Goodnight, Moon.

Niall Horan was a hard one to resist, back when I met him. With those forget-me-not blue eyes and smooth singing, I fell for him instantly. We were as smitten as any other pair of teenagers deeply in love.

But beneath the mask my Niall always wore, he’d hidden away a side of him which none had ever seen.

Aside from myself.

I’d discovered it by accident one day, when I asked him why he wasn’t performing with the lads. He’d growled at me, shoving me back and pinning my fragile wrists against the wall. Before he released me, he’d said:

“None of what I do is your business, Luna.”

He’d been so distraught after he’d realised he hurt me. He wouldn’t stop apologising, and after a long while, I forgave him.

Still, I tried to coax him into telling me more about it, still tried to ask him why he was withdrawing from the boys. Try as he might to avoid them, he was still one-fifth of the worldwide musical sensation, One Direction, and people were beginning to talk.

All he’d do was push me away with a, “Go away, love.”

I wanted to know what was wrong, I truly did. I never failed to test his limits, whether we were out eating, shopping, or even while he so calmly watched the others divide his solo amongst themselves and rehearse it. But the violent side he’d shown me never surfaced again.

We all were certain something was off when he stopped eating. My Niall loved food as much as he loved music, though he claimed I came first in his life.

I whispered with his four band mates while he was asleep. “Perhaps he’s only stressed,” Liam suggested. Liam was always the level-headed one, always the last to be suspicious.

Louis shook his head at him. “I reckon he’s completely mental. Bonkers, really. He’d have to be if he’s given up food.”

I was watching him toss and turn in his slumber, whimpering and scrabbling at his pale face until it turned raw and red. Tears pricked my eyes at the pain he must have been feeling. I wanted to grab his hand, to hold onto it and just never let go, yet the other lads didn’t think it was a good idea.

“Say he’s actually gone mental, Luna,” Zayn told me.

Harry chimed in, “He might attack you.”

“But you’re safe with us, of course,” Liam assured.

I had to know, though. I had to find out for myself. I tried several times to take him to the hospital, get him checked by a doctor, but he always refused to come along. I wanted to break down and sob each time he turned his back on me.

“Niall, come with me,” I’d said that day. I held out my hand to him, and he surprised me with how gently he took hold of my outstretched fingers.

He never said a word.

I led him to the swimming pool behind the hotel we were staying at, and handed him a pair of red swim trunks. I pulled my own shirt over my head and tugged down my shorts, revealing the modest one-piece he’d bought me last year at my request (he wanted me to get the bikini).

“The water’s warm,” I told him, stepping into the pool. “Join me, please?”

He waded in after me and placed his hands on my waist, smiling at me a bit shyly, the way he did when we first met. At that moment, he was my Niall once more. I sighed and leaned into him.

“I knew they were wrong, Niall. I knew you were okay.”

I entwined his fingers with mine, and stood on my toes, and kissed him.

He pulled away first, and I was horrified when I realised his irises weren’t the laughing, happy blue of the sky. Rather, they were darker; a brooding navy colour that I knew didn’t belong to him.

“You should have listened to them, Luna.”

Suddenly, his grip tightened on me and held me in place as I struggled.

“You should have stayed with them.”

The last thing I felt before my head went under was the pressure of his cold lips against my own.

“I think I am mad, after all.”