Rewinding Time (Narry)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

"The only thing that matters is that you're back right?" she asked, rubbing my back and planting a kiss onto my temple.

"About that," Liam quietly interjected.

The room immediately slipped into a tense silence as mum slowly stopped rubbing my back and glanced up at Liam, almost accusingly. I immediately stopped midway through a sob when I realized what sort of news Liam was just about to bring to mum's attention; I had forgotten that we couldn't stay here—that I couldn't stay here.

Liam immediately cowered behind Zayn as he fell victim to mum's intense glare.

"What, Liam?" she demanded, voice firm with a hint of arse-whipping if the next thing that left Liam's mouth was something unpleasant.

Liam mumbled a "never mind" before pulling Zayn with him as he took refuge in one of the rooms upstairs.

"Niall? What's going on?" she asked, shifting her gaze back towards me. I flinched slightly at the demanding tone in her voice and lowered my head to keep myself from having to look directly into her eyes.

"I can't stay," I blurted, keeping my head down and squeezing my eyes shut. "Something quite bizarre has happened and there's no way I can return home for good. Hell, everybody thinks I'm dead. What's going to happen once they find out that I'm still alive? I can't even begin to explain to you what's happened to me let alone revealing it to the entire world."

I couldn't even tell if mum could make out a single word that left my mouth, since the entire thing sounded like a jumbled mess. A silence fell between us, one that was practically eating me alive with every passing second; finally, I decided to take a daring chance to peek up at her.

"Niall, dear," she mumbled, cupping my face in her hands, "what could possibly be so bad?"

I took a deep breath and gently placed a hand onto her thigh in a reassuring manner.

"Well..."

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Surprisingly enough, explaining the whole ordeal to mum wasn't as bad as I had anticipated; indeed I didn't make much sense in some places, but regardless, she had remained silent the entire way.

Things suddenly became quite difficult when the focal point of the conversation shifted over towards my stay at the Styles mansion; an indescribable anger—one that I had never felt before—began bubbling in the pit of my stomach as each word that left my mouth dripped with venom.  My blunt nails dug into the palm of my hands to keep me from losing it.

By then, Liam and Zayn had descended from the stairs and had joined us in the living room. Thankfully, Zayn was glad to take over the parts that I found too hard to talk about.

I was angry; after returning home to my peaceful life—the one I had before this whole time travel crap—it made me pissed just thinking about the utter hell I had to endure because of Harry.

Perhaps it was because I was completely wrapped up in the moment and now that I was out, I could see that a life without Harry was one that was much nicer; frankly, if none of this happened, I don't think I'd miss it very much. After all, he was the definition of a twenty-first century bully.

"Right, Niall?" Zayn asked out of nowhere. Suddenly, three sets of eyes were on me and I had no idea what was being asked.

"What?"

"Zayn here was just telling me about how close Harry and you were."

I sent a glare in Zayn's direction before folding my arms across my chest. "I wish you would stop doing that. I don't know how you could possibly consider somebody who treats you like a slut and yells at you over practically nothing 'close'."