Recap

In the previous chapter, Flo gave Jake a letter explaining everything that happened to her two years ago which led her to up and leave to Australia. This included how her parent's divorce affected her - specifically how it lead to her party-animal ways and drunken habits where one night she kissed River, one of her close friends but also Georgia's (her best friend at the time) boyfriend at the time, and this messed up her relationship with all her friends, including Jake. The letter also exposed that she was raped, and how this ultimately lead to her fleeing to Australia.

Part One

Jake left. I didn't realise the extent to which I was shaking until he did. With a wish to relieve my tensed up body, I retired to my bed. Wrapping myself up in the covers did little to ease my shivers, mainly because the shivers weren't caused by the cold.

He will know everything now.

An hour or two have passed; neither sleep nor calmness have taken me under their wing. So here I am, fixed in a stare down with my ceiling, picturing Jake's face as he reads the letter. It stresses me out. Eventually, the anxiety takes its toll, pushing me into a sleep, only I'm abruptly awakened just as I'm about to go under by three hurried knocks which make my body jolt upright. I freeze. My stillness brings about another three impatient knocks, forcing me to climb out of bed and walk to the door.

With a firm hand wrapped around the handle, I open it. A red-eyed and jaw-clenched Jake stands before me with his fist in mid-air, ready to knock again. When his eyes meet mine, his fist relaxes until his arm turns floppy and drops back to his side.

A tense stare ensues between us.

His lips part slightly, as if he's going to say something, but they quickly seal back together again. It isn't until he shuffles forwards that I break out of a daze I didn't even know I was in. I step aside to let him in. Looking down at the door handle, I begin to edge the door closed, knowing very well his gaze is glued on me. My hand that pushes against the handle sets aflame when his reaches down to hold it, pushing the door closed with me. Once it's firmly shut, he grasps my hand a little tighter and uses his grip to inch me closer to him. I find myself being drawn into the stone hard surface of his chest.

The embrace comes as a shock. I do little to mask the gasp which escapes my lips as my face buries itself in the crook of his neck. My surprise, however, doesn't phase him as he continues to weave his arms around my fragile frame. I hug him back, lacing my arms the same way around him and press my palms against the firmness of his back.

In two years, this is the second man that I've hugged, aside from my father.

It is serene and quiet for a few moments. I feel his feet shuffle closer to mine and his chin rest more snugly into my shoulder as the hug persists. If I'm very still, I can even feel the faint tap of his heartbeat against mine.

"I'm so sorry, Flo, I-" his quiet words pass over my shoulder but I don't let anymore come out.

"Don't," I breathe onto his t-shirt, trying to ignore the overwhelming prickling in my eyes.

Don't cry, Flo.

"I didn't know, I'm so-"

"Stop," I say more forcefully this time, clutching him tighter to me, and this makes him hug me even tighter as well.

We stay like this for a while.

Part Two

"Hey loser," I called over to him.

Jake was dressed in the Colston High school uniform, only the blue and silver tie was loosely hung from his neck; his white shirt was not tucked in and its buttons were not done all the way up to the collar, letting it droop to expose his muscular neck and a few inches of his collar bones. He had a scruffy look going for him, but that's what all the girls loved, including me.

I approached him as he leaned against the school wall, phone pressed up to his ear. His furrowed brows told me something was up on the other end of the line. I then wished I didn't call out to him and left him to his privacy. However, it was too late for that, for when he noticed me, his free hand gestured me over.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," he spoke into the receiver as I slowly walked closer to him. "Whatever, dad. Bye."

Ah, daddy issues.

Okay, maybe that was the wrong wording, but it seemed as though at that time, Jake and his father were not seeing eye to eye.

Jake hung up the phone and turned to me.

"Hi salty," he said rather absent-mindedly, focussed more on his phone.

"Everything okay?"

"Dad bailed, again. He won't be there for dinner tonight."

It was the monthly meal that the Brines and the Lloyds had for the past ten years. Our fathers were, at one point, in business together - some pharmaceutical company that I didn't care enough to ask more about at the time. Jake's father attended these meals without fail when the business was blooming, but when it shut down for reasons that I wasn't sure of, his attendance diminished.

"He hasn't come to these dinners in forever," I said.

"Flo, I haven't seen him in forever, let's just go," Jake huffed, agitation evident on his face.

That's the worst, isn't it? When a parent doesn't spare their time for their children.

"Jake, wait," I reached out to hold onto his wrist before he could move further towards the school gates. He turned back towards me. "He's probably just busy with work and stuff."

"Great, that makes me feel better, I'm being blown off by my dad for work."

Well, shit, Flo, not helping.

"Jake," I groaned, stepping closer to him. "Don't be like this, my dad does the same sometimes. It's annoying, but what can we do?"

"I haven't seen him in a month, Flo."

That had me biting my lip. I didn't know how to reply to that.

The memory lights up vividly in my mind. Unsure of the reason, I guess it's because of this embrace that I need so much right now. As he holds me in his arms, the person who I still consider as my best friend, as he was then, I wish I could have given him this sort of comfort back then - back when he was lonely because he had a mostly absent father, back when he was the only child with only his mother and a few select friends. I wish I could have given him this sort of hug when he needed it.

At what feels like the right time, we simultaneously pull away and face each other, still within close proximity. His usually ambient eyes are now a raging ocean amidst a storm. I watch intently as he clenches his jaw, looking down at the floor holding us.

"Who is he?" His tone is quiet, but deadly.

No.

He looks up to see my defensive face, knowing very well he won't get far in interrogating me.

"I need to know," he presses.

"Why?"

"So I can make him wish he never touched you,"

"Jake..." I step away, shaking my head.

He leans forward to be in my line of view, taking a few steps closer as I move back.

"Flo, you have to tell me who he is," his tone is almost pleading than demanding.

"Jake, this is the exact reason why I didn't want to tell you."

"Why? Why would you keep something like this from me?" His voice rises slightly as the anger in his eyes begins to translate onto his tongue. Although I can tell he's trying to control it, the popping veins on his neck and forehead give away the fact that the angst is probably burning away at his insides.

This anger is like looking into a mirror at myself a few months ago. I literally travelled across oceans to Australia in order to avoid my worries, but my demons followed me there. The pain I felt when I first left had morphed into anger over the past two years, so I knew it was time to come back and put my demons in their place. I think I'm heading in the right direction.

"Who else knows?" His brows rise, denting the skin of his forehead. With drowsy eyes, I look into his and follow the red veins scribbled on the white of his eyeballs.

"No one, just you," I fight against heavy lids and tears to keep my sight on him. "And I want to keep it that way."

"Why wo-" I cut him off before he can speak anymore.

"It's my choice Jake," my tone is assertive. "This is my decision, and I'm trusting you with it."

There is an earsplitting silence as we look at each other. His eyes avert to look out of the window behind me, their turquoise colour reflecting the shimmering morning sunlight. Digging into his pocket, he pulls out the folded letter and holds it up between us. It crinkles between the tight grip of his fingers.

"This shit is notsupposed to happen, Flo."

His tone is a tangle of anger and sympathy, portraying the conflicting emotions in him and in me. I don't know whether to be relieved that I've told someone, or horrified of the consequences. I'm horrified mostly because I'm no longer in control of the situation.

Don't you think I know that Jake?

"How much shit has happened that wasn't supposed to, Jake? It's happened, we can't change it."

I start to feel the uneasy sensations that I've grown accustomed to the past few years. The tingling starts in my extremities, climbing its way up to my torso and neck until it reaches my head and affects my vision, making Jake's face a blur.

"I...I need to sit down," I stutter, lowering myself to the floor at the edge of my bed.

"Are you okay?" Jake kneels in front of me, with arms outstretched in case they need to catch me if I lose my balance. He tosses the paper to a side.

"I will be," I will be.

Part Three

The other time I had a break down I had in front of Jake, he gave me a pillow, sat me down and made me tea. This time, he's given a glass of water and his silent company, the two best things I could ask for in this situation. With me sat against the edge of my bed and him sat adjacent to me against the wall, we've spent the past five minutes staring between each other and the floor.

"Do you want more water?" He asks, making me smile.

"My glass is half full," I respond, lifting it up for him to see. "But thank you."

His otherwise straight lips twitch upwards for a second at my attempt at optimism, but the smile soon disappears as he bows his head to his lap.

"I'm sorry,"

"Why do you keep apologising?" I question.

"I..." He breathes heavily out of his mouth, still not looking at me. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you, I even..." He pauses, taking a breath. "I called you a slut. I didn't mean it and I was stupid, I never thought something like this ha-"

"Jake," I interject his stuttering and slowly shake my head, a delicate smile decorates my lips. "We all do things we don't mean, and you didn't know, how do you expect to be there for me when you didn't know half the story? You have nothing to apologise for."

He finally looks up. His eyes look as if they could possess me, they have such a powerful grip that I can't look away even if I wanted to.

"That's what I'm sorry for, that you didn't trust me enough to tell me,"

I shake my head again, leaning forward. "Jake this isn't about trust. I..." I'm lost for words to finish the sentence. There's so much I can say to, it's running tirelessly through my head, but I've never spoken these things to anyone before. I'm genuinely scared to let him in.

Speak to him, maybe it'll help.

Picking myself up along with my glass of water, I make my way to the kitchen sink. I feel Jake mirror my movement as I sense his body approaching the table behind me. It's been hard for me to open up, to speak about my problems. Though I've found that coming back to Colton, I've been doing just that.

Open up, Flo. I think it's time.

"I was violated in the most disgusting way that a person could be." I sense his stillness, so I slowly turn around to see him, not caring if he sees the tears that are pricking at my eyeballs. "But what makes it worse is that I thought it was myfault." I force the words out of my mouth, as if they're clinging to the back of my throat and chocking me.

He starts angrily shaking his head, "how could you think that?"

"Jake I don't expect you to understand, neither would I want you to. I wouldn't want my worst enemy to understand what I went through, and what I'm still going through." I try to keep my voice steady but the trembling of my hands is incurable. "It's so fucked up that I really did think I was in the wrong, that I lead him on to do what he did," I take a deep breath to ease my nerves but it only makes my head spin faster. "I couldn't tell anyone, not even my dad. I was scared I would be told that yes, I was in the wrong, that Iwas the slut, that I wanted it but then regretted it afterward."

The redness of his eyes grows deeper as I speak, triggering more tears to build up in mine, but I blink them back quickly because I'm frankly too tired to cry anymore. I've cried far too many times over a man that will never deserve it.

"Jake don't think it was a trust thing, you are someone I will always trust. But how I handled

it then, that was my survival mechanism. I did what I could to just keep going."

Surprisingly, I've manage to hold in my tears. However I can't say the same for Jake. He lets one slide escape to slide down the curve of his prominent cheekbone.

Don't cry, I hate it when you cry.

He looks down at his knuckles that have turned white from the way he tightly grasps the backbone of the dining table chair. Quickly, a finger wipes the tear away but lingers on his face as he lingers in thought.

"That's why you left?"

"That, and everything else that is on that paper,"

He looks up wearing a pained expression, as if he's preparing to be hit by a train.

"It was stupid," he says.

"What was?"

"The whole ordeal with River, it was high school drama at its finest. It shouldn't have blown up the way it did, I'm sorry we did that to you." He looks down again, and I'm afraid he's going to let another tear loose.

Stop, Jake. I don't want you to cry because of me.

"No, I should be the one apologising. It was a shitty thing for me to do."

"We all do shitty things. But that shitty thing is nothing in comparison to this," he looks up to the ceiling. "And we-" he pauses to to close his eyes. "I wasn't there when you needed me."

He sighs angrily through 'o' shaped lips, shaking his head as he runs his hands through his hair in angst. It seems that every second longer that he has to process the information, is a second more for the anger to grow within him.

"Flo, I can't," he looks back at me, brows furrowed and eyes pleading and angry. "You either tell me who he is, or I'm gonna find out for myself. I can'tlet him have his life when he's practically taken yours." He speaks through gritted teeth and his chest starts to heave more rapidly, a contrasting image compared to his more vulnerable composure not too long ago.

"Jake calm down-"

"Don't!" He raises his voice, yet is quick to quieten it. "Don't Flo," he repeats, hesitating as he shuts his eyes in agitation before opening them to pierce mine. "Do you know how shit this makes me feel? That something like this happened to you, and I didn't do anything."

"But Jake, how could you have done anything if you didn't know?" My voice cracks as I speak.

He blinks away the moisture build-up in the corner of his eye, but the tears wet his long, dark eyelashes, causing them to stick together.

"No, I did know something was up," he says with a tone of disappointment. "Those few months before you left, you were distant."

That's true.

"All that you've written about in that letter - the drinking, the partying, that wasn't you. I thought you were acting different because of your parents divorce or to get away from us. But those last weeks before you left, I knew something else was up, because something just didn't feel right...I just couldn't get a hold of you." He pauses, his eyes darting from my left to my right. "Now I know why. And now I feel like shit because I know I could've done something."

"What could you have done?"

"Made you stay," he answers.

It's as if we're both holding our breaths it's so silent. The only sound I hear is the pulsations in my ears due to the pounding at my chest.

"I needed to go," I finally admit. "I didn't have anything for me here."

"You had me," he's quick to retaliate.

"I didn't, you were angry at me for kissing River."

He closes his eyes, annoyed.

"Flo, it wasn't anger," he bows his head. "I mean, initially maybe it was. But it was more...jealously than anything else. I know I overreacted and treated you like shit, but I would never not be there for you. You were my best friend."

Youaremy best friend. One of my only ones.

His eyes find their way back to mine. I study the blue-green irises that almost sparkle with a glaze of fresh tears. He's not crying, but I think he's exhausted.

"Tell me one thing,"

I narrow my eyes wearily, "what?"

"Do I know him?"

Saved by the bell is a saying that works true in this moment. Three knocks sound against my door, making both me and Jake jolt and face its direction. I quickly adjust my hair by tucking a few strands behind my ears and blinking a few times to get rid of the tiredness clawing against my eyeballs. Pacing towards my door, I reach for the handle to open it, just as Jake takes a seat at the table.

It's Aiden.

"Well good morning, you look terrible," he states as he gives me a look over. "Have you slept?"

I bite at my lip, "yeah, actually Aiden, this isn't a good time, I-"

"Aiden?" Jake questions curiously from behind me; I feel his tall frame approaching me from behind.

"Jake?" Aiden's brows furrow in confusion. He quickly relaxes his facial expression and follows up with a "hi, how are you."

"Not too bad, and yourself?" Jake responds, giving me a calm glance, yet I know he's questioning in his mind why on earth Aiden is at my doorstep, given my history with his sister. "How's Georgia?"

There you go, there's the G bomb.

"I'm good, she's good. She's coming back next week." Aiden also glances at me, as if this isn't awkward enough. Although he has tried to shield is confusion from us, it's obvious from the way he looks between Jake and me that puzzled. Heck, even I am.

"Cool, well, I better go." Jake turns to me with eyes desperate to say and ask so much more but instead he just says, "see you later?"

I scream internally because I don't want him to go, but with Aiden here, for some reason, neither do I want him to stay. It's just too awkward.

"Yeah, see you," I nod, giving him the best smile I can muster. What warms me up a little in the small smile he gives back.

"Nice to see you again, Aiden. Say hi to Georgia for me," Jake speaks as he steps past him through the doorway.

"You too, and I will," Aiden replies, but Jake isn't looking at him. His crystalline eyes focus on me before he turns on his heels and walks away down the corridor.

***

It's twelve in the morning. I can't sleep. When I shut my eyes I see Jake, I feel how he held me this morning in his tight muscular grip and I'm in awe of myself at how I am not revolted by it. I smile, feeling the warmth I felt when we were close before this mess happened. We used to talk how we talked today.

One step at a time.

I reach for the notebook on my nightstand and turn to its back pages. There lies a list of goals that I wanted to fulfil by coming back to Colston.

I'm slowly, but surely, making my way through them. However the last of them at this point in time seems impossible. My phone vibrates to my left, diverting both my head and attention to the lit screen with a message from Jake.

Come meet me tomorrow at my gym, just off of Bromley Close, 6 am. Wear gym clothes.

***

Hello,

I used to use this part of the chapter to talk to you guys a lot. Unfortunately, I haven't been doing that lately as writing has been stressful for me in itself. It's not that I don't love it, because I do, and I love this story, I'm so invested in it. But a lot of things are going on in my personal life that I have to deal with as well. Recently, my sister had a liver transplant. Amazing, right? She's all well, but I've been her main carer, that's why I haven't been posting. I apologise for that, I know you guys have been waiting patiently, thank you so much for your undying support and the love you have for this book.

I will be uploading more regularly. I aim to upload the next chapter by next Friday (August 31st 2018). I really can't wait for this story to unfold. I hope you liked this chapter as much as I loved writing it!

Stay beautiful,

Indie xoxo