Collin's point of view

"The stars are so pretty." I said to Kayla as we laid down on the guys' backyard lawn. We laid a blanket down and put on a playlist full of slow songs we liked.

"I know." She hummed and laid her head down on my chest. I played with her hair and looked at her as she continued star gazing. "That one is the brightest."

"Which one?" I asked and she pointed to the sky. "There's thousands of stars Kayla, I can't tell which one just by you pointing at it." I said, laughing lightly.

"You can see it though!" She huffed and I just smiled. "It stands out so much." She said quieter this time and she just looked so interested in them.

"I don't care about that star." I said and she pouted. "I only care about one star, it's beautiful and stands out so much." I said and she hummed.

"The moon isn't a star, it's a satellite Collin..."

"I was talking about you." I said and I could tell she was blushing. "You're so much more beautiful than all those stars combined."

"You're a liar." She said softly and turned her body so she could look up at me without hurting her neck. "I know I'm not beautiful. You don't need to lie to me." She told me and I frowned.

"Why do you think that? You're perfect to me." I said as I continued to run my hands through her short brown hair.

"Because I'm so fat and have so many pimples. My teeth aren't bright and white and I don't have really soft and silky hair. I'm so tall and my eyebrows are really thick and bushy. Also, I have big feet and big hands. To top it all off I have no ass and no boobs. I'm just overall trash." She said exasperated. "I'm not even the least bit beautiful."

"But you are, you just don't see it." I said softly. "You see trash, and you want to know what I see?" I asked and she nodded.

"I see the way your eyes shine when you talk about something you love, how it looks as if there are galaxies in your eyes." I said and she looked down. "I see the smile you give off when you're genuinely interested in something and are happy. I see someone who holds their head up high when people try to bring them down and that's preatty fucking perfect."

"You don't need to be five foot three with a tiny waist line with eyebrows you can do division off of." I told her and she hummed. "You're beautiful, you're real. You aren't photo shopped and you aren't edited and filtered."

"But-But beautiful girls don't have self harm s-scars." She said quietly and I sighed. "You can't be beautiful when you have them."

"You can." I said and made her look at me. "The scars themselves aren't beautiful; they aren't art and they aren't pretty, but that doesn't mean that you aren't. It doesn't mean that you are not art and that you are not pretty." I told her and she closed her eyes.

"Besides, physical features aside. You can be beautiful in the way you think and see things. In the way you speak and the way you act. It's not all about looks." I said and she laughed.

"Thank you Collin... That really made me feel better about myself, even if it was just a little bit." She said and I chuckled.

"Anytime. Baby steps first right?" She nodded and hummed along to a song that was playing quietly.

"I'm cold," she said quietly and I looked at the sliding door. "But-But I don't want to go inside yet." She said and I looked at the hoodie that was on my body.

"Get real quick." I said and she did, clearly confused. I took my hoodie off and she immediately shook her head.

"I won't be able to fit that Col-"

"Yes you will Kayla. You're not as big as you see yourself." I said and she looked down. "If you're cold you can wear my jacket. It's okay."

"It won't fit Collin. I'm too big." She said quietly and I draped the grey hoodie over her shoulders. She mumbled some number and I hummed questionably. It was something with a hundred but I didn't pay too much attention towards it. I don't care about numbers.

"You are not too big. Just put it on Kayla." I said and she looked at me. "I don't want you to freeze. This is the only way to stay warm unless you want to go inside."

"O-Okay." She said and then actually put the hoodie on. "I'm too big for this." She said softly and I shook my head.

"You don't have to zip it up, just wear it. It's okay." I said and wrapped my arms around her. "See? You're fine. It didn't rip, if that's what you were worried about."

Yes, it was tight, but it wasn't tight enough to the point it was about to rip. She had nothing to be scared or insecure about.

"You look great in my hoodie." I said and then kissed her nose. She giggled lightly and then we laid down again.

"Thank you." She mumbled and I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her close.

"Anytime." I said and she buried her head into my chest. I kissed her head and she wrapped her arm around me.

A familiar song began to play and I hummed softly along with it. It was my one of my favorite songs from Pierce The Veil honestly.

"As we wake up in your room, your face is the first thing I see, the first time I've see love, and the last I'll ever need." I sang quietly and Kayla laughed quietly because I never really sang.

I sang the rest of the song quietly, rubbing Kayla's back as I did. She listened quietly, occasionally moving closer to me and pressed a kiss against my exposed collarbones.

I closed my eyes and she yawned as she buried her head into my chest. I smiled to myself, a genuine smile, and then held her tighter.

"We should go inside soon." I said and she just hummed. "I don't want you to freeze." I mumbled and she nodded.

"Okay." She said and I pressed my lips against her forehead, letting them linger there a little longer than necessary. "Collin, if I tell you something, can you promise me that you won't get mad?"

"Of course." I said and she mumbled something. "I couldn't hear you Kayla, you have to speak up."

"I-I relapsed." She said and I froze. "Please don't be mad." She said softly and I shook my head.

"No, I'm not mad." I said and she nodded. "It's okay. You'll get through this, I promise you." I said and she sniffled.

"It's hard Collin." She said and I nodded. "I can't help it sometimes. It's like... It's like this part in my mind makes me do it, like I have no control over it sometimes. Like a chainsmoker with a cigarette. It's an itch, an urge, an addiction. You can't just stop."

"I know it's hard but you can do it." I said and sniffled. "We can do it," I said and she nodded. "Together." I told her and she smiled, I could tell.

"You're the best." She said and I chuckled. "You don't give youself enough credit, honestly. You're so sweet and caring and kind." She said to me.

"Am I?" I asked and she nodded. "I guess... I guess it's because like I-I'm just saying what I wish someone else would have told me b-before."

My face heated up as I realized that I was stuttering and she chuckled lightly. "Pain does things to people." She said and I nodded because that statement was true.

"It changes them." I said and then an overwhelming feeling or guilt took over as I realized that she had told me she relapsed, but I didn't tell her. It just dawned on me...

"Can I tell you something?" I asked and she nodded. "I um..." How could I tell her? She expects me to be strong and then I go and hurt myself again...

"What is it?"

"I-I uh r-relapsed too. M-Multuple times." I said quietly and she held my tighter. "I'm sorry." I said and she sighed.

"It's... It's okay. I know you can do it; one day you'll be able to say you were clean for so long that they're nothing but scars." She told me and I nodded.

"Why-Why are we both so fucked up and hopeless, but... but when we have each other to help, we-we all of a sudden have hope that it gets better?" I asked and she shrugged.

"We know what it feels like to have no hope, so like, we don't want anyone else to feel that way. Maybe we don't believe it for ourselves because we can't see it getting better, but we can see someone else getting better." She told me and I nodded.

"Understandable." I said and she laughed lightly as her lips pressed against my collarbone again. "Why do you do that?"

"What?"

"Kiss my collarbones?" I asked and she pulled her lips off of them. "I am not saying I-I don't like it, because I do, but why?"

"Because you can see them and they're there." She said and I sighed. "You can't see mine unless I move my shoulders in the right way." She told me.

"Is it bad that you can't see your collarbones? I don't think that's bad." I said and she sighed.

"It is, especially when you have a waistline as big as mine." She said and I played with her hair. "It's terrible."

"It is not. You're perfect the way you are. You don't need a tiny waist line." I said and she just nodded slowly.

"Can I dye my hair? If I dye my hair, would you get mad?" She asked, totally changing the subject. "I want to die it black, it's my favorite color now." She said.

"It's your body, you don't need my consent to do something you want." I said and she nodded. "All that matters is it you want it and if you have the money to buy the dye if your parents won't let you."

"Okay." She said and I hummed. "Can I ask something of you? A promise?"

"Of course you can. I'm all ears."

"Okay... um, if one day you just like get fed up of me, tell me please. I'm tired of people leaving without giving me an explanation." She said and I kissed her head like I always do.

"I doubt that I ever will because you're my favorite person in the world but if that happens, I promise I will." I said and she nodded.

"I'm getting cold." She said and I chuckled. "Can we go inside?" I nodded and we hesitantly pulled away.

We picked the blanket and our phones up and I followed her into the house. Calum sat on the couch, a bottle of beer in his hand, empty bottles around him, and a notebook in his lap.

"Collin! Kayla! Come here." He said and I told Kayla to go put our things up in the room real quick.

I didn't really want her to be around Calum while he's drunk.

"What?" I asked and walked I've as he handed me his notebooks. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Read it!" He said like an over excited child. "Me and Michael wrote it earlier after he saw your journal and read through it!"

"He what?" I asked furiously. "He read my journal? My personal journal?" I said and he nodded as he drank his beer. "You expect me to read something that's based off if what I wrote in my journal, which I gave no consent to let someone read?"

"Please? It's really good!" He begged and gave me the puppy dog face. "It's a song! It's kinda sad though..."

"'Jet Black Heart'?" I asked and he nodded quickly. "What did Michael read in my journal?"

"Something about being a fuck-up and demons and your undying love for a certain girl." He said and attempted to wink at me.

"It's not love..." I said and huffed as I read the song. I agree that it was good lyrically, but I was still pissed that Michael read my journal and wrote a song about my personal problems.

"It's good." I said and tossed him his jounal. "I'm going to bed." I said firmly and walked up to my room before he could speak.

"What happened? What did he want?" Kayla asked as I laid down on my bed beside her.

"He wanted me to read a song he wrote. It's good but it pissed me off because he and Michael got the ideas from my personal journal, which I didn't let them read." I told her and she cuddled up into me.

"It's okay, we can kill them in the morning. Right now, it's late and we should go to sleep." She said and I laughed.

"This is why you're my favorite person ever."