When Love Heals - A Niall Horan Fanfic

Chapter Twenty Six.

Lydia steeled herself as she lifted the phone to her ear and waited for Niall to break up with her.

Little did she know, the phone call would go a lot differently to how she expected.

"Hello?" She said, her voice betraying her as it noticeably trembled.

"L-L-Lydia?" Niall's voice came through the speaker and it wasn't serious or blunt like she had expected. In fact, by the stuttering and the sniffles, Lydia was pretty sure he was crying.

"Ni? Baby, what's wrong?" She cooed worriedly, forgetting all thoughts of the breakup as just the thought of needing to make Niall feel better filled her mind.

"I-I just... I m-m-miss you and I h-hadn't talked to you and I-I l-love you," Niall sobbed, his voice breaking Lydia's heart in a different way than she had expected when she had answered the call.

"Ni, calm down. I'm here, it's fine. I love you, too." Lydia said, her voice soft and soothing in an attempt to calm down the crying Irish boy. At that moment she wanted nothing more than to be with him, to be able to stroke down his hair and wipe away his tears. Unfortunately, he was almost three and a half thousand miles away and that was just physically impossible.

"A-are you okay?" Niall said. He was still breathing heavily from the crying, but he was stuttering less and Lydia guessed that meant he was a least not sobbing as much.

"I'm okay," Lydia reassured. "How are you?"

Niall let out a little chuckle, a hiccup added on the end. "I'm fine, just miss you s'all."

"I miss you too," Lydia whispered. She felt tears pricking her own eyes now, because suddenly she had somewhat of a 'lightbulb!' moment, and not a good one either.

If Niall was this upset now, how would he react when she lost her hair or when she was hospitalised for good? How sad would he be when she couldn't get up from the bed, when she puked her guts out every time she tried to eat some food? How devastated was she going to be when the doctors announced the treatment hadn't worked, there was nothing more they could do, and she wasn't going to make it.

Lydia had been positive that Niall was about to break up with her. But a sudden twist of fate made her realise that actually it was about to be the other way round. She refused to put Niall through that. How selfish would it be if she ruined his life just because she was too self-interested to let him go? She loved him. She loved him so much. And that's why she had to let him go.

"I'm sorry I didn't call the past few days," Niall admitted, sounding ashamed. "I was just struggling.. and I forced myself not to call you in case I cried. Obviously that didn't work out..." He chuckled humourlessly.

"Lyd? You still there?" He called, when he heard no response.

Lydia took a deep breath. And swallowed the massive lump that had suddenly formed in her throat. She couldn't believe it had come down to this. Just to think that ten minutes ago she was freaking out because she thought Niall was going to break up with her... She almost laughed bitterly at the unexpected turn of events.

"Niall..." She drawled out the word slowly, tasting how it sounded on her tongue, like it would be the last time she would be able to say it without the memories being tainted with sadness.

However, Niall took the hesitant nature of Lydia's tone to mean that something was wrong. And he panicked. "Lydia? Are you okay? Do I need to call you an ambulance?" He practically shouted down the phone.

Lydia almost cried right then. Because she knew he loved her, he had made that very clear. He was the sweetest, kindest, more perfect boy she could have ever wished to meet. And she wanted to scream at the universe for ruining this for her. Fucking cancer.