× Mercury

I spend all of Christmas Eve in my bed.

Everything that happened last night took all my energy and I couldn't do anything but lie under my duvet. I told Grandma that I wasn't feeling very well and that I might have caught the flu, and being a grandmother, she took advantage of the title and quickly made me some chicken noodle soup.

I felt bad about lying to her, but I knew if I told her what had really happened the night before, she would be even more worried about me. Not to mention all the questions she was sure to have.

She took care of me, determined to make me feel better for Christmas by giving me warm blankets, replacing the water she had giving me every hour, and making sure the window was open a crack to keep the air fresh. I could barely utter the word "thanks" because even speaking used too much of my energy.

Jamie was there, too. She knew not to disturbed me so she just stayed with my grandma, helping her make Christmas goodies and do some last minute gift wrapping. I was glad she was here because there wasn't any way I would be able to get off my ass and help her myself.

And then there was Niall. He spent the most time with me, I think. I wasn't too sure because I was a sleep a lot of the time.

I was just being lazy, I thought to myself. But it wasn't like I didn't try to get up and do something. I just physically couldn't do it. My body hurt everywhere and the marks Bradley made on me throbbed under my skin. Too much had happened to me these past few days and Bradley was the last string I had left. Now that that was officially cut, I couldn't do anything but sleep. The only times I got up was to go to the bathroom. I didn't even get up to eat since Grandma brought me soup.

What I really wanted was to go back to London. None of this would have happened if I just stayed in the UK. And then I took that back. Even if I knew all this stuff would happen to me, I still would have come home because Grandma was here and so were my friends and nothing could ever keep me away from them.

Every time I woke up from a nap, Niall would be there, sitting on the bed beside me. He would either have headphones in or a textbook on his lap. Once he even played with my hair and ran his fingers along my arm soothingly. I wasn't sure what possessed him to do that, but it felt so goddamn good that I didn't question it.

I learned a lot about Niall as I was in bed. He fidgets a lot. I always knew that, but I never took the time to understand why. I always thought Niall as being a bit anxious and that his mind worked overtime. Sometimes fidgeting was a sign that someone was thinking hard and was offloading some of the work into their body - playing with their hair, tapping their feet, biting their nails, and picking at their clothes. What was going on inside his head? Knowing him, it could have been anything.

"Do you know how hard it was?" Niall had asked one time after I had woken up from one of my many naps. "To just stay in the hallway and hear what he was saying to you. Imagining what he was doing to you."

I didn't respond to him, but I could imagine.

He was sitting at the foot of the bed, one leg out in front of him. He was playing with a string of the blanket, watching his hands as he looped it between his fingers. His hair was disheveled and his cheeks were flushed. He looked like a little kid, lost and a little confused.

"Letting him go," he continued. "That was a willpower I never knew I had."

Looking at Niall, I came to the conclusion that I needed this with Bradley. It wasn't ideal, I could have done without the bruising and kissing, but it was needed to finally have my closure. I've known for a while now that he was an abuser and a manipulator and just a straight up asshole, but this... this showed me how stupid I really was. It was like looking from the outside in and I couldn't help but laugh at myself. I should have listened to Jamie from the get-go.

Tears swelled in my eyes and I didn't even bother to stop them. I didn't deserve someone like Jamie or Niall. They've been nothing but good, building my confidence back up only for me to knock all their progress down like a ton of building blocks the moment Bradley touches me.

I was weak, and I was doing nothing but hurting everyone around me. The look on Niall's face said that loud and clear.

"The worst part of this is that I see myself in him," Niall whispered.

The words right there hit a cord in me like an out of tune guitar. My heart actually physically jumped in my chest. If this was a few months ago, hell yeah, I wouldn't have argued with him. I always believed Bradley and Niall were the same person, both uses girls and only shows sides of themselves they want to display. But I've learned so much in so little time, that I've made the mistake to think that for far too long. The two of them couldn't have been more opposite.

"You are no Bradley," I said softly.

Sitting up from the bed, I reached over and grabbed his hand from his lap and laced my fingers with his. His mind was reeling with millions of thoughts, and from the constant fidgeting, I knew over half of them were a mix of heartbroken and perplexing feelings.

I ran my thumb up the back of his hand, tracing along the prominent vain running from his fingers, to his wrist, and all down his arm. He visibly shivered from my touch.

"Thank you," I added. "For... everything these past few days. Thank you for not making me talk about them, and thank you for not asking any questions. It's been really tough for me, but I'm really glad you're here."

Niall squeezed my hand and gave me a soft smile, though it didn't reach his eyes.

Eventually the day came to an end and the next time I woke up it was Christmas morning.

I think Grandma was more excited about today than anyone else. When I stepped out of my bedroom, I found her in the kitchen with flour on her face and colorful bows stuck to her ugly Santa sweater. She was milling around, preparing Christmas dinner and wasn't even aware when I took a seat at the island counter.

Christmas had always been her holiday. She was always lively, but you hadn't seen anything if you hadn't seen her on Jesus's birthday.

Her curly gray hair was pulled back in reindeer antlers and her quarter moon shaped glasses had fallen to the edge of her nose, and her dull blue eyes were alive with festivities. If Santa were real, I might have mistaken her as Mrs. Claus.

Three minutes later she finally noticed I was watching her. "You're awake!"

She walked around the island and gave me a big hug. She was small, only going up to my shoulders, but her bear hugs were more like bear traps. "I'm sorry for staying in my room all of Christmas Eve," I told her.

"Oh, nonsense," she said with a wave of her hand. "Niall and Jamie make good company. Are you feeling better?"

Niall walked into the kitchen then, hair messy and in the middle of a yawn. He caught my eye and nodded in my direction before he went to the sink and grabbed a glass of water.

He may not have done a lot for me these past few days - he didn't have any reason to - but he did stay by my side through all of it. Comfort didn't necessarily mean wrapping your arm around someone and telling them that everything was going to be alright. Sometimes just being near the person was enough, because you know they're there for you.

"I'm feeling better," I assured her.

The three of us sat down and ate some toast and eggs before we moved into the living room. There wasn't very many presents under the tree, but there never really was. Grandma and I usually just exchange one or two gifts and send Anders' in the mail and hope he gets it in time for Christmas.

This year I had given her a Holly branch brooch with three little barriers on it and a red vest to match. Grandma had given me a maroon sweater and a scarf for those "cold London days", as she had put it.

I had wrapped myself up in a turtleneck sweater for the day. Bradley's mouth had left marks all over my body that I didn't have much choice but to cover up head to toe. I didn't want Grandma to see the purple and blue bruises, and most importantly, I didn't want to be reminded of them.

"This says it's for you," Grandma said as she sat another present in my lap. It was small and wrapped neatly in simple royal blue paper with a bow on it. It didn't say who it was from.

Tearing the paper open, I found a white box inside. I dug my nail into the tape that kept the box shut and opened the top. A lighter. That was it; just a simple lighter with a soccer ball pattern. I looked beside me at Niall knowingly.

He laughed. "Guilty."

"You think that's funny?" I asked him. I reached down and threw a red box at him, only a little bigger than the one he gave me. "Open it."

He did as I said and pulled out a night light in the shape of a soccer ball. He just glared at me as I laughed. Clearly we had the same idea as a gift; the only difference was that Niall could actually use mine. There was no way in hell I was ever going to use the lighter.

Niall sat the light beside him and handed me another present. "I did get you something else."

I wanted to scold him, saying that he didn't need to get me anything, but my curiosity was way too high to say anything. It seemed to be the same size as the box the lighter was in, wrapped in the same royal blue. A lot slower than I had before, I tore the paper open and took the top off. But instead of a lighter, a silver band lay in the center.

"Oh my god," I gapped.

Carefully, I took out the ring and soon discovered it was looped with a chain necklace. The side of the band was engraved with tree branches, just like the necklace I had lost a while ago.

"Is this-?"

"Yeah," Niall nodded. "I went to the restaurant and looked all over my car, but didn't find it. I ended up calling every pawn shop in London asking if they had a ring with the same description. I eventually found it."

I stared at him. "How much was it?"

"Doesn't matter."

Holding the necklace up, the light bounced off the ring, making it sparkle. Knowing Niall went through all that trouble just to find it, and paid God knows how much for it, I knew I needed to make it up to him somehow. I suddenly felt really bad about just getting him a joke gift.

"Well," Grandma interrupted. "That's going to be hard to beat, but I wanted to save this for last."

She handed me a white letter envelope. I placed the necklace back in the box and took the envelope from her. I would be lying if I said I knew what was inside. There wasn't any writing on the front, no sticker sealing it shut, nothing. I quickly ripped the seal and took out what was inside.

It was a stack of pictures.

"They're from your mother's camera," Grandma clarified once she saw my confusion. "You left the film here during Thanksgiving so I took the liberty to develop them for you. Some of them didn't turn out because of light exposure, but a majority of them are there."

There were a dozen pictures of landscapes, of people I didn't know, and pets I haven't seen before. They were well posed and captured photographs, but I was kind of disappointed. I was expecting to find pictures of my mom at the very least. But I came up empty handed.

"Who're they?" Niall asked from beside me as he pointed to one of the pictures.

I was about to say that I had no idea, that I had no idea who any of these people were, but when I took out the picture from the stack, my heart nearly jumped out of my chest.

It was grainy, not as well taken like the others were, but it was clear to see who was in the image. They were at a beach, or maybe at a lake, and they were playing soccer. The guy had brown hair and a white shirt, barefoot as he had the ball between his feet. The girl in front of him who was trying to get the ball away had hair the same color as mine and was wearing a pink and blue floral dress with round sunglasses covering her eyes. In the corner, it had the date the picture was taken; four years before I was born.

"They're my parents," I told him.

× × ×

Christmas went surprisingly perfect. It was sad that I had to even be surprised about that, but considering how the past few days went, yeah, I was surprised. There wasn't any crying, so that was a bonus. No interruptions of people who verbally abused me and no old neighbor to give me something from my past.

I decided to cut my vacation short and go back to London early. It was never my plan to go back before New Year's, but this trip needed to come to an end. Too much had happened and I'm just tired - so completely and utterly exhausted.

Breaking the news to Grandma was hard, but she understood that I needed to go back (even if she didn't understand why). Besides, in order to get back to campus in time for soccer practice on Monday, I would have needed to leave shortly after the ball drop. This was just easer.

I was sitting on my bed, watching the video of my mom the night of the fire, with dad's wedding band around my neck once again. I think I watched it about fifty times, or five hundred. I lost track. I often found myself looking over at my nightstand at the picture Grandma had given me. I didn't have very many pictures of my parents as they had all burned away in the fire, so I was happy to come across this one.

The light in the room shifted and I looked up to see Niall leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. I paused the video on the camera.

His jaw clenched and unclenched as he looked at the carpeted floor. "Her hobby was photography," he finally said.

I watched Niall closely as he gently closed the door and took a seat on the edge of the bed. I wasn't sure what he was going on about, but I didn't interrupt him.

"She was an only child, but she always wanted to have a younger sibling," he continued. "Favorite color was orange and she had a calico cat named Patches. She didn't know what she wanted to go to school to be, and she had a knack to cheer me up no matter the situation."

It only hit me then about whom he was talking about. My eyes grew wide and I scooted forward to sit next to him. At the beach he didn't want to talk about Alina, so that meant sometime between then and now had changed. I didn't ask him what exactly, because he was finally opening up to me and I didn't want to miss a single word.

"She read every single Steven King book. Her preferred story of his was IT for some reason," Niall said, leaning forward on his elbows and staring at something on the floor. "Her favorite actress is Anne Hathaway and her favorite movie is Ella Enchanted."

He was good at hiding it, but I knew it was hard for him to talk about her. I knew because I felt the same way with my parents.

"She had a little freckle on the tip of her nose and a scar on her knee from when she fell off her bike at seven years old."

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked. "What changed your mind?"

"I was just thinking about everything you've been through," he said softly. "Not just these past few days, but your whole life. I knew it was my turn for you to hear something from me."

"Do you feel any better for sharing?"

He shrugged. "The reason I didn't want to talk about her is because she's irrelevant to my life now. She's not a part of it anymore and she never will be. That's the difference between Alina and your parents. You still want to remember them. I could care less about Alina."

Niall looked at me, something in his eyes I couldn't read seemed to sparkle. Then in one swift motion, he kissed me.

It came as a surprise, but I didn't push him away. Instead, I increased the intensity by putting my arms around his neck as we fell backwards onto the bed. I felt the familiar heat rise through my core until I was burning. It was like a never ending flame between us with little hope to ever be extinguished.

I ran a hand up the back of his neck, into his messy hair, and heard a deep groan against my lips. Then he moved his mouth away from mine until he was kissing along my jaw. Before I could say anything else, his hands slipped under my turtleneck and began running up my ribs. My skin met the cool air of the room as he dragged my sweater higher and higher.

My skin was aflame as Niall squeezed my breasts over my black bra, running his fingers along the border between the cups and my flesh. My stomach was in knots, but the good kind - the kind that I knew would convert into pure energy and electricity.

But the pleasure hadn't yet completely consumed me because this uncontrollable part of my brain made me stop.

"Niall, stop... wait," I said as I gently pushed on his chest. "What about my Grandma?"

"She's across the street with the neighbors," Niall smirked above me. "Did you really think I would do this with her in the house? I'm not an animal, ya know."

"What if she comes in?" I pressed.

"All I need is five."

Panting, I challenged him, "Think you can make me come in five minutes?"

"Know I can." And the confidence in his voice told me he knew he was right.

As soon as I leaned back against the mattress, his mouth was on me again. His hands running up my sides were freezing, but it didn't matter because the chill was quickly succumbed from the fire burning through me. He shifted so he was straddling my waist, only breaking the kiss to pull my sweater over my head. I could feel him slowly grow hard against my stomach.

When Niall pulled away and looked over my shirtless torso, I heard him inhaled sharply. When I looked at him, I expected to find his eyes dark, but what I saw wasn't lust. It was horror.

"Fuck, Lynn," he breathed as he looked at my neck, chest, and stomach. "Did he do this to you?"

I didn't need to give him an answer, he already knew. A lump had started to form in my throat and I swallowed just as my eyes went blurry with tears. The ecstasy I had been feeling made me forget all about Bradley's marks on me. Having Niall's hands and mouth on my body eased all the pain away, leaving nothing in its trail but pure bliss. But now that he took notice in them, so did I, and the memories came flooding back instantly.

But then Niall's mouth slowly brushed over one of the marks on my neck. It was so soft, almost as if he didn't do it all. And then he moved to the next bruise, ghosting his lips over the ugly mark. It was almost exactly what Bradley had done to me last night, but this wasn't possessive, it didn't hurt to be in Niall's arms as his lips gently kissed my body. His touch was welcoming, almost like he was healing all the hurt Bradley had created with just one kiss.

"I know why you did it," he breathed out, running his thumb under my eye to catch the stray tear. "I know why you let Bradley do this."

"Really? Then tell me because I have no idea."

He kissed the skin just above my waistband. "He's familiar to you," he started softly. "Too many important people in your life have left, but he's still here showing you what you want to see. I get it. It's not much different to my sleeping around. It's a way to cope."

"To be abused?"

"To feel wanted."

There were many differences between the two of them, but the main thing was that while Bradley was always under my skin, Niall was in my bloodstream.

"You know," Niall started, his fingers trickled down my body in an agonizingly slow rate. He continued to trace feather-light kisses over my skin and I focused on the feeling of his hands and the sound of his erratic breathing. "I never repaid you for getting me out of that speeding ticket."

I didn't have a chance to say anything as his hand slid down into my leggings. He didn't go any further than that as he looked at me, asking for permission. That voice in the back of my head was back, the one from the very first kiss we shared in the stadium hallway; this was a terrible idea. But just like all the other times, I ignored it and gave Niall a curt nod.

"Five minutes starts now," he smirked.

A low groan left my lips as Niall's hand bypassed my flimsy panties and stuck a finger into my warmth, drawing slow circles around my clit. I could feel that coil of desire tightening inside me, faster than ever before.

Just as I had been utterly reduced from words to formless sounds, his free hand undid the clasp of my bra and let the fabric fall to my sides. As soon as my breasts were exposed, his head lowered and he took one nipple in his mouth, sucking just hard enough for the sensation to be sharply pleasurable. I felt the hand that wasn't working me into a withering puddle trail up my side until it gripped my own.

He placed another finger inside me gently, slowly moving in and out and I started to squirm underneath him.

"Ya going to come?" he asked. I made a whimper sound in response. "Tell me how good it feels. Want to hear ya."

"Fuck," I breathed out, trying my best to catch my breath. Niall kissed a line up between my breasts, but making sure not to make any new marks were he left. "Feels so fucking good. Don't- don't stop- Shit!"

The trail had just reached my throat when he stretched his fingers up as far as he could, and the depth was all I needed to go right over the edge. The moan that left my mouth was a surprise as Niall pulled one helluva orgasm out of me.

I stopped breathing, my eyes shut tight, and my hand fisted Niall's hair. My body was consumed by a liquid wave of pleasure, like diving into a pool of ecstasy and feeling it coat my skin as I crashed down below the surface.

It took me a long time to come down, and my body ached as I did, but in an entirely new way than it had before.

"You look so fucking beautiful right now," Niall said, squeezing my hand one last time before letting go.

I blinked hard to clear my vision as the high slowly came down around me. Niall removed his fingers and stuck them in his mouth, sucking them clean of my orgasm. He then fixed my leggings and reached for a shirt on the floor and pulled it over my head, straightening it while I just stared at him, trying to regain my wits. My fingers had the usual pins and needles I had started to grow accustomed to.

That blaze of lust hadn't left his eyes, and he leaned forward to kiss me just as we heard the front door open and close, signaling that Grandma was back from the neighbors.

Niall gave me a smug smile. "Three minutes."