliver off the floor and took him over to the window to look at the view. My entire strategy to avoid crying was distractions. If that didn't work then I had no back up plan. The baby looked out the window for a moment looking confused and then looked up at me and smiled, grabbing a chunk of my hair in his hand and pulling. That was starting to get annoying, the longer I let my hair get.

"That's bullying," I informed him. "You don't want to be a bully."

He laughed, oblivious to his crimes.

My phone dinged in my pocket and I used my free hand to pull it out, hoping to see something nice from Louis like Hey problems all solved. He totally has a mum again. That was definitely wishful thinking. Things wouldn't be simple between them, even if it was amicable. Instead, I was surprised to see a text from Phoebe. The girls never texted me. We barely spoke when Louis and I were away. It was part of the charm of visiting. If the sender of the text wasn't surprising enough, the content was the real concern.

"Phoebe: I am so sorry. I tried to stop her. Please don't be angry at me."

What?

I responded immediately asking for explanation. I looked at Oliver trying to keep myself from worrying too much. Phoebe was a tween. I couldn't possibly have a reason to fear what she might say. She didn't have enough power over anything to cause damage. What did she mean by I tried to stop her? Who was her referring to?

"Your aunt is acting very weird," I informed Oliver setting him back on the floor. He immediately started pushing up into his weird "attempting to crawl" position that was absolutely adorable.

Phoebe sent me a link in response. Shit.

I clicked it with bated breath. I didn't have a lot of good expectations when people sent me links because they almost always gave me reason for concern. I was a public problem. Most links just took me to evidence of my being a public problem. I already knew that to be an almost undeniable fact but what I really didn't expect to see was the headline "Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson collab? Finally? Yes please!"

I scrunched up my eyebrows in confusion. What did that mean? I scrolled down and that's when I saw the video. It was taken in Jays living room. Louis sat at the piano, I sat behind him on the sofa, closet to the camera, with the stupid child's guitar in my hand. Off to the side, Daisy was standing with Oliver in her arms swaying to the sound of Louis and I playing music and singing loudly and enthusiastically. The audio was great. We sounded good, for what that was worth, singing our original composition. Phoebe was notably missing from the video, because she was obviously the one holding the camera that I had failed to notice.

I scrolled a little further and found where the video had been released from. Why was I only minimally surprised to find it was posted from Lottie Tomlinsons Instagram? Millions of views already? Obviously.

The post had only been up about 4 hours but I closed the article and opened my email instead. In the last hour I'd received 12 separate emails, including 2 from Melvin Greene asking me to call him. Of course. The world had just heard both mine and Louis voice for the first time since the end of One Direction. The people were used to at least seeing some of Louis work but mine? I was a relic, dusted off the shelf for all to see. We were blowing up.

"Your aunt Lottie is a monster," I told Oliver as my phone rang from an unknown number. I ignored it. I made another quick google search to check and found myself trending. I felt my face burning red. "A huge fucking monster."

I dialed Louis to lose my shit over it.