Devotion [h.s]

254

just a heads up I posted the last chapter at 2am eastern time and I've come to realize that because of the weird time I guess many people missed the notification SO if you happen to be like wtf is going on it's because u missed a chapter due to my stupid time posting !! :) xx

Niall Horan

One week later

It's hard, it's always hard.

Life, love, loyalty - it's all so fucking difficult.

I knew this was what life was going to be like the moment I signed up for this gang when I was eighteen - but I was a different person then. It was what I thought I was meant to do; be bad, live life with no limits or expectations of anyone.

Maybe it was because I felt apart of something, that I was wanted. After being told from the age of five and up that I was nothing but a useless waste of space, being brought into this gang for the first time made me feel needed to others.

I knew only a handful of things when joining Malignant;

I had to kill the wealthy,
Wear the leather jacket,
And live my life with getting any luxury I wanted.

A world-angry, broken juvenile delinquent teenager thought this deal was absolutely amazing. I didn't realize how much I was going to miss out on with this agreement as I got older. With Malignant I got any materialistic thing I wanted, it was great. But I came to know that I was missing one thing..

No one has ever loved me.

Not one girl has ever sat in front of me, running her hands back through my hair with her eyes on mine, whispering to me that she loved me. Not in that situation, and not ever.

Nobody would ever love me for who I was and what I've done. My life was too dark, too twisted and messy. Not everyone gets to spontaneously find something like Amelia and Harry - the literal definition of dark meeting light. Their relationship was a one in a million thing, nothing I'd ever come across. The only people that would understand me are people that have done the same things I have.

And that was where Erica came in.

Erica, the girl that double crossed our gang, got me captured, lied to me to get information, and almost destroyed all our lives.

She was the girl that always said she cared about me - that if it wasn't for Axel, we could've been together.

I wasn't proud of myself when sitting at a bar for the third time this week, across from the same girl that has caused me so much grief but warmth for so long. I wasn't proud for going behind my friends back to see the girl that wanted to end them all - but I have no control sometimes.

Never when it came to Erica.

It was like she had a spell over me, some sort of trance because I always ended up back where she was. I always wanted her, needed her. It was so wrong, but I couldn't stop. I didn't want to walk away from someone who has actually understood me and still stuck around.

She was the closest I ever had to love, even if she lied to me the entire time.

I haven't been seeing her that long recently, it started when Louis and I went underground to inspect the new Deception headquarters. When we split up, I went to the old tattoo parlour to look for her. I don't know why, I could've gotten killed really. But I had to go and at least see if she was there.

But she wasn't.

I asked about her in the tattoo parlour, to a guy behind the counter. He told me that Erica left, that she was no longer apart of Deception due to the loss of their leader last year. Apparently no one has seen her since and it really just confused me.