"Plea...se," I begged in a desperate whisper. My senses sensitive and overloaded. The room felt too bright, the carpet too rough against my skin, my lungs burned and my head pounded.

I was shivering so bad and the pain was unbearable, like every single cell in my body was being torn apart. I groaned. Sweat beaded my forehead.

"Just a few more hours and you'll be over the worst of it," Jack's voice soothed but I shook my head, not believing it would ever end.

He didn't understand the pain I was trying to deal with. If he did he would give me what I wanted.

"It feels like I'm dying..." I wrapped my arms around myself trying to hold it together but feeling like I wasn't going to make it. "Please Jack."

No amount of pleading swayed him. He wasn't going to give into me, he had a will of steel and no matter how much I begged, nothing swayed him.

He put a wet face cloth to my face as he sat beside me. "I will get you through this. Trust me."

Trust. That wasn't something that I had to give to anyone. The monster who had kidnapped and traumatized me had taken that from me.

"I'm not strong enough..." I whispered.

"Yes you are. You are strongest person I know." He voice filled with emotion that made me glance up to him for a second. His eyes locked on mine. I saw his pain, it was the pain I carried.

For that briefest moment I didn't feel so alone in the world. A world I feared.

His fingers brushed against my cheek. My skin so sensitive his touch was painful. I winced so he lifted his fingers from my face.

I closed my eyes trying to block everything out but I couldn't get away from the pain that trembled through it. I just needed a hit and I would be free. Just one.

I had lost track of time but hoped it would end soon or I would die on the carpet in Jack's spare room's floor begging for the only thing that would stop it.

"Just a little longer. You can do this Had."

His voice seemed further away. All I could concentrate on was the pain that held my body in its clutches and refused release me.

He was wrong. I couldn't do this.

It felt like a lifetime of agonizing torture while the pain ravaged through me. I begged and pleaded with Jack to get me something that would stop the pain.

All through it, he held and soothed me. Whispering words of encouragement that barely penetrated my ordeal.

He had been steady through all of it, even when I cried and begged for the pain to stop. When I was shaking, he held me. He was there for every moment of it whether I was aware of it or not.

"Shh," he murmured into my hair with his arms around me, keeping me together when I feel like I was being ripped apart inside.

Finally, I drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up I felt achy but the intense pain was gone. It was daytime, the sun streamed through the window. I was lying on the carpet on my back. Rolling slowly I saw Jack asleep beside me on the floor. He lay on his side. His features relaxed.

He looked so peaceful, I wanted to reach out and touch his face. There wasn't the haunted look in his eyes, I wondered if I held the same in mine.

I had been too drugged up to think of how he had been handling the years that had passed since that fateful day. My pain had been the only thing I had been able to think about. There had been no space in me to take in anyone else's pain.

I could stare at him feeling memories form the past return. Ones where he was laughing and I was staring at him with my heart beating faster than usual. My lungs breathless. I hadn't thought about that in so long. It had felt like another lifetime, so far away. Not within reach.

Shifting slowly I moved closer to him shivering.

Even asleep he adjusted himself so I could lay beside him, heading resting on his shoulder as he put an arm around me and pulled me to him. He sighed, still in a deep sleep.

I held my breath ready to fight my way out when the fear took hold but it never came. Slowly I eased my stiff stance and exhaled cautiously.

My eyes fixed on his mouth. How many times as a teen had I daydreamed of him? I wasn't the same sixteen year old that had hung on his every word. The one who had scribbled my name with his surname more times than I could count.

I yearned for alternative reality to the one we were living in. A time where Alice was still here with us.

I allowed myself to imagine a world where she grew up and did all the things she had dreamed of like graduating and going off to college. My life would have been very different. I wouldn't have dropped out of school and spiralled into an addiction to drug to numb the pain.

I exhaled slowly, it was difficult to think about that now with everything that happened.

Alice's death had ripped that all from me.

But here now, was a reminder that he was the only one I felt safe with. I didn't know if it was because he was the one to find me or if it went deeper than that.

I breathed him in as I settled into his arms. He smelled of soap and spice. I closed my eyes and held onto the feeling of safety that had eluded me for. I promised myself I just wanted to stay there for a few minutes to take it all in.

I sighed, content to lay there and stared at him, struggling to remember a time before the tragedy that had changed our lives forever.

How I wished we could go back in time before that horrific day and change all the actions that had led to it. I wanted to go back to the times I could remember him teasing Alice and I. She would shove him playfully and roll her eyes at him. There had been a lot of love between them, a closeness they had not shared with their eldest brother Luke. I hadn't spent a lot of time with, only seeing him occasionally at family events.

Thinking back to those times filled my heart with so much love and pain it was difficult to breathe. That time was gone forever.

All I had now was the memories of her. I released a heavy breath.

Now all I could think about was the anguish in the face of the ones who had loved her.

I swallowed, feeling my rising emotions and wanting to block them out. I still couldn't think of her without thinking about the devastation that had been brought into our families by the events that day.

Even now I couldn't think about the day without a tightness in my chest and all the regrets that weighed heavily on me.

What if. None of that mattered. No amount of wishing was going to undo what happened and bring Alice back. Even catching the monster responsible.

I shivered again, this time from fear.

It had been a domino affect in our lives, tearing through all of us with pain and suffering. Unable to pick up the pieces of our lives in the wake of it.

I couldn't close my eyes without seeing her in my memories. It hurt, like a knife in my heart. I exhaled slowly but the pain didn't ease.

There was a lot from the incident I didn't remember. The doctors had explained it as my mind's way of blocking out the trauma.

I remembered enough to live in constant fear but not enough to be able to remember any details to catch him. He was a stranger, an unarmed man, who had murdered my friend. Somehow, I had escaped.

It was difficult to remember what happened and the truth was I was too afraid to push it for fear of what I would uncover. What if I wasn't strong enough to handle more? It was something I couldn't think about. I was barely coping, I couldn't deal with more. It was impossible.