Catch me if you can [NARRY AU]

Chapter thirty-five

Please read A/N at the end!

It was quiet after Zayn's story, we needed to process it all, needed to let it sink in, needed to understand in order to plan our next move. Niall was a drugdealer. Niall had PTSD. Niall thought someone was hunting me, thought his past has had caught up on him to give him more misery that he already went through. In some way, that was true. His past did caught up with him and did give him more misery, but not for the reasons he thought of. I wished I knew earlier, maybe I could have helped him before it was too late. But he ran away before I could think about these things. Poor Niall. He must have lived in constant fear. He must have thought twice with every decision he made if it was safe, if he could do it without having to worry about someone or even himself. Even though his outside didn't show it, he was always responsible, always caring for others, always making sure the other was alright. That was one of the things that had me attracted to him, but now that I knew the reason why, I almost felt bad for liking what he had became after he witnessed his best friend's murder. Almost. Because this wasn't about me. This was about Niall. I always remarked that when someone was missing, or someone was dead, people talked about themselves. "I miss her", "why is he doing this to me", "don't leave me", that sort of crap. I got that, I did, but now, I needed to be there for Niall, needed to look for him and make sure that nothing had happened to him. Probably, he was hiding somewhere, somewhere he thought there was no connection to me and the boys whatsoever. Niall was not familiar in England, so he needed to go to a place which he could easily find, something like Manchester. I hoped he was okay. I hoped he was alive. The things that could've happened to him.

I felt liquid salt on my lips and I knew I was silently crying. I looked up to see Liam, Zayn and Louis all looking at me, worried. I didn't need their worry, nothing was wrong with me. Yes, I was sad and yes, the truth about Niall was something I never had seen coming, but like I said, this wasn't about me. I took a good look at the other three boys in the room. Louis looked beaten, but that was probably because everyone else was. I had no idea how he felt towards Niall at this moment, but then again, I guessed I had never known how he actually felt. I mean, I never saw it coming that he had a crush on me, and by how he was acting earlier, it wasn't just a teenage girl crush. This was the kind of crush that broke you, that ruined you from the inside but your poor heart kept telling you that maybe there was still a chance, even though your brain had already warned you as soon as you started to feel things you shouldn't feel. Not at all. That's probably why it's called a crush. Because after, you feel like you had indeed been crushed. I felt sorry for Louis, but I couldn't help my own feelings. Even if Niall wasn't here, I knew I loved him with all I had in me. When I took a look at Liam, it was clear he was sad, but he was mostly concerned about Zayn. He kept studying his face, kept rubbing his back, kept whispering to him. And his eyes, they were filled with so much love and so much worry, I felt like an intruder for looking at them. Liam was always the most sensitive, so we all knew this was hard on him, but he seemed to worry more about Zayn than about himself. And at last, I looked over to Zayn. He looked broken, but also relieved. I guessed he was happy he got this big secret of off his chest. What I didn't understand was why it was a secret. If Zayn told us immediately from the moment we've met them, we could prevented this from happening. I knew it was kinda inappropriate to ask this right now, but curiosity got the best of me.

"Zayn, eh, why didn't you, like, tell us earlier?" I asked, my voice raspy from the crying and not talking in a while. Zayn studied my face before he gave me a small smile.

"Well, like I said, the nurse told us Niall was fine, and for a while, he was, so I thought it wasn't necessary for you to know. Besides, if I told you, Niall would be so mad. He liked to keep up the appearance everything was fine, he didn't like it when people would worry about him." Zayn said with a smile, probably thinking back to memories with Niall. What I noticed was that Zayn would speak of Niall in past tense, like he was dead or something, and I didn't like it one bit. I decided to keep quiet about it, we had other things to worry about.