𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐳𝐚 𝟐𝟓𝟖 [𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧]

𝟒𝟔. 𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐤𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐬?

Terror filled my eyes when I saw Liam with all those wounds. The closer he got, the more terrible they looked.

Arriving in front of us he pretended not to see our worried expressions and his face broke into a smile that was very out of tune with all his bruises.

"Hello lads!" he said in his usual cheerful tone, even though I could hear a note of nervousness in it "I'm so sorry for being late. So how were the holidays?"

I exchanged glances with my friends, who looked as puzzled as I was.

"Are you kidding us?" Niall asked him cheekily. I saw Liam's cheerful face start to crumble. He sighed as if he'd known all along that glossing over the obvious wasn't going to work, but that he had to try anyway.

"What happened to you?" I intervened, evidently agitated, then realised.

"Oh God, was that why you didn't answer the phone?"

"Guys, don't worry, I'm fine" he tried to reassure us. Niall ignored him completely to ask who had done that to him. He glossed over the question, as well as the others, the blond and I asked him.

"Guys stop it" Liam snapped at the end "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to go to my room to lie down because the journey has been quite tiring. See you later." Having said that, he took his suitcase and passed us without another word. It was really hard to piss Liam off and Niall and I had come very close at the time. Maybe we'd overdone it a bit, but we'd only done it because we were worried about him.

Zayn had been silent the entire time. He was evidently the closest to Liam, despite spending most of his time teasing him for his ways. It seemed that the news paralyzed him.

"Everything's ok?" I asked him worried, placing a hand on his shoulder. That touch seemed to awaken him.

"Yes yes, maybe it's better if I go..." He didn't finish the sentence. He just walked away as if he had already explained everything. Niall and I looked at each other disconsolately. We didn't even know what to say or do anymore.

"When did this happen?" I asked him "When did it all start falling apart?"

He shook his head. "It's always been in pieces. Nothing has ever been whole."

And when you think about it, it was true. Since before I got there, my life had been just a pile of rubble. And the moment I started putting pieces together, as soon as one wall began to take shape, another was brutally destroyed and I was back to square one.

I was beginning to give up. By now the possibility of collecting those stones and building a safe place in which to be happy seemed impossible to me.

Niall patted my back as if to encourage me. I gave him a shy smile and we silently agreed to go to the cafeteria. We tried not to think about Liam for a while and the mood lightened. He tried to extract as much information as possible from me about how I had spent my holidays with Louis, what we had done, how my family had behaved towards him and how he had asked me to be his boyfriend. I tried not to answer the questions and to tell him as little as possible, especially when they started to get awkward and embarrassing, but between one laugh and another he managed to make me tell much of the truth.

He too told me about his holidays, how he had baked cookies with his mother, going out with his old friends to pubs, going golfing with his father and Josh introducing him to his younger brother one day when they were video chatting.

I wasn't sure whether to be jealous of the fact that it seemed like his best friend was Josh and not me or to start going over to Louis and Liam who suspected that there was something going on between those two.