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"If you'd have been more attentive, she wouldn't have had to look someplace else for that attention. You're the one who gave her these 'mommy' issues!"

"Mommy issues? I'd suggest you use more suitable vocabulary the next time you attempt to blame me for anything related to our children. I've already admitted my fault in this, maybe you should try it sometime. It comes with lots of tears but it's well worth it!" Jacqueline hollers, throwing her hands in the air as a vein pulses out from the side of her neck. Her usual composure was gone with the wrinkles forming on her forehead. Jacqueline typically makes it a point to avoid scrunching any part of her face to avoid future sagging but her ex-husband always brought so much emotion out of her.

"You lecturing me on how to be a parent is ironic, Jacky. I was thee parent until you broke our family apart!" Damien Hill snaps back with frustration consuming his face in the form of a deep blush tone in his slightly chubby cheeks. His unkempt, bushed brows invert slightly, enough to exhibit discontent.

"You did that to yourself. No one stopped you from, at the very least, calling your daughter." Jacqueline frustratedly runs her hand through her disheveled hair hanging loosely down to her shoulders.

"I have!"

"No, you ignorant ass. I'm talking about your other) daughter. The one that isn't begging me for rent money to live with her new boyfriend," Jacqueline lowers her tone, staring daggers at the man whom she still has a love for, in disbelief. The pain communicates itself in the lowering of her brows.

Jade didn't know that Melanie had a boyfriend. I hope he doesn't sell drugs or threaten her like the last one... I miss Mellie so much.

Jade decides it's time to slam the door behind her. With one swift movement, the brunette forces a suffocating silence upon the nearly 4,000 square foot home. She had been standing at the door for a couple of minutes now, listening to the heated blame game playing out from the formal living room.

The parents snap their heads over to their daughter standing aloof in the foyer.

Jade is slightly taken aback by the intense looks served by her parents in her direction. The eyes focusing on her makes her want to disappear, especially when assuming they've seen the pictures already. Shame fills Jade's gut, making her want to vomit.

Her mother's deep brown eyes soften while her father's light hazel eyes coldly glare at her.

The sight sends an arrow through Jade's heart. She'd never seen him look so fierce before. To be honest, she hadn't seen him look much of anything besides upbeat and happy, but he appeared that way whenever he was leaving the house, probably going to hook up with his mistress.

Fuck him for looking at me like that.

"Jade, I wasn't aware that y-"

Scattered steps clatter across the hardwood floor. The steps cease once Jade stands before her father, barely two feet away. The brunette then squeezes her small body into the man's tall and lean stature. The tears fill her eyes without warning as she embraces her father. Her tears soak into his soft baby blue collared dress shirt. The natural warmth of his body surrounds her, insulating her.

Damien stands frozen like a statue. His arms hover over Jade's back warily as confusion displays across his face at the gesture. The light hazel eyes dart around the room ceaselessly. He hadn't hugged Jade since she was in middle school. He'd never realized that until now, as his body rejects the hug like the immune system to a transplanted organ.

His daughters grew up and he assumed that they didn't care about him anymore. He assumed that they'd grown out of their father and his attention since that is what he believed was his father's reason for departure when he was Jade's age. Unbeknownst to a young Damien, his father truly left his mother because he couldn't face fatherhood while being unable to maintain a steady job in any city within a 50-mile radius. The decision wasn't the most logical but it was a decision nonetheless.

Damien's arms slowly falter to awkwardly pat Jade's upper back with his hands. The man bites at the corner of his lip, looking over confoundedly at his ex-partner. He notices the way Jacqueline stands tall and composed throughout this whole ordeal.

His eyes read, Help me.

Jacqueline's initially perplexed expression mellows out into disappointment. He really can't do it.

Jacqueline possessed this abiding fear that her husband, Damien Hall, may not have been capable of being a father. This feeling began once Melanie had been born. Since he spoke so highly of having children, a young Jacqueline assumed that he would be great at it. She believed in him enough to feed into the idea that she wanted to have children when in reality, she didn't at the time.

She wanted to have faith in him, but once observing the way the man could barely lull an infant Melanie to sleep, she knew. The man did try... oh, he tried, but no matter how much he did he could not fully commit. He was there but he wasn't there. Jacqueline could sense the disconnect between her husband and her from then on, and it crushed her so much that she didn't want to accept the fact that he had been cheating on her for years. She wanted to believe that their love could persist.

Jade sniffles, burying her face further into her father's one-sided embrace. Jacqueline stares at her daughter in pity. Her heartbreaking as she realizes that Damien and she have both failed this young woman. They failed at being her parents.

And she so desperately deserved parents and unconditional love.

"Jade hon, it's ok-" Jacqueline attempts to start.

"Dad, I'm sorry," Jade pleads as her tear-filled eyes look up into the cold, glazed-over eyes of her father.

"Hey, hey, it's alright," Damien soothes in his deep, raspy voice. He removes his arms from around Jade, slightly relieved that the moment is over. He felt awkward beyond belief at hugging his daughter.

"Jade, I'm sure Mr. Scott has a handle on the case," Jacqueline chimes in, glaring at Damien as Jade looks down to wipe her eyes for a second. Jacqueline assumed that was the reason why Jade was crying into her father's chest.

"Yeah, Scott is good at what he does. Trust me, whoever did this will be prosecuted, but they need to know who did this, Jade?" Damien adds, his tone too official for the setting and mood.

Jade feels weak. How did I go from cursing this man outside to crying on his shoulder? How fucking pathetic.

Once her eyes are cleared of tears, Jade looks up at her father. I can't tell on Zoé. Jade's heart starts racing at the thought of getting Zoé in trouble. Some part of her was still afraid of Zoé.

"So, you're just gonna stand there and act like we haven't spoken in weeks?" Jade instigates, running a finger under her eyelid to wipe the excess tears. The inflammation under her eyes becomes more agitated as her slender forefinger scrapes across the sensitive skin. She had been wiping her tears away a lot today.

"That's not it... I wanted to," Damien stammers with a dazed look of bewilderment.

"Then why didn't you?" Jade gulps heavily as her voice threatens to crack under the pressure of the millions of things she wants to say to this man. "Why didn't you care enough to see how I was doing?"

Damien doesn't falter at the questions that would have broken any parent's heart. His structured face remains strong and cold, unfazed by his daughter's line of questioning. Internally, he feels bad. He just feels 'bad'.

"I can't explain my past actions but I can try to give you what you want now." The man's face shows a bit of emotion in the way his brows squint together.

"Do you even love me?"

"What kind of question is that?" He raises his voice a bit. "Of course I love you, you're my kid for crying out loud." A bit of his southern accent comes out, marking some sort of emotion in him.

"How about Mel, huh? She worshiped you like a fucking Saint even after she found out you were cheating."

Damien snaps his head over to Jacqueline in disbelief.

"Don't blame me for your little 'entanglement'. They are the ones who told me. Own up to your shortcomings, Damien." Jacqueline crosses her arms over her chest, annoyed at his audacity to suspect that she was the one to expose him.

"Since I may never see you or hear from you after this, I just want you to know... I never blamed you for never being there. Melanie most definitely didn't want to. We wanted you to be the one that we could trust. The one that could show us how to be loved. We wanted that so fucking bad, so we settled. We didn't know what the fuck we were settling for, but we accepted that you both were our parents." Jade pulls her lips in harshly to fight back the tears. Fuck, I feel like I'm running out of tears.

"Fuck," she exasperates, "I don't even know why I'm saying this. It won't matter because you won't love us the way we need you to. I don't know if you can."

Damien rubs his fingers through the short stubble that he grew since he'd left the home. He seems to be thinking through the words without reacting immediately. There seems to be no chance of a purely emotional response from him.

"I don't know why we have to emphasize this "love" thing. Weren't we present throughout your life? Didn't we give you enough money to spend? Send you to the best schools?" Damien states as if having a valid argument for not loving his children.

"That's not the point. I want your attention and affection."

"Maybe I can't give you that!" Damien lowers his voice to add, "but that doesn't mean I don't care. I care for all of you deeply." He raises his eyes to Jacqueline, holding her gaze for a moment before looking back at Jade.

The brunette is worn out. There is no forcing it. This is the extent to which her father cares. She has to accept that.

"I love you, dad," Jade whispers, holding a strong gaze with her father.

The man's eyes flutter away, staring past his daughter at something else in the home. "Yeah, me too."

Jade tightens her lips and nods. "Glad my nudes haven't made you care less about me." She walks swiftly past her father towards the staircase.

The same suffocating silence fills the home again.

Jacqueline watches in guilt as the miniature version of herself walks away defeatedly. In moments like these, she isn't sure if anything she says will help.

Damien Hall runs his hand through his quiffed hair in frustration. "You know I tried," he sighs.

"Cut the crap, Dame. If I can try, you most definitely can finish the marathon. You can't keep your emotions to yourself, because that little girl," Jacqueline points towards the empty staircase, "she needs you, to be honest, and vulnerable with her. She needs to know that you 'actually' care."

Jade stands still at the door of her bedroom, freezing at her mother's words. Exactly.

The brunette drops her being into the bed, laying on her back with her limbs spread out every which way. A hefty sigh escapes her lips as the heaviness of her head settles in the memory foam. She didn't expect things to get so heated. She starts to feel pressure in her head, signaling an oncoming migraine from all her tears and torment from the day.

Her forefingers gently massage her temples as her eyes remain shut. Her mind continues racing as flash memories of what transpired a minute ago in the living room. My dad admitted to loving me, but not that much? Melanie moved on with her life and may never speak to me again?

Despite the disappointment from her father and his composure throughout all of this, Jade finds that her heart aches more at the thought of never speaking to Melanie again. Her older sister, her rock, the first person who had suspected that she was gay but accepted it is no longer by her side.

Jade can simply pick up the phone and call her sister but she's afraid. Afraid of the rejection that may come. Melanie has always been a free spirit and she never conformed to things she didn't want to do. Continuing to live with Jade and her parents had been something that Melanie hadn't wanted for the longest time, but the older sibling stayed for her baby sister. She wanted to move out since she graduated high school. She stayed for Jade because she knew how much the brunette struggled and the older sibling could not imagine leaving her to fend on her own with their mother. For Melanie to distance herself this much from Jade, it had to be because she has had enough.

Enough of this life she lived where she had to bottle everything in and pretend to be perfect when she struggled with her own issues. Jade had never seen Melanie suffer much as they grew up which shows how good Melanie got at concealing her weaknesses.

There is no way that this could be the end of them. Jade refuses to accept that. The brunette wipes at the drying tears on her cheeks as her body rises from the bed like a zombie resurrecting from the dead. Her body feels dense while her head possesses a pressurized feeling like a balloon that's about to blow.

The phone stuffed into the hem of her skirt lights up as if on command. It seems she has received a notification on her social media. The sharp bell sound of the notification sends shivers down her back.

scarlet_goddess: Thought you'd wanna see these babe. You look so fucking good ☺️

Tagged along with the conniving message are the several images that Mr. Scott had shared with Jade earlier that day. Jade realizes that she hadn't even asked where the photos were uploaded. Zoé shamelessly uploaded them to Instagram where everyone they knew could see them. The redhead did all of this on purpose.

Jade tentatively clicks on the first image and bites her lip at the number of likes. 345. Jade couldn't fucking believe her eyes. Her heart sinks for the twentieth time today. The feeling is unbearable enough to have the brunette thinking she may suffer from a heart attack soon.

The comments didn't help. Several comments were left on the post displaying reactions of confusion or praise. Jade would like to assume that people were oblivious to what was going on since Zoé hadn't hinted at much, besides leaving a caption saying: "when one falls in love, they fall into a temporary madness"

Some praised her artsy prowess, probably thinking that Jade's pictures were some stock pictures from someone's angsty middle school Tumblr feed.

Jade stares mindlessly at the picture of her sprawled across the bed in her bra and panties. It was obvious Zoé took that one while she was sleeping on her stomach. The brunette's face was cut out enough but she couldn't shake the fact that she knew it was herself. Someone is bound to find out and when they do, all shit will break loose.

The thought of her being known as the girl whose semi-nudes got exposed kills Jade bit by bit. Her soul crushes with each passing thought. What if she can't get into college because of this? What if employers find this and refuse to hire her? Her mom would be so disappointed. Kinsey wouldn't want her anymore. She'll have nothing because of this fucking picture.

As the disordered, catastrophic thoughts fill her mind, Jade's heart rate rises rapidly. She begins to struggle with maintaining even breaths. Each breath feels strained, forcing her to press her hand over her chest. She feels her chest heaving up and down but there seems to be no air coming in.

Her doe eyes widen into saucers. The brunette realizes that she can't breathe. She can't breathe. She is trying so hard but every breath is coming as a wheeze as her throat dries. The wheezing gets louder and louder as the air escapes her, leaving her desperate. Suddenly, there is no longer enough air in Jade's world.

Air continues to escape her body.

"Jade? Is everything alright?" Jacqueline asks, knocking on Jade's door hesitantly, pressing her ear up against the bedroom door.

"I'm sure she doesn't want to hear from us anymore, Jacky," Damien nags from downstairs with his hands in his pockets as he casually stands in the middle of the living room.

Jacqueline ignores Damien's comments, listening through the door for anything from Jade. Once Jacqueline catches a snippet of the wheezing sound she thought she heard from downstairs, she quickly turns the knob. She rushes into the room to see her daughter curling up in the middle of her bed, breathing heavily with her eyelids shut tight.

"My baby," she says with her voice barely reaching above a whisper.

Before she can process her thoughts, Jade's body is encompassed in warmth. The warmth of her mother with the scent of that Chanel perfume radiating from her body fills Jade's senses. As the seconds pass, Jade focuses more on the scent and her mother's warmth. It's enough to bring her heart rate back down. Her thoughts centralize and concentrate on her mother's safety.

Tired is an understatement at this point. Jade is enervated. She is not only drained of energy but vitality, her will to live. She is surprised that her body is still together after everything that's been happening all at once, it seems. Every time she sees a chance to get back up again and actually try to breathe, her head is dunked back down into the water. At this point, she is wondering if she's meant to drown.

"Mom, I c-can't anymore," Jade croaks with a brittle voice

"What do you mean?" The older woman inquires, lightly stroking her daughter's entangling locks. Her eyebrows soften as her eyes calmly watch Jade.

"I can't do this anymore."

"Yes, you can. I'm not going to let you give up." There is stern conviction in her tone. A ripple of chills scatters down Jacqueline's arms. This moment reminds her of someone whom she had used the same words to plead with. A special someone who had kinky curly black hair and possessed the brightest smile in the universe.

The memories compel Jacqueline to hold onto her daughter even tighter, hoping that loving the shit out of her will be enough.

"Pardon my language, but even if the whole world goes to shit, know that you've got me. I'm here for you no matter what, even if it feels like the sky is falling. I'm here, darling."

Jade melts at her mother's words. She feels safe enough to close her eyes and relax. The brunette hadn't realized that her entire body was tense. Her joints felt glued in place until she developed the strength to move her heavy limbs. As she relaxes, she can feel the soreness coming on.

Tomorrow was gonna be hell by the looks of it, but it didn't seem that bad to Jade as the warmth of her mother's arms soothes her like a baby being rocked back and forth. Tomorrow no longer rings through her mind as her eyes close shut. The mother's gentle fingers run through her daughter's thick wavy hair. She knew the younger had always enjoyed that.

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Hey beautiful peeps... y'all didn't expect this chapter didn't you? 😈 I hope you enjoyed. It's a little shorter but have some faith. We are getting into the tea in the next couple of chapters!

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Thoughts on Damien Hill?

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Theories on Melanie and how she's doing?

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Also, damn I need to give my girl Jade a break. 😩😭

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See y'all beautiful queers in the next chapter. Don't forget to comment, vote on this chapter and others, and give me a follow if you'd like! ❤️