"Come here baby...I cant sleep without you." The voice was JJs, his beckoning being due to the fact that June had sat up in the middle of the night to escape a nightmare. She was holding the sides of her head, trying to expel the haunting images that were still echoing around her brain. The sound of his voice was enough for her to calm a bit, her head turning to look back at the perfect boy in her bed, his blonde hair tousled and messy and his eyes heavy and tired. His hoarse voice was music to her ears and she turned her full body back to him, crawling back into his embrace and laying her head on his chest. He groaned slightly as he adjusted in the bed, running a hand up and down her back as he attempted to fall back asleep.

June counted how many times she heard his heartbeat, knowing internally that her heart was beating in sync with his. She listened for so long that she memorized the rhythm, and she was so focused on  it that the remnants of her dream faded into nothing, and she was only surrounded by the tangible presence of him. His skin underneath her was like a warm pillow, trying to lull her back to sleep, trying to give her the happy dreams she wanted so badly. It radiated off of him, she only hoped to soak in his optimism.

She shifted slightly, her head lifting from the warmth of his chest and instead picking up on the silence of the night. She attempted to keep her eyes closed but she couldn't help but start thinking, her overthinking was a waking nightmare on its own.

She had been unable to pry a single thing from Zach, whether Kiara and him were hanging out, if he liked her, if there was something at all going on. June wasn't entirely sure why it bothered her so much...the thought of the two of them together. She knew it wasn't feelings for him, she hadn't had those for a long time...if she had ever had them at all. The possibility of it being bottled up resentment towards Kiara or the fear that she would hurt her him the way that she hurt her...there was a fair chance that it could be.

On top of thinking about the possibility there was the thought of Barry, his requirements he set for her if he did what she asked him to. His condescending, smug grin was imprinted in her brain and she thought it made a lot of sense that this was Rafes partner in crime, they had that dreadful confidence and blinding hubris in common. He hadn't refrained from reminding her he knew all of her little manipulative tricks...learned from watching her and Rafe suffer through the hell of another try at a doomed relationship. It was sort of amusing to her that Barry was the closest thing that the Cameron boy had to a friend, it reminded her just how lonely he was...about as lonely as he had left her when he had abandoned her and stopped visiting. She felt her blood begin to boil as she thought of it, the lost feeling she had felt behind those walls...the way she—

A light tapping noise penetrated her thoughts, her head slightly lifting as she tried to determine what direction it was coming from. The sound of the almost indistinguishable knocking came from the glass of her window, the one everyone loved to climb through. June felt her heart drop as she slowly sat up, her hand bracing above JJs arm to see if she needed to wake him. Her breaths halted and she felt fear in her body as she waited in the dead silence, wondering if she would hear it again.

The buzzing of her phone on the bedside table almost made her scream, her body jolting as she had been scared by it. She reached for it but kept her eyes on the window, trying to figure out if maybe she had been half asleep and imagined it, maybe she had just been hearing things. She looked down at the phone screen and let out a small sigh of utter relief when she saw it was a text from John B.

Come to your window

She pressed the button and turned the screen off, feeling relief in her body now that she knew it was him and not someone else. She put the phone back on the table and slid out of the bed, trying not to wake JJ. She stood fully and looked at him, her head shaking slightly as she thought about his whiny voice from a few minutes before, contradicting with the deep snores that convinced her he could sleep without her. She smiled to herself as she walked towards the window, her fingers brushing against the soft fabric of the curtains and revealing the curly haired Routledge boy who was sitting in the small section of roof beside her window. She looked back at JJ once more before pushing the window up, her head poking out of the small space and tilting towards him.

"Can I help you?"

"I knew you'd be up." John B said, completely disregarding her question. His head didn't turn to her, his eyes still trained on the moon that was glaring it's light on the side of the roof they were sitting on. She let out a sigh and shook her head, looking back towards the bed where JJ was still snoring loudly. When she looked back at John B she was prepared to tell him to come home, but a slight tilt of his head revealed a glistening on his face, slick trails of what looked like tears leaking down his cheeks. Junes lips pressed into a thin line and she realized he was here for a reason, the girl pushing herself out of the window and towards the small area to sit. He still didn't look at her as she moved to sit beside him, the boys knees pulled up and his arms wrapped around them as she settled. Finally she stopped moving, her head turned directly at him and her eyebrows furrowing.

"How'd you know I'd be up?" She asked in a low tone, her hand sliding out to support her as she leaned back a little. He shrugged, his face still upturned to the moon as he parted his lips to speak.

"You're the only person I can talk to. I cant bring this stuff up to Sarah because I don't want to mention it. She's going through shit too and I can't—you're the only person I can talk to."  June caught onto what he was talking about, knowing this was something to do with his dad. She lifted her hand and placed it on his shoulder, the boy reacting to it quickly. John B was a touchy guy, but when it came to comforting when he was upset, it was hard to know if you could comfort him in that way. However the second her fingers touched his skin he shot into her arms, his chest heaving as he buried himself in her neck. He let out a shuddering breath and a heartbreaking cry, June holding him by the head against her as she tried to calm him. He was almost fully on her but she didn't fight it, running fingers through his hair and  whispering calming words into the air around him. "I miss him. I miss him so much. And the nightmares...I keep having nightmares—"

"It's okay...it's okay—I have them too. I have them too..." He sniffled and tightened his arms around her, catching his breath and pulling back. She used her hand to push hairs out of his face and for a moment he looked like a child, like the kid he was supposed to be instead of the man he was forced to be.

"Is that why I was right?" He was referring to his comment about her being awake, and she nodded, holding his face tenderly in her hands. Her thumb grazed over his cheekbone and she nodded, hoping to offer him the comfort of knowing he wasn't alone.

"Do you wanna talk about it?" She asked in a small voice, and she saw the relief in his eyes when she asked him. She wondered if he had talked to anyone at all, at any point since everything had happened, her heart ripping in half when she thought of him suffering in silence all alone with no one to talk to. She felt sick to her stomach at the thought of not noticing, but he started to speak and so she tried to push that feeling away.

He launched into excruciating detail about a nightmare that came to him, a dream where his dad died over and over again and it never ended and he could never do anything about it. June felt utter pain as she listened to him, watched the tears drop down his cheek and lifted her hand to wipe them. When he was finished talking about the dream he rushed into other topics, how hard it was to be around Sarah sometimes...how much it hurt him to know she was suffering too, but it was too painful for him to try and  talk to her about it.

"I hope someone's listening to her because I—I just can't." And he seemed broken by the fact that he couldn't help her, June rubbing her hand up and down his back as he spoke. They were molded together, his body pressed so far into her side and June not even quite sure where the separation of their bodies began.  They longer they sat out there the more comfortable he got, the more he started to spill, June just lending a shoulder and an ear as he let it all out. "I just don't know if he would be proud of me if he was still here...I don't think he would."

"Come on John B...he would be—of course he would be. With everything you've done and everything you're doing—"

"What? What am I doing? I'm not doing anything but sitting around and fucking up." June shook her head at him, pushing her fingers over the hair by his ear. He relaxed into her touch and she opened her palm against his cheek, accepting what she was gearing up to say.

"You're doing plenty. You're surviving. You're having fun. You're making plans for your future. You and Sarah are working on getting the store open...he would be proud of you even if you weren't doing anything." June didn't know whether or not this was actually true, from the little bit she had known Big John he had only proven to be a difficult man, but John B nodded against her hand, his eyes closing as he felt a wave of pain go through him again. It was easy to believe when she said it, June helped make everything okay, he didn't know how or why but he thought maybe it was just the power of trusting her words the way he did. Her fingers moved from his cheek back to his hair and she pulled him to her chest again, the boys breath shuddering as she held him tightly. "I'm here okay? I promise I'm here if you need to talk to me. I just wanna know you're okay. And I'm sorry I didn't know you weren't."

"I didn't want you to know. It's not your fault. I just need help. I need something."

"I have you. It's gonna be alright." The two of them sat there together for awhile longer, no words being shared between them as they reveled in the comfort of each other. John B felt at ease and June felt like she had some kind of purpose for the first time in a long time, and for both of them...it was relieving to know that they weren't alone.