I knew that no matter what I told you, some of you would never understood why Ella made that choice in Chapter 30 of CME and would've kept calling her selfish and stupid and a bitch. So here you have what would've happened, considering Ella's personality, if she had thought of Niall and chosen him instead of herself.

Bel, xx

-:-:-:-

Choosing Him (Call Me Ella)

I’ve been hours inside that bathroom, thinking and breaking my skull as to know what to do. It still makes me want to throw up that I’m making Rhonda happy, that I’m doing exactly what she always wanted. That I’m just one of her daughters. I’ve always pitied Jenny and Kimmy for being what Rhonda made out of them… and I’m the same. Because of Niall. I was so trapped in our honeymoon stage, in all the cheesiness and butterflies that I didn’t realise I wasn’t getting distracted from my battle. I got side-tracked and lowered my guard. Now these are the consequences.

I walk like a zombie to the stables, my mind still going crazy because I know what I have to do to fix this, to stop this madness… but that doesn’t mean I really want to. Niall is Niall, he makes me happy in a different way. Not that I wasn’t happy before him, but he was my plus and knowing I have to end this is breaking me inside. But what else can I do? I don’t want to be Rhonda’s puppet. I know that not because I’m with Niall I’m not going to go to Uni and just become his girlfriend, but still, I will have Rhonda’s voice in my head, telling me how proud she is of me for doing this. Like poison.

When I finally walk inside the stable and I see him I’m not surprised. Even if it’s been hours since we said goodbye, I knew he would be here.

“Ella,” he calls reaching out for my hands, but I don’t move so he actually has to grab my hands, which I keep at my sides, and pull them towards him. “Are you okay? How did it go?” He asks full of concern.

I want to throw up again because I see Rhonda, I remember the way she hugged me and how reality came to me like a wave of bricks, drowning me in my own mistakes. I was distracted, I allowed this to happen. I was distracted because of Niall.

As I don’t say anything, Niall adds, “Whatever she told you she’d do, I’m sure we can do something about it. Don’t be scared.”

Scared? Scared of what? I’m already the puppet, I’m already doing exactly what Rhonda always wanted me to do. I’m the piece that she controls because I fell for the guy I shouldn’t have fallen for. They say love is the downfall of the best warriors. Now I understand why. You do stupid things for love, you become weaker for love. You get distracted and lose focus of the things that you’re fighting for. I allowed this to happen, I fell for Niall . For this amazing guy and I didn’t even realise what I was doing because I was lost in the bliss of this relationship.

“Ella?” He asks again, cupping my face and brushing away a tear I didn’t notice had escaped. “What happened, love?”

“She’s happy,” I finally answer, my voice sounding foreign even for myself. “She’s happy that I’m with you. This is what she wanted all this time, for me to follow what she dreams for Jenny, Kimmy… and I—I’m doing exactly what she wants me to do.”

Niall seems confused at the beginning, trying to understand what this means.

“That’s… that’s great, then. We don’t have to worry about her, she won’t ask you to break up with me!” He exclaims, getting excited with every word but for me those are like daggers in my heart.

Oh, how easy would be just to ignore that I’m following Rhonda’s plan and just be happy with Niall. How easy and romantic and cliché would that be?

I pull back because I need space, I need air. “No, you don’t get it. She’s the woman who made me suffer all these years. She’s the woman who changed all what my father worked so hard to build. She’s the woman who closed the door to all those people my father wanted to help just to bring celebrities here so her daughters could be with one and have that glamorous life. She’s the woman who treated me like a slave all these years. She’s the woman I’ve hated for so many years, and I’m just doing what she wants. I’m pleasing her. I’m pleasing the woman I hate. Don’t you see the problem here, Niall?” I end up almost screaming and Niall looks so confused, but I don’t blame him. It’s not easy to understand what’s happening here.

“Who cares about her?” He asks, trying to step closer and grab my hand, but I step back.

“I care! Don’t you see? I hate her. Hate means you care at some level, a different level. You don’t understand the real meaning of hatred, when every part of you screams to do the opposite of what that person wants you to do. When you can’t just accept anything of what that other person does. I. Hate. Rhonda. I hate her so much and I can’t even conceive to do something she loves, something that makes her this happy. I can’t!”

“Ella… what are you trying to say?” He asks and I step even farther away from him, slightly shaking out of sheer frustration.

“I can’t be the one who makes her happy, Niall. I can’t. Because by doing that, I’m betraying myself. All this time I’ve been the poor girl who had to do everything Rhonda told her to do, all these years I’ve been nothing but her slave. The bloody Cinderella of the fucking fairy tale!” I yell, frustrated with all this, with the life I’ve had so far. “My consolation was that I wasn’t part of her game. I was just the slave, but I was still me. I refused to go drooling after every celebrity like Jenny and Kimmy. I refused to love what she loves. I refused to be what she wanted me to do. And it turns out that I am doing exactly what she wants me to do. I’m exactly what I’ve been fighting against all these years, Niall. That’s the problem! I’ve betrayed myself. All what I’ve done, all what I’ve stood for all these years is nothing now! Because I’m making her happy.”

I’m breathing heavily, letting go of all the anger I’ve held for so many years. All the tears I kept inside. All those screams I never shouted because I had to behave. All that frustration for seeing her changing everything my dad built up. All that sadness because I didn’t even have this place anymore to remember what my father started.

She took that away from me. I can't give her this satisfaction. She can’t win on everything.

“But Ella, what about you? What about what makes you happy?” He asks and I shake my head.

“Making her happy is what makes me the most miserable, doing what she wants me to do makes me throw up. Literally. I wish I could be indifferent towards her, but I can’t. I hate her,” I say, my voice lower, tired… just like I feel. Tired of all this.

“Ella, hating her is not good.”

“You think I don’t know!?” I shout again, frustrated that he doesn’t see the problem here. “What would you feel if the person who has made you miserable for so many years is actually the happiest with the decisions you’ve made? Would you really be able to do what makes that person happy?”

Niall doesn’t reply and I know he’s trying to understand, trying to put himself in my shoes and I rub my hands on my face, trying to put myself together and I notice how wet my cheeks are. I’ve been crying all this time.

“What about us, then?” He asks and I don’t miss the fact he didn’t answer to my question, probably because he knows he wouldn’t be able to do different. “Where does this leave us?”

“There’s no us anymore,” I reply and he loses all emotion, his expression is blank and that hurts so much. “I would never be at ease with myself knowing that by being with you I’m being the person she wants me to be.”

“Are you… are you breaking up with me because of this?” He asks and I don’t know why he does that. I’m making things clear.

But he looks at me right into my very soul, his big blue eyes begging me not to do this. I see his hurt, I see the pain I’m causing. Hearing me saying it’s over is also killing him, I see it so clearly in his eyes that I feel like throwing up for a very different reason.

Why isn’t a way out without someone getting hurt? Why is this so difficult?

I’m hurting the man I love, I’m breaking up with him and with that breaking his sappy heart. But what else can I do? Forget about everything else? Forget about the fight I’ve been in for six years? Forget about all the things I’ve been through and the way Rhonda has treated me because of him? Can I actually do that?

“Ella, please, think this through,” he says stepping closer, cupping my face, his eyes so sad and I’m dying inside because he looks at me this way. He knows what he is doing, he knows he’s breaking my determination, he knows, he knows so well.

I’ve thought this through, for hours and I was so sure that breaking up with was the best solution, the only one that would give me some peace for my mind, but now I can’t stop seeing Niall looking at me like this.

Why is he doing this to me? Why is making this harder than it is?

“Please, Ella. I love you, don’t let this break us apart.” And he said it... he said that, knowing the effect of his words. We don’t know each other for more than two months, we’ve been together barely a month... yet he knows what those words would cause on me. He knows and he did it anyways.

Love destroys you.

I lower my head and bury it in his chest, crying because I’ve given up. For him I gave up to my fight, to all what I’ve stood for these past six years. I’m doing what Rhonda wants, I’m making her happy, I’m making her proud. I’ve accepted the way she treated me all this time.

I’m giving up.

“I love you, too,” I say to Niall, hugging him tightly because my soul is being ripped off as I say those words and realise the weight of this decision. I’m not breaking his heart, but I’m breaking mine in a very different way.

Sometimes we do the craziest things for love. I should’ve been more careful, I shoulnd’t have fallen for Niall, but I did and now it’s too late to go back.

+ + + + +

Yes, Niall makes me happy and when he kisses me or holds my hand I feel okay, but then he lets go of my hand or he has to do something and I feel the void in my chest. I feel the self-loathe for what I did, for the decisions I made.

At night I have nightmares, I wake up screaming because I see Rhonda, laughing at me, smiling so proud because I’m just one of her puppets. I’m one of her daughters. I see her saying she’s so proud because I brought all this to myself.

Yes, I don’t have to clean toilets and I can spend all my time with Niall, but as days pass I feel like a black pit of loathing is eating me alive, taking away all the happiness and self-respect I had. Because I chose love, I chose the boy I barely knew and gave up on everything.

I don’t hate him… I love him. I just hate myself for being so weak, because all what I did went to waste the moment I chose Niall. All those years of fighting and putting some resistance were for nothing. I gave up at the end anyways.

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Because when we leave the retreat centre, when my contract finally expires and Rhonda cries saying goodbye, Niall and I can’t spend that much time together. He’s not there to remind me that I made the right choice by staying with him. He’s not there to remind me that I love him and because I love him everything else is worth it. The nightmares, the memories haunting me, the disappointment in myself. He’s not around anymore and yes, I’m studying, I’m on my way to become a doctor but it’s not like I planned.

Charlie and I live together, how we always planned, but I’m on every cover as the slut who lives with another man but is dating Niall Horan. And after those three months they spent at the centre it’s been riots everywhere. Days can pass by when Niall doesn’t call me and I can’t even look at myself in the mirror because without him to remind me of our love, I feel sick of myself.

Rhonda’s poison is killing me inside. She didn’t just win the war, she made sure I would have the most painful and slowest death.

For how long can love keep me alive while this blackness and self-loathing is consuming me inside? For how long when I’m in Oxford and my boyfriend is travelling the word. For how long?

In many occasions Charlie has found me in the flat we share crying, hugging myself as I try not to hurt me for doing what I did. I knew this would come, I knew I would hate myself more than I hated Rhonda if I followed her path. I knew it… yet I still chose Niall because he looked at me like that, because he loves me, because I love him. I betrayed myself and threw away all what I fought for just for him. And I hate myself for doing that, for not being strong enough as to break up with him and spare me all this pain.

Three months pass since we leave the centre when I see Niall again. More time than what we’ve spent together and he looks scared when he sees me because I’m not the same girl he left when my classes started. I don’t look at myself in the mirror anymore for when I do I see Rhonda’s happy smile, I see my stepsisters. I don’t know how I look, but I feel different.

“Ella, what happened?” He asks, hugging me and I thought that the moment I would feel his arms around me I would feel whole again, I would feel like everything was worth it. I just needed him to remind me of that.

But it doesn’t happen.

He hugs me and I hate myself even more because I gave up on me because of him, because I still love him.

But I don’t tell him how I feel, not really. “Uni is crazy,” I reply every time he asks why I look so tired and… dead. I don’t allow Charlie to tell him what really happens, what my problem is. I enjoy the three days we have, trying to gather some strength from his company but I only feel more disappointed in myself.

But I love him… I love him so much. I just hate myself.

I know he knows there’s something wrong because I can’t be the girl he met during summer. I don’t even reply to his cheesy lines anymore. I just smile and I don’t even know if my smiles are convincing.

How can I smile when I feel so disappointed in myself?

How do I explain to him that I wake up screaming at night because I have nightmares with Rhonda?

How do I tell him that I hate myself and I can’t even stand seeing my reflection anymore?

How?

But then he leaves again, for other many months and I only have myself but I’m not strong. I’m not strong anymore and sometimes I don’t even think I can do this anymore. Keep studying away from Niall when he’s the only person that can remind me I did the right thing by choosing our love. I need him around because otherwise it doesn’t feel like I actually chose our relationship.

“What happened to you?” Charlie asks one day, I don’t even remember exactly what day, when he finds me, again, crying on the bathroom floor because I saw my reflection even if I didn’t want to. I saw what I had become. “Where’s the strong and independent Ella that I knew all my life? My friend would’ve never skipped classes. My friend would’ve never done this. What happened?” He asks and I know he’s being severe because he cares, but it only makes me cry harder.

“I don’t know myself anymore. I’m not strong, I was never strong!” I exclaim, holding on to him. “I deceived myself but when the moment of choosing between myself and Niall… I chose him. I’m not strong. I was never strong,” I repeat crying like a baby, disgusted at myself.

Charlie doesn’t say anything, he only holds me closer and tighter. “You have to break up with him,” he says after a while and I freeze.

“No. I love him. Don’t they say love conquers all? Maybe I just… I just need to be closer to him. Maybe I need to quit Uni and be with him. Rhonda was right, I can do all the charity I want and be with him. I’ll be fine!” I propose and Charlie pulls me away, disappointment in his eyes.

“You’re not Ella, Ella would’ve never said this. Quitting Uni for him?”

“I quit myself for him, why not Uni as well?” I retort and the worst part is that I don’t even feel bad about that, but I don’t feel good either. I just don’t feel. I’m too deep in this blackness. “You can’t be with someone like Niall when you don’t really see him, right? He can’t even call me sometimes. Are we really together if we don’t see each other?”

“I hate him,” Charlie says. “You two were great together, when it was summer, when he wasn’t the biggest popstar and you weren’t the medicine student. This is not working now, Ella,” he adds and I shake my head, still crying.

“But I love him… and he loves me.”

“Love is not always enough. How can you be with someone when you’re not okay with yourself? How can someone love you when you don’t love yourself?” He says and I know he’s right, that this is not healthy but I made this decision already when summer ended.

“But I love him. This will be all right, I just have to hold on to that,” I say as I wipe the tears away and rise to my feet.

I walk away from the bathroom, leaving Charlie inside, until he calls my name, so I turn to look at him. “I’m sorry,” he says but I frown. “I’m sorry for pushing you towards him during summer. I never imagined this would happen.”

“Don’t be,” I say with a weak smile. “He’s my prince charming. He’ll save me, even from myself.”

I see Charlie’s pain when I say that and I don’t even flinch because I just accepted it. Saying that was the biggest sign of surrender but it’s okay. I have faith this will be all right because I have him. I still have his love and we’ll be fine. He said it, he promised it. I just need him right now.

I chose Niall over myself. Now I have to live with the consequences of my decision. At least I can do that.

-:-:-:-

For a happy ending, Ella had to break up with Niall. Just wait and you'll see it was the best and necessary choice. Otherwise, this would've happened.