Crooked

he infuriated me, but I was in love with him. [chapter twenty-two]

“Mornin’ Blondie!” Zayn ruffled my hair as he took a seat next to me on the tour bus. There was a concert tonight in London, but the boys had the day off to relax after last night’s Comic Relief concert. And when I said relax, I meant they had to work off their hangovers. Harry had told me that London was their favourite city to perform in, because it was home. “How are you today?”

“Why are you so chipper?” I asked him, sending him a weird look. Zayn was never happy in the morning, let alone awake at 10am. Usually, neither was I, but I had a job and sometimes it required me to wake up early. This was in case someone important had to call me, but I didn’t think I was going to get any calls today. You never knew, though.

Zayn shrugged. “How was your night?”

I made a face. It had been good in the beginning, but then that stupid model had been completely unprofessional and made a pass at Niall while she was modelling. Afterwards, Niall had disappeared and fifteen minutes before their show, I had managed to find him, chatting up the same model. I tried to ask what had happened, but he wouldn’t respond, and had completely avoided me for the rest of the night. It had taken all of my effort not to drink my sorrows away, tequila style.

“Shitty,” I answered, leading Zayn to chuckle. “But I enjoyed watching you guys perform, though. It was great. How about yours?”

“Thank-you,” he replied. “Mine was good. Met some people. Nice people.”

“Ah yes, Zayn met a lot of nice people last night,” Louis strolled into the sitting area of the tour bus, clad in sweatpants and a dark shirt. “You had fun, didn’t you mate?”

“We all had fun,” Zayn retorted. “Except for Cassie, apparently.”

“Because of Niall?” Louis shot me a sympathetic look. “Did he tell you about tonight?”

My eyebrows rose in surprise. “Tonight?”

The boys fell silent.

“What?” I prompted. “What’s happening tonight?”

“Are we talking about how Niall got lucky?” Angie joined the conversation, followed by Harry. I knew Angie hadn’t come back to our hotel room last night, but I had trusted that she had stayed with either Harry or Zayn, or one of the other boys. We had checked out this morning and were now on the process of actually getting onto the tour bus, so we could leave. Randy was in the process of properly checking us out, which was why the process had been taking so long.

“What?” I glared at Angie. “Niall got lucky?”

Her eyes widened as she shared frantic glances between her and the boys. “You guys didn’t tell her?”

“Tell me what?” I crossed my arms in annoyance. “Just freakin’ tell me already!”

“Niall’s going on a date tonight,” Angie said finally. “With the winking model. I’m sorry, Cassie.”

Immediately, my mouth dropped open and my shoulders slumped further into the seat behind me. I couldn’t move, let alone speak. Niall was going on a date – and not with me, either. Did that mean he wasn’t into me as much as I had thought he was? Did that mean he had moved on and simply wasn’t into me at all?

“That asshole,” I breathed out in anger. “He played me? Seriously?”

“Technically, you played him first,” Angie pointed out with a shrug. “You can’t really go against him for that.”

“Says the girl who can’t even decide between two guys,” I shot back, narrowing my eyes at my best friend. “You’re playing both Harry and Zayn and yet you have the nerve to call me a hypocrite?”

“Don’t project your feelings onto me,” Angie replied calmly. “This is about you and Niall. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the reason why you’re so angry is because you’re in love with him?”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I had admitted that I liked Niall, sure. Butlove? No. Angie could not be right. She was usually right about a lot of things, but not this time.

“And let me guess,” Angie paused to think. “You don’t want to be in love with him because he reminds you of the devil?” The devil being my brother’s stupid girlfriend that I had punched, because if I could recall, she had called art stupid. The devil had these god awful crooked teeth that were worse than Niall’s – not that Niall’s was that bad, really, but every time I looked at his teeth, I saw the devil. And that sight alone wanted to make me hurl myself off a cliff. “Face it Cassie, besides the teeth thing, you’re in love with him. Stop denying it to yourself.”

It was true, really. I could deny it forever and say that my feelings were Niall were merely a crush, or that I just liked him and nothing else. But from the first day that he bailed me out of jail, and between the flirty comments we had traded to the sweet moments we had shared, I had fallen for him.

At first, I had hated Niall. His too-blonde spiky hair, ocean blue eyes and rounded cheeks annoyed me. His upbeat personality and infectious laugh made me want to slowly slaughter him with a knife. And those teeth; those damn-crooked teeth that I wanted to pull out so he could get a whole new set of straight ones irritated me the most.

He infuriated me, but I was in love with him. And I couldn’t deny it to myself any longer.

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If I stick to my plan and not drag out any chapters, I have about four chapters left of this. Yep. They'll move fairly fast paced, I think, but I think it's time to wrap up this story. And this time, I'll actually update frequently, instead of slacking. Woops.

Let me know what you guys think!

PS THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR 64K+ READS THIS IS ACTUALLY AMAZING OH MY GOD THANK YOU A BILLION TIMES OVER OK OMG