One Division

Chapter Three - Hate A Song

Chapter Three – Hate A Song

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I’ll say I hate a song, then you go request it the whole night long.

***

“NIALL. JAMES. HORAN!” Victoria yelled, before rubbing the bridge of her nose, turning away to give herself a moment to calm down. With a forced amount of calm, she hissed, “Have you lost your entire mind?”

Just hearing her voice sent Zayn subtly shifting away from the object of her wrath. Everyone in the room dreaded that quiet tone. If she was yelling, then her anger could be manifested. But a voice like that told them she was past anger.

Without turning, she said, “Girls…” The Ingénues heads snapped up almost nervously, “isn’t there somewhere else you have to be?”

That second the girls couldn’t have vacated the room fast enough, muttering apologies and excuses as they rushed away. Niall glared, almost betrayed by their abandonment before casting his angry gaze down at his sneakers.

The white Supras scuffed at the floor as if to punish the carpeting for some imagined slight. Or perhaps Niall was trying to kick open a secret entrance in the floor leading to some place where Victoria’s heartbreakingly disapproving gaze did not land.

“What the hell were you thinking, Horan?” She went over to him, standing right in front of him, her hands twitching as if barely holding herself back from attacking him and asking with her fists if he’d been dropped on his head as a child.

Niall did his best to seem bored, tugging his phone out of his pocket, “What we all were. That she was sleeping with her boyfriend after the first couple weeks of being with him, and that it was awfully… open of her…” The way he said ‘open’ told Zayn that he wasn’t talking about her personality so much as her legs.

The other lads easily recognized the thunder in Victoria’s stance. They’d lived with that for half a year while Victoria was tough and ready to defend at any given moment. They knew just how sharp her tongue could get, and just how barbed her words could become. Niall, having been her friend from close to the beginning, couldn’t have possibly prepared himself for the onslaught to come.

“They’ve been dating for two months, Niall. Their anniversary was yesterday!” Victoria exploded with the information, and Niall felt like he’d been dealt a physical blow.

“Two months?!” He cried, jumping to his feet. Her responding look was unimpressed, like it was something he should’ve known, and it should have. That’s what hurt Niall the most. For someone who had pursued Lo so closely, he should’ve known when the chase was over… or paused, Zayn deduced from the fire still burning in Niall’s cerulean eyes.

Victoria nodded, unapologetic for the bomb she was dropping on him. “They met looking for Christmas presents and he asked her out finally a week before Valentine’s Day. He asked her to be official on Valentine’s Day, she called me right after to tell me all about it.”

Zayn had expected Niall to fall back, to slump over in pain or defeat, much like he had for the hours after hurting Happy, but instead Niall jumped to his feet, pacing as if he wished for nothing more than to wear a trench in the floor from which he’d fight this sleaze, Kaiden. Zayn was shocked at how large a part of himself hated Niall in that moment. Why couldn’t he have done that? Why couldn’t he have fought back when the time came? Why was he such a coward? And what the hell did Niall have that he didn’t?

Apparently that answer was a small girl prepared to beat the living hell out of him.

Victoria stopped him in his tracks, keeping him from digging that trench, and practically shook him, “Niall. You do not get to be indignant. You belittled her and irritated her for close to half a year instead of doing anything that actually resembled trying to be in a relationship with her. Then Kaiden comes along and treats her like a person–”