Collide, Ignite

Reilly tossed and turned all night, her sleep riddled with images of a life she'd tried to leave behind, along with Niall and his confusion plagued expression. She woke up several times to tears on her cheeks and an aching in her chest, and each time her thoughts immediately turned to Niall sleeping just down the hall. He was so close, yet so far away. It was no different when the morning light peeked though the blinds and she finally gave up trying to get her mind to rest.

Just like so many other things, she didn't know how it had happened. One minute she was fumbling for words and the next all the wrong ones were flying out of her mouth. The things she'd implied were things only Lexie knew because she had been there, but also things Lexie didn't know. Things Reilly wasn't proud of. Things she tried so hard to forget, and didn't know how to forgive herself for. And since she opened her big, stupid mouth, there was no way of getting out of talking to Niall about them, short of sneaking out his house before he woke up and either finding somewhere else to stay or getting on a plane to go back to London if the weather permitted.

Neither seemed like a viable option and she released a heavy sigh. Finding the right words to explain those things was going to be difficult. Her mind was already a jumble of thoughts, trying to make sense of the feelings stirring inside of her. She was trying to write them off as being unresolved from years before, but there was something else nagging at her that she couldn't shake.

She sat up and looked around the room, trying to remember what she'd done with her phone. It had been several days since she'd last talked to Owen, a few days since she'd heard from Lexie, and only just over a day since she'd spoken to Liam, whose message she didn't ever get around to responding to. None of that really concerned her, but she felt like it should.

Her phone was dead when she finally located it, and she rummaged through her purse for her charger. When the device came to life it showed several messages. There was a voice mail from Owen, which was him 'just checking in' and wishing her a happy Christmas, another text message from Liam asking if everything was okay, a message from Lexie which questioned if Reilly was out of her mind. The one she hadn't expected was from Zayn, in which he very simply stated that she shouldn't be in Ireland with Niall.

She quickly responded to everyone except Owen. Guilt weighed on her once again, but this time it wasn't as fleeting as it had been before. Lexie and Zayn were right. If she was going to be with anyone other than family on Christmas, it should have been Owen. He should have been the one she went to see, not Niall.

But then she had to wonder, was dancing with Niall at Louis' party wrong? Was being upset that he was upset with her wrong? Was wanting to be his friend again wrong? Was it wrong that she wanted to tell him things that she hadn't told anyone else? Was she wrong for feeling like she owed him any explanation in the first place? It didn't seem wrong, because it went back to before she'd ever even met Owen. It didn't involve him. But just because it didn't seem wrong at first glance didn't mean it was right.

She shook her head, trying to shake off the thoughts that were filling her head and the guilt that was taking over her body. The fact of the matter was that she was there, and she couldn't change the fact that she'd come. She threw the blankets off and slid off the bed. It was early, though not as early as she used to get up. Still, Niall would likely be sleeping for hours before he finally dragged himself out of bed.

Reilly used that knowledge to her advantage and crept down the stairs. She wasn't hungry, so she didn't go into the kitchen to make breakfast. Instead, she wandered through the house. She'd seen the upstairs the day before, but hadn't seen much downstairs other than the entryway and the kitchen.

The living room held the basic furniture you would find in any other living room, and a large flat screen television. She noticed the speakers up in the corners of the room for surround sound. The next room also had a sofa and a smaller flat screen TV. On the shelf of the TV stand were a couple video game consoles and controllers. She moved down a short hallway and passed a bathroom before ending up in front of a closed door.

When she pushed open the door, the room that was revealed to her came as a bit of a surprise. There was a desk in one corner with a cabinet next to it. If that was all you looked at, it would be an office. But if you kept looking, you would see two tall bookshelves filled with books on one of the short walls. Across the room was an overstuffed chair positioned next to a window. And on the other short wall were cubbies filled with children's toys and games.

Reilly moved into the room, leaving the door open behind her, and went over to the toys. There was a balance of toys geared toward little boys and those aimed at little girls. Baby dolls and dinosaurs, toy cars and miniature purses, building blocks. She tried not to read too much into it and turned to walk across the room to the bookshelves.

She glanced over the spines of the books on the first bookshelf, surprised at some of the titles he had. He'd told her not long after they'd met that he didn't read much. Some of the books he had were books she'd read, some she'd been meaning to read, and some she'd never heard of. She moved onto the other book and her eyes swept over a familiar title that nearly made her heart stop. Just as she was reaching for it, she heard a noise behind her.

Her hand froze, hovering just in front of the novel, and she turned around slowly. Niall stood in the doorway, dressed in gray sweatpants and a white tshirt. His hair was disheveled and he had bags underneath his eyes like he'd been tossing and turning all night instead of resting peacefully. For a brief moment, Reilly wondered if she looked the same.

"What's with the kids toys?" she asked him. He had just opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it, knowing she wouldn't want to respond to whatever he was going to say.

"For my nephew and niece when they come over," he answered easily, though he sounded as exhausted as he looked.

Reilly nodded. "You look like hell," she told him.

Niall let out a soft laugh and ran a hand over his face. "Yeah, I'm sure. Hardly slept all night. Had a lot on my mind, I guess, with you right down the hall," he said his voice getting quieter with each word he spoke, and quieter still when he continued. "So close, and still so far away."

"Don't do that," she said, turning back to the bookshelf. She quickly located the book she'd seen just a moment ago and plucked it off the shelf.

"Don't do what?" he asked, slipping his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants and leaning against the door frame.

She half-turned toward him, enough to see the expression of confusion written across his face. "Feel pity for me after being pissed at me for days. Or sympathy. Or whatever you want to call it, just because I said some stupid things I shouldn't have last night. I didn't need it back when we were younger, and I definitely don't need it now, nor do I want it. I'm fine," she said firmly but refusing to make eye contact.

Niall let out a heavy sigh. "Gettin' real tired of you and everyone else always tellin' me what to feel," he confessed. "You did it five years ago, and so did Lou and Liam. You're all doin' it now." He stood up straight again and fixed his eyes on the side of her face. "Just, sick of it," he said.

Her stomach jumped and her eyes widened a little at the sharpness of his tone. Sure, he'd been angry with her and was yelling at her before, but this felt different. "Niall, I didn't-" she started, her tone much softer than before, but he cut her off.

"I don't want to fight with you right now, Reilly," he told her. "I don't want to hear whatever excuses you think will make me feel better. I want to talk about what you said last night before you ran away from me," he said, and then after a short pause added, "again."

Reilly only shook her head and glanced at the bookshelf next to her, and then looked down at the book her hands. "I thought you told me you didn't like to read," she said, attempting to change the subject. She wasn't ready to talk about the past yet. When she'd left London, she thought maybe she could. But she was wrong. And Liam was wrong in telling her that she could do it. There was too much there she wasn't ready to face yet.

Niall sighed heavily and leaned against the door frame again. The distance they kept between them felt almost necessary. Like they needed the space for all the words they hadn't said to each other over the last five years, and for all the unresolved feelings they'd both felt since they met. Space for the silence that started to hurt if they stood too close.

"I didn't. But, you know, sometimes you listen when other people talk about things they've read and how the words can mean so much more than the story they're written into. And it makes them curious. Sometimes you find little pieces of yourself inside a book that you didn't know were there before," he said. Tears were filling Reilly's eyes as he paraphrased something she'd said to him a long time ago. "And suddenly the world is a more colorful place, even if only for a few moments."

She closed her eyes and filled her lungs with air, trying to steady her suddenly shaky breathing. "You've read all these?" she asked after expelling the air she'd taken in.

He shook his head, but she still wouldn't look at him. "The ones on that shelf you took that book from, I've read. Still workin' on gettin' to the ones over there," he said.

She assumed he motioned to the other set of bookshelves, but kept her eyes trained on the book in her hands. By the way the butterflies and begun to swirl in her stomach, she knew without looking up that he was slowly moving toward her.

"Can we talk about last night?" he asked. His voice was soft, but so much closer than before. Reilly wanted to move away but the only place she could go was the corner.

Instead she flipped open the book and let her eyes scan the pages. She shook her head. "I found this book not long after my mom died. It's one of my favorites," she said, her voice just barely above a whisper. "I can't believe you have it."

"Reilly," he said. He was almost directly in front her, and she was fighting back tears with everything she had in her.

"I can't believe you've read it," she whispered.

His hands covered over hers, sending a tingling sensation up her arms and all through her body, and he closed the book. "Reilly, look at me," he said, but she didn't. He took the book from her and placed it back on the bookshelf and went on anyway. "You came here and said you wanted to explain things to me. I've giving you that chance now. Look at me," he said again. Slowly she lifted her head and raised her eyes to meet his. There was still a sadness in them, but the anger had been replaced by something else she couldn't quite put her finger on. "What did you mean last night when you said that you felt awful every time you saw me because it reminded you that the girl you tried to leave behind was still inside of you?" he asked, his eyes locked on hers.

She shook her head at him again. "What if I'm not ready to tell you that? What if I thought I was, but I'm too scared to face certain things that are inside of me?" she asked him. "I told you a long time ago that I didn't have it in me to be more than your friend, and there was a reason for that," she said.

"And I never understood that. You never explained why," he said. It was obvious he was growing frustrated. "And I can't understand now how you couldn't be with me, but you don't seem to have any trouble bein' with this Owen fella." His tone had become a little sharper, and his voice had raised a little, but he didn't sound angry. This time he sounded hurt.

Reilly's own feelings and frustrations had started to bubble inside her, and his tone only pushed her over the edge. "Because it's different with him," she exploded. She wasn't yelling, but she wasn't just speaking either. "Okay? It's easy with him," she said.

Niall flinched visibly at her words. "It could have been easy with us, also. You were the one makin' it hard," he said. "All I ever did was show you that I wanted to be with you," he told her. "And you can tell yourself whatever you want to, but we weren't just friends."

Tears she didn't even realize had filled her eyes spilled over onto her cheeks. Crying all the time had grown exhausting. "I know!" she exclaimed, exasperated, as she aggressively wiped away at the wetness. "I know."

But she left it at that, which only caused Niall to grow more frustrated. "What?" he hollered. "What part of that do you know?" he questioned.

"All of it!" she yelled back. "I know all of it. I know that I made things hard. I know that you were never anything but gentle and kind and caring and that when you did get angry and blow up it was because I screwed up and you were frustrated. And I know, God, I know we were more than just friends. Okay? I know I'm the one who ruined everything," she said.

By then tears were streaming down her face but she couldn't muster the energy to wipe them away. She just let them fall, and, for once, let her outside show how she felt on the inside. "I never intended to hurt you the way I did. I felt a lot of things for you that scared me. Terrified me, actually. But you had this way of making me feel so good, and I just kept taking that from you without ever really giving anything back. If I didn't do what I did, Niall, I probably would have drained everything good from you until you were just barely a shell of the happy-go-lucky boy you were before you met me," she admitted. Her voice wavered the entire time she was talking, but she spoke with complete honesty.

Niall stared at her for a long moment but something didn't fit. "I still don't understand. You're leavin' something out, Reilly. What were you doing back in Boston that made ya think you're such an awful person?" he asked.

She drew in a deep breath as she pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. Looking at him was the hardest part, but there was no way he was letting her get out of this conversation. She exhaled unsteadily. "After Zachary left," she started.

"Nuh uh," Niall interrupted. His hands closed gently around her wrists and he pulled her hands away from her face. "You look at me when you're talkin' to me."

She blinked a few times. Her vision was blurry from how hard her hands were pressed against her eyes. Once Niall came into focus, she looked down at her hands, waiting for him to release the hold he had on the them. Waiting for the tingling where his skin touched hers to stop. But he held on, perhaps as a way to let her know that he was there, that he was listening. Or maybe for some other reason that she couldn't fathom.

Drawing in a deep breath, Reilly looked up to meet Niall's eyes again. She wasn't ready for this, but if she waited until she was, the words would never be spoken. "After Zachary left to go live with his dad, I guess I just kind of lost myself a little. During the school year I could keep myself busy with school work and studying and practicing dance, and coaching kids soccer. But when the summer came there was only so much I could do. I took a class at a local community college, and I was dancing still but it just wasn't enough. I would spend time at Lexie's house but inevitably I had to go home at some point," she said, trying to piece the words together in the right order. Memories flashed in her mind and tore at her insides.

"I hated being there. My stepmother mostly just ignored me, which was probably a blessing in some twisted way. But Fallon was awful to me. She blamed me for Mom being dead. My father was awful to me. He didn't think I was his child, and he blamed me for my mom being dead, also. I guess, when people repeatedly say horrible things to you, it gets to a point where you start to believe them." She paused and drew in a breath. She closed her eyes for a beat longer than a standard blink. The intensity with which Niall was looking at her was making breathing difficult and her thoughts jumble.

"I was looking for anything to make myself feel better. Lexie and I started going to parties. Well, Lexie already went to parties. She's always been a lot more outgoing than I am. But I started going with her. I think it really surprised her the first time I went, but she liked having me there, too. We would drink and dance. And then I would drink a little more. And then I would drink more, until I'd drank entirely too much. And then I would go find a boy. At first I would just dance and make out with him, whoever he was. But then, after a few months, that wasn't enough," she said.

Over the few minutes she'd been talking Niall's expression had changed several times, and her heart broke at the one he wore at that moment. "That's why you asked us that morning after we brought you home if you'd tried to kiss any of us," he said.

Reilly nodded. "I learned how to drink to the point where I was still aware of what I was doing, but didn't care. It really didn't happen that many times, I suppose, but I wasn't as careful as I should have been. I think the thing that made me feel the worst was," she sighed quietly and paused for a moment. "There was this kid in one of my classes. I guess I kind of knew he had a thing for me, but we were both kind of shy. Well, one night I was feeling particularly bad. My father and Fallon had both been really awful to me. And this was during the school year. I went to a party and I drank more than I should have and I had his number from when we'd worked on a project together. I called him and told him to come to the party. And as soon as he got there, I took him upstairs. I knew he liked me, and I had sex with him, and then I just left." Niall let go of her wrist when she reached up to wipe at the tears that started to fall again. "I mean, how awful of me was that. I didn't really give two shits about him, but I used his feelings for me to make myself feel better for just a minute."

"Reilly-" he started, but she put her free hand up to silence him.

"When I woke up the next morning, I was naked and next to someone I didn't know," she said. "I slept with two people in the same night. I wasn't hungover but when I realized what I'd done, I felt sick to my stomach." She paused long enough that Niall opened his mouth to say something, but she didn't let him. "I've never actually admitted to that out loud. Lexie doesn't even know. She wasn't with me that night," she said. "And I was doing all of this while still making perfect grades in school. Even if I'd had someone at home who cared, they wouldn't have ever known something was up."

Niall released his hold on her other wrist and took a small step back. Self loathing filled Reilly and she closed her eyes, waiting for him to tell her that she was, in fact, the awful person she felt she was. But he didn't say anything. When she opened her eyes again, he was staring intently at her, waiting for her to continue because he knew there was more.

She drew in a shaky breath. "I got my shit together after that. I took extra classes, I spent more time coaching and dancing. I stopped going out and drinking. And then I moved to London, and I was doing okay. I mean, I didn't have any friends but I was starting over. Then you and Liam and Harry and Zayn and Louis took me out of a potentially bad situation, and insinuated yourselves into my life. But you," she sighed heavily. "You were more than I bargained for. I tried to keep my distance but you made me feel things. Good things. I didn't realize what I was doing at first. But it was a lot like what I did to that boy from high school. Except it was different because I cared about you. I cared about you, but I was still using what you felt for me to make myself feel better," she said. She hadn't realized it, but she'd started talking really fast, and she paused for a long moment to catch her breath. "Now do you understand?" she asked.

He nodded tentatively and stayed quiet. Reilly didn't know what else to say, so she stayed quiet as well and waited, once again, for him to tell her what her father and sister had told her so many times. She waited to hear him say that she didn't deserve to be loved. That it was her fault. She waited for him to tell her to leave, and that he never wanted to see her again.

But those words never came. "You have to forgive yourself, Darlin'," he said finally. "You made some mistakes, but have you learned from them?" he asked but didn't give her a chance to respond before continuing on. "You have your whole life ahead of you. Do you really want to spend all that time hating yourself for what you did when you were a kid? Ya can't go back and change it, but once ya forgive yourself and move on, you can grow into the person you have the potential to become."

Reilly stared at him, shocked at his words. It took a moment for her to find her voice. When she did, it was with tears slowly rolling down her face again. "I was sure you would hate me once I told you," she said softly and Niall took a step toward her. "I kind of hate me," she whispered.

He reached out and gently wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. His fingers softly brushed her face and slid down to her neck. He took another step toward her. "Could never hate ya," he said as he brushed a tear off her other cheek.

She glanced up at him as he leaned down and his other hand slid down her face. His fingers brushed against her neck and he used the side of his hand at her jaw to lift her chin up. He stroked her cheek with his thumb and leaned down until his face was only inches away from hers.

She inhaled sharply when his breath hit her lips. "Niall," she said softly and he hummed in response. "I'm engaged," she reminded him.

His hands dropped from her face and he exhaled a sigh. His eyes closed and he rested his forehead against hers for a moment. "I know," he said quietly and lifted his head. He took a step back. "I know."