Count On Me | Niam

Chapter Seventy-Three

Liam/Niall

"Shit."

That was the first thing that fell out of Liam's mouth as he realised what was happening.

"Holy fucking shit."

And that was the second.

The intern just nodded, raising an eyebrow as she looked up at Liam, giving him a look that suggested he should really run in the opposite direction as she gestured to the door. "You should probably go in there. It involves you. I'll only be sent to fetch you otherwise."

Liam was debating whether it would be possible for him to leave anyway, possible for him pretend he hadn't been stood there, when the door opened and his publicist practically fell out of the office, followed by a very, very angry Niall. He seemed so angry that Liam might almost have said he was livid, but saying so wouldn't have bode well for him. Saying anything would not be good for his life expectancy, not when Niall was so extraordinarily angry with him and he knew exactly why.

He already had questions he wanted to ask, such as how Niall had found out and how much, as well as was there an article and was Chloe at risk of being found out, but his would be questions were silenced by the look on Niall's face. It wasn't yet Liam's turn to be yelled at, so he kept quiet, listening as Niall yelled at the woman supposed to be in charge of handling all press issues, yelling at her apparently not for the first time.

Well...Niall wasn't actually yelling. Not anymore. Which Liam figured was a positive. Sort of. Maybe not. Instead, he was calm. Scarily calm. His voice impossibly soft yet sharp as flint and seeming a million times more frightening somehow than if he'd simply continued yelling as he had initially. "You're telling me that my daughter is at risk of being exposed to the public, not only exposed but about to be thrown to the wolves, because you people cannot do your jobs and prevent one article, one little article, from being made public? You've fabricated whole stories, relationships, controlled what gets out about anything, yet you can't do anything about this one article? And this, this is happening because someone let my little girl get lost in a building she doesn't know and didn't find her before an actual random stranger did. You're telling me that, despite you supposedly being the best of the best, with an army of people behind you, you cannot do a single fucking thing? That's just not fucking good enough."

He made a lot of good points, and everyone knew it. Liam, spurred on by a need to do something and the slowly growing crowd of people, all of whom were curious about the latest drama Liam's invariably messy personal life was causing, tried to speak, opening his mouth only to be cut off immediately.

"No. No. I don't want to hear it. I don't care what you have to say since you decided not to say anything to me for days. You can give more your side of the story later and explain why I had to learn from twitter and an intern, a fucking teenager, that you allowed my daughter to be put at risk, and then chose not to tell me; but for now, I don't care. No. Not a word." Niall gave him such a glare that Liam didn't even try to stop him as he walked past him towards the exit, where Chloe and Paddy were waiting, Paddy having the foresight to see that Niall wouldn't want to stay and that it would be best if Chloe was ready but not forced to listen to whatever Niall might've had to say.

Chloe clung to Niall as he took her hand, leaving Liam stood there, well aware that he'd: a) fucked up royally, b) caused yet another problem in dire need of solving and c) just had his ass handed to him. He would have run after Niall, followed him and Chloe back to the hotel, where they would have solved this in private, but he was cornered by his publicist and a few people who he recognised from his management, ushered into the lounge that had been the base for the previous meet and greet but was now apparently the emergency board room for meetings and discussions about how to manage the situation.