The dreams were the worst. She dreaded going to sleep at night in fear of having to see him, his subtle smirk, the look in his eyes as he tore her open. The lion boy, tearing into her flesh with his razor sharp teeth and claws, keeping her alive so she could watch him eat her heart right out of her chest. Every moment he hovered over her, whispering her name to wake her up before he could drop in for the kill.

This was torture, she thought it would have been over by now. It had been a week, seven days, twelve hours and ten minutes to be exact. She was too aware of the time, she had to be.

Chewing on the end of the pen, she leafed through the notes she had diligently taken all semester long. Pages and pages of handwriting she could barely decipher, like another person had written them, all chicken scratch and nonsense. None of it made sense, which added to her ever mounting stress.

She needed this, she needed something to go well for once. With the constant dark cloud looming over her head in the form of Harry, and now Tom's worrying texts, voicemails and phone calls "just to check in" she needed finals to go flawlessly.

"You look like you need a break," a quiet voice broke into her attempt at cracking the codes on the pages in front of her.

"I'm fine," she dismissed, waving her hand to shoo them away. She didn't even want to look up, fearing that all of her momentum would just plummet.

"Katie you aren't fine, you couldn't be any less fine. Let's just go get something to eat, take an hour break and you can come back."

Finally looking up, she came face to face with Charlotte's pleading eyes, her bored boyfriend staring off into space.

Kate wondered how long they had been sitting there, looking at her frantically studying some subject she didn't even remember now.

With a loud, long sigh, which garnered her a few frustrated stares, she nodded. "Alright one hour and not a second more."

"I'll have Scott physically carry you all the way back here if I need to."

"I'll do what?" He asked rather loudly, snapping to attention.

"Shut up," Charlotte hissed, placing her hands carefully on the table with a big smile, reaching just enough to shut a few of Kate's books. "Come on, let's go."

Gathering everything up, the three of them snuck out of the library and onto the darkened campus.

"Okay this is so depressing," Charlotte grumbled, walking ahead of them to twirl and face them. "Finals make everyone so crazy, look at how dead campus is right now."

"Well, that's because everyone is like your friend over here," Scott smirked.

"What's that supposed to mean?!" Kate bellowed, swinging her bag at him but missed.

"I think he's calling you a book worm."

"I think he's being a dick," she shot, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Whoa now tiger," he laughed, holding his hands up in front of him before he put one on his hip to imitate something his girlfriend often did. "I wasn't like, going to say anything but you are totally being a bitch right now."

Both girls looked at him with their mouths wide open.

"Scott! Okay, you are being a dick" Charlotte gasped, glaring at him now.

Lunging forward, he picked the girl up to swing her around, getting her to laugh so her anger melted away.

"I was kidding, Kate knows that. Its like you said though."

Slapping his arm, Charlotte grumbled something to him that Kate didn't really catch, which caused her to raise an eyebrow. Her friend shook her head, laughing nervously.

"He's just kidding, come on before we waste this hour."

As they grabbed one another's hands, walking ahead of Kate just slightly, she felt the pain in her stomach that always seemed to come when they were around. As if her dreams weren't bad enough, the sudden flood of little memories triggered by the simplest things were getting worse. Shaking her head, Kate brought her attention elsewhere.

They reached the little diner, getting a booth and ordering a ton of food for the three of them to share. When it was all delivered, Charlotte and Scott dug in, while Kate sipped on her milkshake delicately.

"So Kate," Charlotte mumbled through a fist full of fries she had shoved into her mouth. "Are you excited to get out of here and go back home?"

Shrugging her shoulders, she pursed her lips together for a moment. "Yeah kind of, i'm excited to see my mum and dad, even my brother and snotty sister."

"And what about…you know?" She asked shyly, shoving another handful of fries in her face.

Involuntarily rolling her eyes, Kate clamped her teeth down onto her straw to speak before she took another gulp of the creamy milkshake. "He'll be away all summer, and he doesn't live in our village anymore anyway so it doesn't matter."

"Is this about that lame pop star kid?" Scott muttered between a bite of his burger.

The mood immediately changed between all three of them, Charlotte just looking down at the plate while Kate shifted around uncomfortably in her seat, all of them falling into silence.

After a few long moments of it, Scott sighed dramatically. "Ladies, come on. You're better off without him Kate, Tom is a fa-"

"I don't care about Tom," she shrieked, cutting him off. "I don't care about either of them."

That was all Charlotte needed, scoffing with the own roll of her eyes. "Oh bull, you cried for days and you've been moping around for a solid week, throwing yourself into library exile and studying almost all night, every night without so much as lifting your head out of your stupid books."

"My stupid books? Well, excuse me for actually caring that I do well so I can come back here next autumn."

"Oh please, this has nothing to do with your precious grades or your precious scholarship. You need to stop lying to yourself."

"Oh whatever," Kate dismissed, pulling herself out of her seat to drop a few bills on the table.

"What even happened between you two? What did he do that was so horrible, did he cheat on you, what?" Charlotte called after her.

Pushing her way through the swinging glass door, Kate angrily stalked back towards the library.

What happened between you two? The question rang in her mind, bringing forth a memory that had been bubbling just under the surface for so long.

She was waiting patiently by the phone, the hall clock ticking so loudly it began to ring in Kate's ears. It gave the illusion that the phone had rung, making her jump. She didn't know why she was so high strung, they spoke every night around the same time, so he would call when the clock struck seven.

He had been away at his step father's cabin waiting to be fully swept up in the hurricane of a singing competition reality show. She was so proud of him, he had already gotten so far and now that he had been put with four other boys she had a feeling he could get even further, if not win.

Today just felt different though, something was off for the entirety of it. She had just assumed that it was nothing, not taking it as an omen like she probably would have.

She didn't notice when her own digital clock sitting next to her bed continued to change, flipping beyond the set time. She didn't notice until it had been two hours later than normal because she had done everything to her preoccupy herself, and the phone finally rang.

"Got it," she cried, scrambling to yank the black cordless phone out of its charger while the book she had been reading fell to the floor. "Harry?"

"Hey," he said flatly, his voice missing the enthusiasm it normally carried.

It brought an odd feeling back up, but it went ignored. "How are you?" She asked, her fingers pulling at a loose thread on her blanket.

There was a sigh, she imagined he was closing his eyes or pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Look Kate," he began, then hesitated. She heard the sound of gravel being kicked, which made her realize he was outside. She also made note of the lack of an I in her name, he rarely ever called her Kate.

He sighed again, clearing his throat before he continued. "I don't think this is working, I don't think we should be dating."

This floored her, made her sit up a little straighter. "Wh-what do you mean…why?"

"I just, I don't…they don't think we should have girlfriends. I mean, they have a point right? We won't have time for anything, and the farther we may advance the more fans we'll have, the between chance we have at signing a deal with someone by the end of all of this. It won't be fair on you, and it isn't fair for me either."

"So you're going to tell me this over the phone?" She asked in disbelief.

"When would you have liked for me to have told you this in person?" He somewhat spat back at her.

Swallowing hard, Kate brought her hand up to her chest, clutching the necklace she was wearing to keep her hands busy. She couldn't make sense of this, her mind grasping at incomplete thoughts as they whizzed around her brain before it clung to a few and put them together.

"Do you not love me enough to even try and make this work, I mean you said a couple of the others have girlfriends, are they breaking up with them over the phone now?"

He paused for a long while, so long Kate thought she felt her hair growing gray.

"No," he finally told her, his words sending a fist straight through her gut.

She caught on then, nobody had suggested they all break up with their girlfriends, or maybe they had but that wasn't why Harry was doing this. He had seen the future, screaming girls lusting after him, any choice of the litter for free. If they found out about her they would dismiss him in favour of someone else. Image was the most important thing now, he knew he had the talent so all he had to worry about was how he looked, both physically and within his every day life.

"Kate i've got to go okay? Bye."

She didn't have a chance to continue and argue with him, he never gave her the room to do so. All he gave her was the dial tone.

Throwing the phone down, Kate flopped onto her stomach, burying her face into her pillow. She sobbed into it until her mum came to shout at her for leaving the phone off the hook, moving to spill her tears onto her shoulder until her dad came in to see what was going on. Her little sister hoovered out in the hall, while her brother shouted from his room to tell them to keep it down.

She was so embarrassed, unsure if she could face anybody else now that her whole family had made such a fuss.

She hadn't expected this, she hadn't even thought this could be a possibility considering what he had said before he left. It stuck with her, every word.

She was so insecure with him leaving, watching him packing while trying to hold back the vomit that kept rising out of fear. He could tell that she was dreading him going, but he brought her closer and pressed a firm kiss to her lips, taking her cheeks in his hands so her attention was nowhere but his eyes.

"I love you Katie, you don't have to worry about anything. I promise we can do this."

He was a liar, he had humiliated her, he had broken her heart over the phone. That's what had happened, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.