I slept a bit better that night. There was still something missing, but while I was still a bit restless, I began thinking. The restlessness could be caused by the fact that we hadn’t finished the mating process. That’s why Niall was all I could think about, why I was all he could think about. It was why the two of us laid in bed wishing to replay the night we made love to each other for that brief yet intimate time.

We just had to finish the process.

I woke up the next morning bright and early to begin making breakfast. It was only a bit surprising to find Niall up, but it was a surprise to find him looking so . . . terrible. I don’t mean he looked ugly or anything like that because, trust me, that wasn’t it. Even though he looked pretty damn sick, like flu sick even, he was still freaking sexy.

I immediately rushed to stand in front of him, my eyes wide. “Niall, are you okay?”

He gave me a half-hearted smile and began coughing a little. “I’m alright, I guess. Still kicking. I just don’t feel so great. I came to get some hot chocolate or something.” He pouted. “Evie, I’m sick.”

His cheeks were rosy, so I checked his forehead. Sure enough, he was running a slight fever. “What’s the matter?”

“I have a sore throat,” he began, and his eyes peered into mine in the most innocent of ways. “My body aches, and my head hurts pretty bad. And my heart’s been beating irregularly.”

That caught my attention, and kind of alarmed me. “Oh?”

He nodded. “That’s been going on for a while now, but every time I see you, my heart skips a beat, and I feel like I’m in heaven. At least what I imagine heaven’s gonna feel like.”

This surprised me, a lot, and my cheeks began to heat up. “Niall . . . .”

“It’s only the truth,” he murmured. “Can we cuddle on the couch for a bit?” To my delight, he started singing into my ear. “I want you to rock me, rock me, rock me, yeah.”

I shook my head, and using literally every drop of willpower I had in me, I gently pushed him back from me. “No, no. Go on back to bed. I’ll get you some hot chocolate, and you’ll get yourself some much needed rest. I’m serious. Just take the day off. Maybe you’re just exhausted. Lack of sleep does that to a person.”

He let out a soft laugh. “You look a bit better, like you got some last night. Did you?”

I nodded. “I did, and I thought you would’ve, too. But you didn’t. I can’t figure out why. We didn’t do anything new last night, didn’t finish the mating process. I’m pretty sure that’s why we can’t sleep. I got to sleep a little better, though.”

Despite his weak and sickly state, he smiled a goofy smile at me. “Good. I’m glad, my dear. I’m not sure why either. Maybe I will soon. I’ll go try now. If I feel better when Brinley gets here, we’ll have a meeting. If not, you, Brinley, and Harry will. Or Liam. Or Zayn. Or Louis.” He frowned. “I guess even all of them.”

I smiled sheepishly and nodded. “Alright, Niall. Now, just scoot yourself on into your room.”

---

It wasn’t surprising to me to find Brinley arriving at noon, seemingly hung over. She was much crankier than usual, and she didn’t look like she wanted to be alive at the moment.

Of course, the guys were immediately ready to get down to business, and she perked up when four of the five members of One Direction came in the room. She lost all the attitude and went into ultra-flirt mode.

Harry flipped the chair around so that he was sitting in it backwards. “Alright. Brinley, you weren’t here, so you don’t know. Niall’s not feeling well today, so he’s taking the day off. Instead, we’ll be helping you guys out.”

Liam snapped. “Before we forget, the semi-finalists are all singing a song, and each gender is singing a song. So, the semi-finalists are singing Radioactive by Imagine Dragons, and the girls are singing Crazy Kids by Ke$ha. Is that right?”

“Correct,” Louis said, and he looked between both of us with a small smile.

I wasn’t surprised to hear a coughing Niall shuffling out of the room and to the farthest end of the table. He had a blanket wrapped over him, and truth be told, he looked even worse than he did this morning.

He coughed into his arm and swallowed before looking between us. “I feel like I should say this. I’ll hurry away so I don’t get you lassies sick as well, but I wanted to do this part. You two have made it this far. You’ve both faced elimination, so you both know how scary it is. You both know how real this is. Next week, there is no saving you. All I do is give you a percent of a hundred and let America decide the rest. So, I don’t want you to go home wondering if there was anything you could’ve done to change the outcome. That’s why I’m leaving it up to you. You pick your song choices based on what you think would be best for yourself. If you would like, the guys or myself would be happy to offer suggestions, but I want this to be your choice. That way, you can’t blame me. You can’t blame bad song choice. It’s what you believe fits you best, so truthfully, the outcome doesn’t matter. If you choose your own song, go out there and do your absolute best, it doesn’t matter the outcome. You gave it your all, and hey. We didn’t win the X-Factor.”

That was true.

He coughed into his arm once more and stood up. “I’m gonna go in the other room so I don’t get you sick. The sooner you come up with a song, the better.”

Brinley smirked at me. “I’ve already got one. I’ve been thinking about it all season long, in case we ever got to decide.”

Niall wasn’t in the mood to deal with her, so he just nodded. “Fantastic. Get started then. You have practice with everyone else for the group songs at five in the usual rehearsal room, so don’t be late.”

And just as quickly and quietly as he entered, he disappeared.

Zayn looked to Brinley with a fake smile. “So, what do you have picked out?”

“Love Bites by Halestorm,” she informed them with a flirty smirk. “I think it fits my persona very well.”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, Brinley. They don’t care if you think your kinky in bed or not.”

She glared at me. “I don’t think anything.”

It was all Harry could do to not laugh. She may think she knows kinky, but she has no idea. He knew what real kinky was, and I was really kinky. She probably just liked it rough sometimes.

With a groan, I let my head fall onto the table because my own thoughts got me super horny. Right now, I wanted to go in there, finish Niall’s process, and then some . . . .

I shook the thought and slid my chair out. “I’m gonna go think. Really hard. Because I have no freaking idea what to do!”

Louis laughed. “Aw, come on, Ev. I’m sure you’ll think of something. Look on the bright side. No matter what you do, everyone will probably think it’s sexy.”

“Not if she’s after me,” Brinley scoffed, but before anyone could start to get onto her, she smirked at me one last time and began ascending the stairs into her room to do whatever it was she was going to do.

I rolled my eyes and looked at the four. “Can I kill her? Would that be okay?”

“You and Niall could never be together if you’re in prison,” Harry reminded me, and I scowled. He didn’t respond to my scowl appropriately—in my eyes—because he started laughing at me.
After I finished making faces at him, I sighed and cleared everything else out except the task at hand. “I have no idea, guys. I mean, I don’t even know what genre to pick. There are so many songs out there, and I just . . . have no idea.”

“Just go upstairs, listen to your music, and relax,” Liam suggested. “I’m sure it’ll come to you.”

It seemed like a wonderful idea, so that was exactly what I did, except instead of listening to my dance playlist or any other playlist, I listened to all songs on my iPod.

Oh, the variety that device contained . . . .

---

Unfortunately, as great as Liam’s advice was, it didn’t work. It was fun doing, and relaxing. I was definitely ready for the group rehearsals.

The girls’ rehearsal wasn’t as fun as the group rehearsal. In the group rehearsal, Jesse and I had a spazzy moment when the lead singer from Imagine Dragons, Dan Reynolds, ended up working with Adam as our mentor. Adam laughed while I bounced casually up and down on my toes, and Jesse just stood there with wide eyes.

I freaking loved Imagine Dragons, and I vowed to marry Dan Reynolds’ voice one day.

Dan was talking all serious while he explained the origin of the song, but when he looked and saw us, he just started laughing. He understood why Adam was laughing then, and he laughed, too. Of course, everyone looked at us, and Brinley rolled her eyes, but it was still fun.

After our moment was over, we got to business, and we did a very rough run through of the song. Each person was given a solo, big or small, and the guys were released to go grab some dinner while the girls rehearsed their song for a bit.

Christina, unfortunately, was helping us, along with Ke$ha. I really wasn’t crazy about Ke$ha.
Sure, I liked some of her songs, but she really wasn’t a very . . . interesting person. Honestly, she just wasn’t someone I personally would get along with.

The song we were doing, however, I was in love with. We couldn’t sing the full version of the song, so we had to sing the radio edited version. By the end of the rehearsal, we had a pretty good run through of the song without music.

After rehearsal, I went back home and ate strawberry banana yogurt while continuing to relax and wait for the right song to come on.

In the meantime, I didn’t mind jamming out to certain songs that played. I was doing it outside due to the very sick boy with hearing as good as mine.

I was outside by the pool, and with my yogurt all finished, I got to dance and sing pretty loudly. Not, like, performance loud, but louder than I would’ve dared to sing in the house.

“Do you remember summer ’09?
Wanna go back there every night.
Just can’t lie, was the best time of my life
Lying on the beach as the sun blew out
Playing this guitar by the fire too loud
Oh my, my, they could never shut us down

I used to think that I was better alone
Why did I ever wanna let you go?
Under the moonlight as we stared to the sea
The words you whispered, I will always believe

I want you to—”

“Everit, you have to sing that song!” the very British and adorable voice of Harry Styles interrupted my jam out session from right behind me, something that shocked me so much that I almost fell in the pool. Thankfully, he caught me and helped me balance myself, but it didn’t take away the surprise.

“How long have you been standing there?” I asked with wide eyes as I turned to look back at the happy goof ball.

“I came out when I saw you dancing,” he admitted, giving me a sheepish grin. “So, not very long. But think about it, Ev. You did the absolute best with Dirty Love—as far as votes go anyways. Well . . . people downloaded No Different more . . . but that’s not the point! That song is something no one’s ever done before. Not only that, think about the words. What do you want? You wanna bang the shit out of Niall, and he wants you to do the same. But it’s not sex. It’s love. Then there’s the, ‘I used to think that I was better alone,’ bit. This song . . . it’ll just turn him on so badly, and it’ll also make him so freaking happy! Of course, he can’t know for this to work, so we’ll have to make up something else, but just consider it? I’ll give you the sheet music, let you look it over. That is, if you want.”

I gave him a nervous smile. “I don’t know, Harry. I mean, I’m doing you guys’ song. You’re the ones mentoring me.”

“So?” he snorted. “I’m not making you do anything. I just . . . I heard it and thought that it could be your best performance yet. Really, though, it’s up to you. This is your decision.”

He was right about something. Making it my own style didn’t change from who I was. I was taking something and making it my own, so how much more me could I get? I loved One Direction music, always had, so to have an opportunity to give it my own twist like this was, honestly, a great opportunity.

Especially if I were to go on tour with them . . . .

So, with a smile, I nodded. “I’ll need that music asap. I’ve got some work to do before tomorrow’s rehearsals.”

He laughed and began leading me inside. “Right this way, my dear, though it kind of hurts my feelings to hear that. So much work?”

“I’m making it my own,” I reminded him. “As amazing as I think the original is, there’s some things I wanna do that I haven’t done yet, so I’ve got some brainstorming to do. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He made a face. “Bright and early . . . yay.”

I laughed at him. “Alright. So, cover song? What should it be?”

He pressed his lips together. “Hmm.”

“Love Alone by Thriving Ivory!” I exclaimed, and I realized he had no idea what I was talking about by the way he frowned at me. “They’re this really incredible, mostly unknown band that sings the kinda songs I think I might be into. I’m not really sure . . . kinda like a casual rock type feeling?”

Harry smiled. “Alright, Ev. Love Alone it is.”

Notes

The lyrics are from Breathe Today by Flyleaf. :)

Things are about to get...different. Even more so. I'm not sure how well you guys are gonna respond to it, but it's coming up next chapter. Just...don't hate me. x3

Hope you guys enjoy this chapter! :) What's wrong with Niall?

Let me know what you think!