One Last Time - We Are Defencless - Sequel

Chapter 41 - Niall

The last four weeks have been awful. It's not because of living with the boys again. They are the only thing making me sane right now. The only reason I have been able to wake up every morning. Even though being awake is like living in a constant nightmare.

I go to sleep at night in either Liam and Zayn's or Louis and Harry's room. The thought of being alone in a dark room leaves me heaving for breath with salty tears soaking my clothes.

They say it's alright, but I feel like they're going to get tired of me and how broken I am. They're going to get tired of the times I wake up in the middle of the night screaming, but when I try to remember why, it's just blank.

I have a three-day hole in my memory. I can't recall a single thing that happened during the time I was gone.

I was gone for three full days and I can't remember a single thing. The one thing I do know, is that dark rooms bring horrible things.

Why else would I be petrified of them?

So I don't sleep alone anymore.

The meeting on the third was practically just Simon making sure we knew how serious he was about needing demos for the next album by the end of May.

He was sat behind the desk I know for a fact Harry had dragged him over when Louis was hurt, with that smug look plastered on his face. The look that said, 'I won. You lost. And there's nothing you can do about it.'

It had taken everything in me not to bolt when I saw those cold eyes and way too bright teeth. My heart had sped up so much it felt like it was about to hop out of my chest. My breath had hitched in my throat that felt like it was constricting to the point of struggling to breathe.

I had my fists clenched hard enough to break the skin and bit the inside of my cheek until the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth.

It helped me keep my emotions at bay until they vanished completely half-way through the meeting. I had gone completely numb.

Suddenly I didn't feel like I was going to die when Simon set his eyes on me. Instead, I felt nothing. The hole that's in my memory had formed in my chest too. A dark, cold, empty hole of nothingness.

Ever since that interview we've been working non-stop on getting our demos ready. Which was easier said than done when we have to put at least 16 songs on the album.

I've never had problems with putting my thoughts and emotions down on paper. But I've been completely blocked off.

We almost have 18 demos ready. And we have six days left until they need to be pretty much polished and ready to be recorded in a studio to be released.

But I haven't written on any of them. Not the lyrics, anyway.

When we started out with writing the album, we fell back to the way it was in One Direction instantly.

It worked for about a week. Until Louis pointed out that Zayn had been writing a lot but never showed us anything.

Zayn had denied it at first, not wanting to talk about it at all. In fact, he up and left the room when Louis tried to push. Liam had to spend ten minutes to convince him to just to get his butt back in the room. Another couple of days was needed until he actually explained why he reacted the way he did.

It left us in tears from hearing how difficult it was for Zayn when he never got his songs on the albums back in the band. How much he struggled to get confidence in his writing again when he started making solo music.

Every time we rehash things that hurt from the five years we spent pretty much every day together. Making music, touring and going from stranger to brothers, some more. I don't think we've even covered a fifth of the stuff that was going on.