Welcome To Ireland (A Niall Horan Fanfic)

Chapter twenty-four

I woke up the next morning alone. The bed was empty. I looked around my room, but Niall was nowhere to be seen. Did I dream that he came here? I heard noise coming from the living room, so I bolted out of bed and walked out, only to see Niall zipping up his bag.

"What are you doing?" I asked with confusion.

He spun around, looking nervous that I had seen him, "I didn't hear you get up."

"Just now. Are you leaving?"

He scratched the back of his neck, "yeah, I was uh.. I have a flight to catch soon."

"You were just going to leave without me knowing? Just going to sneak out of my house?"

"I know having me here was awful, so I was just going to make it easy and leave without you seeing. Now that plan's shot to shit."

"I didn't want you to secretly leave, Niall."

He sighed, "it sure seemed that way."

"Can you blame me? This wasn't the easiest thing to deal with."

"I know and I'm sorry. I'll go back home and you won't have to see me ever again."

He turned to pick up his bag, but I stepped behind him and put my hand on his.

"Can we talk? No yelling and no blaming each other. We just need to sort this out."

He turned his face toward me skeptically, like he somehow didn't believe me, like I was just going to yell at him again for all that he's done to me, but his face contorted into a solemn look, saying that he was going to give it a go.

"Please Niall, for me."

He nodded slowly and tossed his bag on the floor and sat down. I took a seat right next to him.

"Do you remember that one night back home, a couple days before you guys were leaving for X­Factor, when I told you that we should break up because we were going to be so far apart and you would be meeting a whole bunch of girls?"

He looked down at his hands nervously, but nodded his head, telling me to continue.

"And you said that you would never cheat on me, that I was the only one you wanted, and that you couldn't make it through without me?"

"Yeah, I remember," he whispered.

"What changed?"

He took a huge intake of breath and faced me, "I don't know, I just got scared. Things just got so hard to deal with, like how you were really close with Harry, I couldn't handle it. I was afraid that you were going to fall back into it with him, so I didn't want to get hurt."

"So you just hurt me instead..," I whispered knowingly.

"I've never regretted anything more in my life. I was just so sure he was going to take you away from me, and I didn't want to face another heartbreak by his hands. And you still ended up with him."

"Do you honestly think that I never cared about you? I was with you, not him. I thought about you all the time. No, correction, I thought about us all the time, but I guess once you left, you stopped."

"That's not true. You were and still are, everything that I think about. I miss you."

His blue eyes pierced mine, and I could tell that he was being sincere. I missed him too, but I wasn't sure if it was right to tell him that. I had no idea if it would save us or condemn us to a more hurtful existence of loneliness.

"So do you.. um, do you still, you know, with Cher?" I asked nervously. I probably shouldn't of asked the question, but it was killing me.

He shook his head, "no. I only talk to her rarely now, but never for long."