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Enjoy the chapter, and hopefully from the title of it you've already figured out this is an important chapter!

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I woke up the next morning with a pressure on my right side, down near my stomach. I tilted my head once the remnants of sleep departed. I swept a piece of hair that was tickling my forehead away as I looked down at the hunched over figure of my best friend.

Joney's mouth was parted as her head rested on her arm, her sweater enveloping her small form. I tried not to move as longing crashed over me. I hadn't been a very good friend towards her lately, and I felt terrible that she was here for me when I hadn't been for her.

I sighed into my oxygen mask, feeling better, but noting that the doctor told me I had to stay overnight to make sure nothing else went wrong. I looked outside the window to see the array of colors painting the sky just as the sun hid itself behind the looming trees.

I looked back down at Joney, and vowed to be a better friend, regardless of what I was going through. Just as I resolved that worry, another troubling thought popped up.

Who was going to pay the hospital bills? My mom...

My eyes glazed over and my eyes got blurry as I thought of her and my siblings, but I willed myself to stay strong. No matter what it took, I would find them.

My mom was missing, and my jobs didn't pay very much, not to mention I hadn't exactly been present at my jobs lately. The overwhelming since of defeat was omnipresent, and it took a lot of energy to remain optimistic through all of this.

I simply wanted my family back. Once that happened, I am sure that everything else would work itself out, but right now I needed them.

Stirring caught my attention, and I met Joney's green eyes. We stared for a moment before she leaped up and hugged the life out of me, and I sat there squeezing the life out of her.

"I'm sorry I've been such a bad friend!" We said simultaneously.

She pulled back and I sat up. "You weren't being a bad friend, I was!" We said together again.

There was a slight pause, and then we just erupted into laughter. I hadn't laughed like this in... well, a very long time. I watched her wipe her eyes. "But seriously Jo, I'm really sorry I have been such a bad friend. I promise to do better."

She let out one laugh before looking up at me. "Are you kidding me? I've been worried this whole time that you were angry with me, when you've been worrying about the same thing." She laughed again as her eyes lit up.

"I have to catch you up on everything!" She told me, but I smiled mischievously at her, raising a brow.

"Everything meaning Finn?" A blush illuminated her cheeks as she looked at me with twinkling eyes. "You seem to think you could sneak around with him without me finding out. Nothing gets past me smart one." I told her smiling, but at the same time I was worried. Wasn't Finn one of them? Did he play a part in kidnapping my family? Regardless of how much sense it made given the evidence, I couldn't picture Finn's innocent face in the mixture with taking my family.

For someone who claims that nothing gets past me, a lot of things sure do slip by. For instance, X always seems to have the upper hand, but now that I know its Jacen, I guess I know why. I needed to figure out a way to expose him though; I couldn't just accuse him out of nowhere. His family, or he himself might kill me. They have the ability considering his family is the richest in the city.

I have to figure out where he goes to catch him in the action and save my family, but there he never left a cl-

Wait. Maybe... maybe he did leave a clue. It is a very very farfetched clue, but its all ive got to work off of.

My stalker always signed his name with X, but what if it wasn't supposed to be his name, but rather a place? He told me to find him, and I told him I would, but I always got frustrated because I couldn't figure it out where to even start.

Spencer was the tech savvy one of the four boys that I was now wary of, but he told me that X had used a disposable cell phone, so it was impossible to trace him. Even if we were able to figure out where he was, he always seemed to be one frustrating step ahead of us, so there was no guarantee he would be where his phone was.

There was a place on the outskirts of town called Xenon; I am pretty sure it used to be a comic book store or what not, but it when out of business a couple of years ago. No one had done anything to it as far as I know, and it was too far out for business to thrive, so no one bothered renovating. However the thing that sticks out in my memory, is the next closest shop just down the road.

It was a little antique watch shop.

I thought back to the night in the hotel room with Axle when I got my mom's watch with a note attached. "Time's ticking"was its message, but I was too worried about the watch itself to consider the fact that there could be so many different models of that same type of watch.

Where else to get it than at a store that only sells watches.

It was a long shot, but it felt...right. Although, I wasn't completely sure if it was the watch shop or the only DVD and comic book store, I felt that it had to be one of the two.

My fist clenched in realization and anticipation. There was a feeling in my gut that I was one hundred percent correct about my assumptions, and it made me want to throw up. I didn't want to let on that I had reached a major breakthrough in all of this, so I smiled and pushed it to the back of my mind.

For now.

"-And then he told me that I had something on my face, and I was like 'where' and he was all like 'here' and then he kissed me! Zaph, when I tell you it was magical, I mean it. Like actually, I could have sworn I saw a couple of unicorns poopin' rainbows." I looked at her with suppressed amusement.

This girl...

My hospital door was shoved open, and all the boys toppled in, looking like guilty little children who got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

"We were just uhh..." I narrowed my eyes at them and crossed my arms.

"Mmhmm."

Finn stood up and brushed himself off, staring at Joney with a small smirk as she shot up from the seat at the foot of my bed. "You think I have magical lips baby?" To say she blushed was an understatement.

"What are you all doing here?" I asked in a clipped tone. There wasn't anything they could do to me in a hospital.

"We are hear to take you home," Jacen said, walking up to my bed. I shied away.

"What makes you think I would go anywhere with you?" I spat. Joney looked at me in confusion, as Finn wrapped an arm around her waist as he looked at me with sadness.

"Z, I promise me aren't the bad guys here." Finn said before placing a kiss on the crown of Joney's head. Let's go get something to eat babe, I'm sure you're hungry." He led her out the door, along with a groaning Spencer muttering something about wanting to gag.

That left Luke, Jacen, and me alone.

"Will you let me explain, please?" Jacen whispered as he took a seat at the chair at the end of my bed.

"I'm listening, although I don't know why." I looked away from him, so that he wouldn't see the pain in my eyes.

I heard his sigh and then he started speaking. "I used to be a part of it. I'm not anymore, and I haven't been for a while. It's partly my fault why you are being targeted, and I'm sorry."

"Why should I believe any of that?" I asked him dejectedly.

"Because if I wanted to hurt you, I would've already, and you should know by now that I care about you, too much to let anything happen to you on my watch." I squeezed my eyes shut.

I didn't want to sound sappy, but my heart was telling me one thing and my mind another. It was more than annoying.

"Then why do you have that tattoo? You said it wasn't a coincidence," I asked, finally looking at him; really looking at him.

His eyes were bloodshot, and I wondered what he had been doing since I had last seen him. He still had a five o'clock shadow giving his already angular shaped face a more rugged look. To sum it all up, he looked like an Abercrombie and Fitch model that was high.

You remember that Mark? The one Colton was talking about that night we were locked in the school? He is the leader over many different groups, and I was in one of those groups once upon a time. But the stuff they did- that I did- was sick, and if I could take it back I swear I would. I've done stuff I'm not proud of Z, stuff that I was forced into, but I'm do take responsibility in my actions, and the pain they've cause so many people; the pain it's caused you."

I was silent. What could I possibly say to that?

"We both used to be involved in a gang, the same gang that is targeting you." Luke leaned forward in his chair, resting his arms on his thighs. "We've been trying to figure out where they are keeping your family, but they have changed the location since we were last with them. We have no idea where to look first. There's no guarantee that they are even still in Asford." He placed his head in his hands, but not before I noticed how bloodshot his eyes were too.

"You have to believe that I didn't mean for you to find out like this, I just didn't know how to tell you I used to belong with the people who kidnapped your family." He said, his eyes begging for me to believe him.

I sat staring at him as he looked at me sincerely, a pleading look taking over his face. I sighed in defeat, but I couldn't keep a small smile from my face. Call me stupid, but I decided to follow my heart.

"Luke will you give us a moment?" Jacen said, not breaking his gaze, its intensity holding me hostage.

"I was about to take me leave anyways," he said, getting up and stretching, before walking over to me. He planted a chaste kiss on the top on my head before whispering to me.

"Be good to him Zaph. He's been living in his own personal hell for a while now." And with one of those guy nods to Jacen, he walked out of the hospital room.

What did that mean? Why had he been living in his own personal hell?

There was a deafening silence, before Jacen pushed himself up from his seat at the foot of my bed, struggling as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. As he walked towards me, he looked defeated and worn, as if the world around him had suck out all of his energy, and corroded what made him human. He looked otherworldly and ethereal as he stood next to my bed and looked down at me, but I couldn't deny that he look anything short of handsome.

I slid my oxygen mask off an placed it next to me, as Jacen sat down in the seat that had once been occupied by Joney.

"My mom died when I was younger, she died from cancer." He took a deep breath, before continuing on. "After that, my dad just stopped being Dad. He was never home, and when he was home, he was forcing me to fight, to learn to protect myself. But the thing is, is that I was a kid Z." He looked up at me and I saw so much pain in his eyes at that moment that my throat became clogged with emotion.

This was the same person who always held himself with confidence, and was always calm and collected, but here he was in front of me, looking more disheveled and vulnerable that I would have ever thought possible.

And that's what truly broke my heart.

"Why would I need to know how to do that? He was the one who was supposed to protect me. He was the one who was supposed to look out for me. But instead he forced a ten-year-old child to learn how to hold a knife, because he was incapable of being the man he was supposed to be. I was force to grow up, Zaph, he made me grow up too fast. It was because of him that I got involved with that group." I gripped him hand, pulling it onto my lap as he struggled to get through his story.

"Jacen you don't have to-"

"I do." He stated firmly, looking me directly in the eye. I hesitated before nodding slowly.

"They took me in Z, they treated me like the family I longed for, the family I knew before my mom died. They gave me food and bought me clothes as long as I helped them out in return. I never understood until I was older that the food they had given me, and the clothes on my back, were all paid for with blood money, and it made me sick. I met Finn and Luke in the same situation as me, and I vowed never to let Finn, Luke, or me do the things that the group did ever again."

He closed his eyes, and I watched as a single tear slipped out, even though he was quick to wiped it away. Jacen was broken, and for so long he was alone. He had the burden of taking care of the other guys, even though they all technically had family.

Jacen was truly Atlas, struggling to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.

"Zaph, I-" I sprang up with my arms open and hugged him. I hugged him hard enough for him to understand that I was sorry. I was sorry for accusing him so quickly, and sorry for putting him what I have been putting him through while he has been dealing with his own burdens, and dealing with them for a long time. I had only made things more difficult for him, and we have had a pretty bumpy relationship, which was mostly my fault.

"I'm so sorry. I truly am," I whispered in his ear. If I was granted one wish, it would be to take away all of the pain he was feeling at this moment, but since I didn't get that, I opted for the next best thing.

I pulled back slightly, until we were face to face. Our noses skimmed for a moment, before I gently pressed my lips to his, and kissed him with all of the emotion I could muster up until the world faded around us, and we were infinite.

***

Oh heck yeah we are getting somewhere!

What do you think Zaph's next move is gonna be? I'm excited to find out!

xoxo,

jean_margaret