Midnight Memories

t w e n t y // f i v e

"Forget what you thought, good girls are just bad girls who haven't been caught." - 5 Seconds of Summer

I had never seen Louis look so horrified in his entire life. We were all three just staring at each other, realizing the magnitude of the situation we were caught in.

"Go now, i'll take care of this." I whispered to Louis.

I didn't have to tell him twice, Louis was like a bat out of hell leaving the hallway. Now it was just me and Ryder, who now had a mixture of anger, confusion, and sadness on his handsome face.

"Ryder, this isn't what it looks like." I blurted stupidly. Ryder was a lot of things, but he wasn't an idiot. He knew this was exactly what it looked like.

"Don't lie to me Stella! But that's what you're best at, right? Telling lies! God dammit! You are seriously the most infuriatingly annoying person on this planet. You think i'm bad? Well at least i'm honest! All you do is lie time and time again to people who care about you, who put themselves in danger to help you! You use them, and abuse them, and you don't think twice about it." He yelled.

I had to admit, I was shocked at his outburst, even though he had made some valid points. I was also shocked at how hurt I was by his words. "Is that- is that really what you think of me?" I stuttered.

Ryder sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Stella, you have no idea how difficult you make my life."

"That's rich, coming from the boy who tried to murder me and my boyfriend!" I couldn't help myself, I had to say it.

"Oh my god, you two are the biggest fucking hypocrites! You walk around thinking Louis Tomlinson is some sort of angel for what reason? Because he has a good head of hair and a shit ton of money? He is a corrupt, drug addicted thug who's just smart enough to get others to take the blame for all his idiotic actions. He is no better than me at all! Name one difference between us."

"Louis has a good heart." I mumbled. "I know he does. He doesn't want to be part of this world anymore. Plus, he loves me, and I love him."

Ryder laughed. "A good heart? Stella, this guy has shot down a man in cold blood. Had his best friend killed because of a mistake he made. He joined this world for no reason other than he was bored with his pathetic life! Plus, he dragged you into it and put your life in danger. Now he sulks around making everyone feel bad for him doing drugs and drinking and smoking and luring you all back into his trap. He's a total megalomaniac. He's manipulating the shit out of you and putting innocent people at risk to protect himself from Rooney."

"You just don't know him like I do." I refused to accept what Ryder was saying as true.

"My whole life, i've always been second best to anyone i've ever cared about. My dad, my brother, and now you." Ryder said softly. "Yet you all wonder why I am the way I am."

"You don't care about Ryder. Now you're just lying right back to me."

"You seriously think I don't care about you?" Ryder looked pained. "I've always cared about you, from the very beginning. Why do you think I devised that entire plan to make us allies? Why do you think I made you break Louis' heart, so he wouldn't confront Avery and get shot dead? Why do you think that night at the warehouse I didn't kill you when I had the chance? I've been protecting you and Louis from the very beginning!"

Oh. My. God. This was not happening.

"Why did you try to shoot Louis then?" I asked feebly.

"Because, I couldn't just make it look as if I let you get away, Rooney would catch on. So I shot him in the arm, close enough to make it look as if I tried to kill him but not doing him much harm."

"So this entire time," I put my head in my hands. "You've been the good guy? It was all just an act?"

Ryder nodded. "You're the only person i've ever loved besides my mom. I knew that if I didn't convince you that I was the bad guy, I wouldn't be able to protect you from people who actually wanted to hurt you."

I was speechless, absolutely and completely speechless. This... this changed everything. Everything that I had thought and knew to be true had just completely disintegrated.

"Ryder... I-"

But I didn't get a chance to finish my sentence, because Ryder pressed his lips against mine, pushing me back against the wall.

Holy fuck. Out of the millions of things I should've been thinking in this moment, that was all that came to mind. It was so wrong... so, so wrong, blasphemous even. But I couldn't find it within me to make any attempt to stop it.

I grabbed Ryder's tie, pulling him closer to me, deeper into the kiss. It was unlike anything i'd ever felt before... sort of exciting even. I felt like a naive freshman making out with the bad boy seniors under the bleachers. I knew I shouldn't be doing it, but it felt good to break the rules for once.

My hands traveled down to the buttons of his shirt, slowly starting to undo them one by one. By now he had one of my legs wrapped around his waist, the skirt of my dress bunched up on my thigh. There only seemed to be one possible ending to this scenario at this point, but I pushed the thought to the back of my mind, instead focusing on running a hand down the warm muscles of his chest, the other one resting gently on the nape of his neck. My heart felt like it was beating a million miles per hour.

"Don't be nervous." He whispered before his lips traced a path down to my neck.

Oh my god, this was happening, this was really happening. Me and Ryder Hartley, right here in an empty hallway at a charity gala hosted by my fake boyfriend and attended by the boy who I was supposedly in love with. This was so fucked up.

I could feel Ryder's hands traveling further and further up my leg, until it was under the fabric of the dress. We were still heatedly making out, but it didn't feel intimate until I could feel his fingers intertwine with mine.

For a second, my eyes caught his. Eyes that had once been so lifeless, so full of pain, finally ignited with something other than hatred. He rested his forehead against mine, and I could tell he was about to say something, but a loud bang came from somewhere further up the hallway.

"Stella? Hartley? Are you in here?"

Derrick.

I pushed Ryder off of me, adjusting my dress and smoothing down my hair. Next to me, he frantically buttoned up his shirt and fixed his tie, using one hand to try and wipe the lipstick marks i'd left all over his face. "Yeah, we're just down here!" He called back to Derrick.

I was inwardly screaming bloody murder. It was dark in here, sure, but what of Derrick noticed we weren't as put together as we had been before?

Finally, he approached us, looking at us quizzically. "Hartley, I sent you to find Stella ages ago. What took you so long?"

"Oh, um, Ryder stammered. We were just talking... about Miami. How much we miss it there, old times, all that jazz. I guess we just lost track of time."

Derrick didn't look convinced, but he seemed distracted by something. "Why are you so jittery?" He said to Ryder. "Tell your brother to let you get some sleep instead of sending you out on runs in the middle of the night. I need you alert. I just saw Louis Tomlinson talking to my brother and Remy Shepard, and I have a bad feeling about this."

"I had no idea they even knew each other." Ryder deflected.

"Neither did I." Derrick frowned. "Anyway, they're all going to an after party at some guy named Niall Horan's apartment, Stella, do you know him?"

"He's my best friend." I said calmly.

"Perfect. So you can get us in. Whatever Jet, Louis and Remy are planning, it won't be a secret for long. Ryder, get your brother. We have a party to crash."

Derrick grabbed my hand, dragging me down the hall behind him. I turned around to look at Ryder, who was just standing there, looking heartbroken.

"I'm sorry." I mouthed to him, tears pooling in my eyes. What had I done?

Jet had been right, someone's house of cards had come crashing down. But it wasn't Derrick's.

It was mine.