Prologue ~ Liam I’m standing there, looking at everyone in the church waiting for someone to walk in. I’m down the aisle, in a tuxedo and there’s a priest in front of me. My best mates are at my side as well and when I look at them, they smile encouragingly. I’m not sure why I’m here or why I’m waiting. Wait… am I getting married? But isn’t too soon? I’m only nineteen, I can’t get married that soon. My heart starts beating faster and faster, my hands are shaking and I feel like I’m going to start hyperventilating at any moment. I can’t get married yet. I can’t. No matter how much I love her. But wait, whom am I getting married to? Is it Danielle? It has to be her… who else? Everyone expects us to get married, anyways. And I know she wants to get married. Her friends are getting married and she has commented about that many times before. I know those are hints, but I’m too young. Too young to do this. I don’t want to be here, waiting for her to walk down the aisle and to swear in front of everyone that we’re going to be together forever. It’s too much time. I’m just nineteen. Just nineteen. My classmates from school are just starting their lives. They are in uni, looking for and pursuing their dreams and I’m getting married. Have I lived everything already? That can’t be right. How is it possible that I’ve lived everything in nineteen years? No one can do that. No one! I start panicking right there and I look at my hands. They are not only shaking. They are not my hands. These can’t be my hands. These hands belong to a kid, a little kid, and the sleeves oversize him, hanging out as if he is wearing his dad’s clothes. Is this me? What is happening? I look around feeling all the panic and fear in my chest. I find a reflecting surface and I want to scream when I see what’s there. It is me, but I’m not nineteen anymore. I’m a kid, I’m a five-year-old Liam Payne and I can see that little boy is scared to death. He’s wearing a tuxedo and everyone there is waiting to see him get married to a woman. I want to scream and run away, but when I turn around the doors of the church open as the music starts to play. Everyone stands up and my heart beats even faster. No, no, no, no, no. I’m a kid. I can’t get married. I haven’t live everything yet. Getting married is not for me yet, I need to do other things before starting a family. I’m not ready yet. I’m five! I’m five! I can’t get married. As I see her walking down the aisle, gorgeous and radiant, with all the people looking at her with big smiles, I start crying like the little kid I am. I start calling for my mum to rescue me. I don’t want this, I can’t do this yet. Everyone stares at me and I cry louder. Crying like I did when I fell from the tree and broke my leg. I’m desperate and scared. I can’t do this now. I need to do many other things first. Just because I got my dream doesn’t mean I’m ready to do this. Danielle is looking at me disapprovingly, but I can’t help it. I keep crying like the world is ending, and in a way it’s like that. I feel like my world is ending somehow, my freedom, my youth. If I get married, I’ll be officially and adult, a grown up man with a starting family. Danielle will want children, but I’m a child too! “Liam, please!” She hisses at me and I see she’s embarrassed, but I can’t stop. I’m a five-year-old boy, I want my mum to save me. I can’t do this now. Not now. “You’re acting like a kid.” “I am a kid! Don’t you see me?” I cried out, looking up at her. I reach her hips! How can she marry a kid? Doesn’t she see me? “Well, you’re acting like one. Stop crying! You can’t do this now, Liam,” she argues and I cry harder. “I want my mum!” “Oh for God’s sake, Liam!” She cries out and I see everyone around looking at me disgusted. Why can’t they understand? “Mum!” I scream at the top of my lungs like a kid throwing a tantrum. It is there where I wake up with cold sweat all over my body, my chest falling and rising quickly, my heart beating at an unbelievable speed and the covers on the floor. Nightmare. It has been a nightmare. I close my eyes and I just then realise I have tears on my cheeks. I cried whilst I was asleep. I breathe in slowly, trying to calm down my rushed heart. I still feel the panic I felt whilst I was on the altar, I still feel that paralysing fear that froze every single one of my muscles. I still can see myself as a kid in an oversized tuxedo. Can this be a sign? Clearly, I’m not ready for that kind of commitment but I love Danielle. Right? I do love her and it shouldn’t scare me that much the thought of getting married to her. I should be excited about it, about making a promise that we’re going to be together until death do us apart. But I can’t. I see her in her wedding dress and all I want to do is run away as far as possible. I picture her like that and I feel desperate. I’m nineteen, there’s still so much for me to do before getting married. I haven’t lived a single man’s life. I’ve been with her since I started working. Since I started the life of an adult when I was seventeen. Oh my God… I haven’t been a young adult. I jumped from teenager to an adult in a moment. I started a life that wasn’t meant to happen yet. I didn’t go to uni, I got in a serious relationship immediately, and I’ve been only working. My life has become that. Working, working, working. Just working.