Dedicated to AwesomelyBlaze for the gorgeous Story Card on the side, thank you!
--
(Unedited)
There's a place that I know,
It's not pretty there,
And few have ever gone.
If I show it to you now,
Will it make you run away?
Or will you stay?
~Dark Side- Kelly Clarkson
"Okay, maybe prostitute's an exaggeration," Avril admitted after a moment. "I didn't walk street corners. It was more like fake girlfriend with benefits," she said quietly. Not quietly enough, apparently, because a second later the door slammed open.
"What?" Blake demanded, stalking into the room. He kicked the door shut, keeping his eyes on Avril the whole time.
"What are you doing here?" I asked as Avril let out a string of curses. Worst timing ever. And of all people, it was Blake. I mean, yeah, he was one of the few people who knew about Avril, but I didn't think he popped in for visits, or something.
"He's stalking me," Avril told him flatly, without a hint of amusement anywhere on her face.
Blake, on the other hand, looked like he was a couple seconds from cracking up. "I can't stalk you. You haven't gone anywhere in the past week."
"Stalking is obsessively attempting to communicate with someone who does not wish to communicate with you. So yes, your actions are stalking," Avril corrected.
Blake simply sighed and shook his head in response, admitting defeat. "So," he said, attempting a casual tone that failed miserably. "Fake girlfriend?"
Instantly the little humor left in the room evaporated, leaving only a cold hard silence behind.
Avril shook her head. "Forget it."
He raised an eyebrow, then narrowed his eyes. "So should I tell Owen it was rape?"
"He told you too?" she demanded, eye twitching, looking like she was ready to kill someone. Violently. Probably Owen.
"You know Owen too?" I asked at the same time.
"I'm the boyfriend, remember?" Blake said, kind of replying to both the questions at the same time. Avril flinched at his answer. "What did he do?" he asked, watching Avril. I blinked at his focused, almost angry expression. Since when did Blake care so much? And why?
"Does it matter?" Avril asked quietly, so quietly I almost didn't hear her despite it being dead silent in the room.
"Yeah!" Blake and I exclaimed at the same time. We exchanged a look, then both turned to glare at Avril with an 'Are you stupid?' look. I still didn't know why Blake cared, or was even still here, but if it helped convince Avril to tell... And if it didn't, I could always just throw him out. Well, attempt to throw him out, since he was like, half a foot taller than me and probably a lot stronger too.
"Why do you care?" Avril demanded, saving me from having to ask Blake the question myself.
He shrugged. "Why can't I?"
"Because you don't know me!"
"So?" Okay, should I just, I don't know, try to throw him out now? Ask Owen to come back and get him to go? I mean, Avril didn't look like she was planning on talking any time soon with him in the room.
She shook her head. "No. I don't trust you."
"This is about trust?" he asked, eyes narrowing. Oh god, where is he gonna go with this?
"Blake-" I started. He shook his head and shot me a look. So I guess he had a plan. The question now is, should I or should I not let him carry it out? Well, if it starts going bad, I can always shove him out of the room. Besides, I was curious to know why he cared, and what he had in mind, so might as well. I watched as Avril glared at Blake for a couple moments, then to my surprise, she backed down and nodded slowly.
Blake grabbed a chair from the corner of the room and dragged it over to her bed, sitting down beside me. "Okay, story time." He glanced at me, then turned back to Avril. Oh no, I think I know where this is going. "Three years ago, I helped kidnap Raine so my cousin could rape her," he said, keeping his voice almost monotone and his eyes on Avril the whole time. "That's not something I'm proud of. And I never went to jail for it." He paused, and looked down for a moment. "So there. If I say anything about what happened to you, you know something that can put me in jail for a couple years."
Avril blinked and turned to me. 'You're friends with your kidnapper?" she asked, giving me a 'Are you crazy?' look.
"It was three years ago!" I protested.
She sighed. "You are just..." She shook her head and turned to look at Blake. "Fine, I guess that's fair enough. But just... Don't judge, okay?"
Blake snorted. "I just told you I helped kidnap someone so they could get raped. I don't think I can judge you."
Avril let out a bitter laugh. "You say that now."
"Av, we're not going to judge you."
"I know you won't." She shot a pointed look at Blake.
He sighed and shook his head, realizing he couldn't win with her. "Think about it this way. If you do creep the fuck out of me, I wouldn't stalk you anymore," he said, lifting his arms to put air quotes around 'stalk'.
She sighed. "I was fifteen when I ran away. I didn't have much money, food, anything. It was a pretty rash and stupid decision. And nobody would hire a fifteen year old drop out. I didn't want to go to the police because they would just make me go back to my parents."
"What was so bad about your parents?" Blake asked.
Avril looked away, blinking back tears, so I decided to answer for her. "They were abusive." Blake didn't respond, except for a nod of understanding.
"I didn't want to walk street corners, though. I found an ad on the Internet, asking for a fake girlfriend. So that's where I got my idea. I was new to New York, no one knew who I was, and it wasn't like people would ask for an ID or something. That was my advantage," she said, sounding bitter. "It was enough so that I could rent an apartment and buy food and clothes and stuff. I did that for two, almost three years. Then things got better. I got a job, and I didn't have to do it anymore."
"Then he was your boyfriend?"
She shook her head. "No." Then she paused. "Well, sort of. Fake boyfriend. It had been six years since I stopped when he showed up at my apartment. He said he got my name from a friend. I wasn't planning on taking it, but he offered a thousand dollars for every hour I faked. I had been taking classes online, but with that kind of money, I could go to real college. So I said yes."
Avril paused and took a deep breath before continuing. "The abuse started a month later. I knew I should've left and stuff, but I had been sucked in. His dad was a billionaire so he lived a pretty glamorous life. And I stayed."
"So you know who he is?" Blake asked. Avril nodded. "Then you can charge him for abuse."
She shook her head. "Yeah right, who so you think they're going to believe? The son of the CEO of a company worth billions or a girl who was stupid enough to run away when she was fifteen?"
"I bet they'd believe you if you had one of the best lawyers in the world," I said, grinning slightly as I thought about Avril facing off that guy who had been standing over her with a belt.
"Yeah right, how would I manage that?" Avril asked skeptically.
"She didn't tell you? She's dating Kaden Fleming," Blake told him, somewhat amused. "His parents are some of the best lawyers in the world."
She laughed and shook her head. "I just want to forget about it," she said, then turned to Blake, looking at him expectantly. "So what do you think of me now?"
He simply shrugged. "You did what you had to do."
***
"Hey," I said softly, stopping Blake from walking away. "Thanks."
He shot me a puzzled look. "For what?"
"For not judging," I replied hesitantly, unsure of how to phrase it, really. I hadn't expected Blake to judge Avril or anything like that, but his response and what he had said before... I hadn't expected that either. Especially since he didn't really know Avril. I mean, I guess he visited her, I had understood that much from their conversations, but still, it had only been a week.
"Damn, what do you guys think I am? I don't go around judging people," he said with a slight scowl.
"I know, I don't think you're like that. It's just... Most people wouldn't care." I didn't ask the question straight out, but tried to hint at it. I still didn't know why Blake had cared enough to tell Avril about what had happened.
Fortunately, he caught on. Sort of. "Are you asking if I'm interested in her?"
"What? No!" Wait... "Are you?"
He shook his head wildly, then stopped and shrugged. "She's a good... Distraction, I guess."
Oh god, why does that sound so bad? I think he meant a distraction from Bells, but that would mean he was, or wanted something. "She's not a rebound, okay, Blake?" Avril didn't need that on top of everything that had happened to her.
He sighed and shook his head again. "Not like that, Raine. We're always arguing, and it's easy to just focus on that," Blake explained. After a couple seconds he let out a slight chuckle. "I don't think that would ever happen. We hate each other."
"There's a pretty thin line-"
"Don't even try," he interrupted before I could finish the cliché line.
"Why did you care, though?" I asked, changing the subject to a more serious question that had been nagging me for a while.
"What do you mean?" he asked, eyebrows furrowing slightly.
I sighed. "You don't know Avril. You met her a week ago. Why do you care what happened to her?" It wasn't that I wasn't glad that he did, his response seemed to make her happier, but it still confused me.
He shrugged a little and ran a hand through his hair. "After what happened, I thought a lot about right and wrong. What happened with Avril... It's not right, no matter what the story is."
"What if she had said she had wanted it?" I asked. It was a weird question, I know, it had just flashed through my head without warning, but I knew there were people who liked getting hurt. Masochists.
Blake shook his head. "Not that severely." He paused. "She didn't, right? Didn't want it?"
"Didn't want what?" A new, barely familiar cut in. We both looked up to see Owen walking towards us. He clutched a cup of coffee in his hand, tight enough that he was crushing it. "Did she explain?" he asked, looking between Blake and me.
I nodded and opened my mouth to respond, but before I could say anything, someone called my name. I spun around to see... "Xavier?" What was he doing here? He looked worried but not hurt, as far as I could tell. It's a hospital, Raine, obviously someone he knows has been hurt. Of course he'd be worried.
"Go, I'll explain," Blake told me, drawing my attention back to him and Owen. I shot him a grateful smile and walked over to Xavier.
"Who?" I asked.
"Freya." He shot a glance at the closed door beside him. "She got in a car accident."
Oh god. "Is she going to be okay?"
He nodded and smiled weakly. "Just a couple cuts and bruises."
"Hey, you okay?" I asked, noting his clenched hands and wandering eyes. It was easy to tell he was worried about Freya, but he also looked lost, or confused.
"I don't know why I'm here."
Oh. So I guess they haven't made up. Yet. "Simple. Because you love her."
"I don't-" he started, then cut himself off when I shot him a 'oh really' look. "I shouldn't."
"Maybe the things we should do are the things we think we shouldn't and that's why the world's so messed up," I replied, with a slight smile, thinking about how Kaden and I were trying again, despite the fact that we shouldn't, that it was a pretty stupid idea. But it felt right. "Freya's a good person, she's not proud of what she's done, but she loves you."
For a moment, he was silent. "You know, it's scary."
"What? Relationships?"
He shook his head. "No, thinking you almost lost someone you love."
"And you said you didn't love her," I teased. "Just try again," I said when he didn't reply. "You love each other."
"I don't know if I can. I mean, how do you know if someone's going to stay loyal?" he asked, in a sort of sad, broken tone.
"You don't," I said, thinking of three years ago, walking into Kaden's room and seeing him with someone else. But then I thought of how it must've been for him, me dating his best friend a week after I broke up with him. We were still giving it another try, though, weirdly enough. "You just have to trust them."
"But that's hard," Xavier said, with a slight sigh, running a hand through his blond hair.
I smiled wryly. "I know. It always is."
-READ ME-
Sorry it keeps taking so long for updates. I have like 50 things I want to do with the same characters, so I'm trying to decide which ones are actually necessary. :3
Didn't have time to edit or format this, so sorry for any mistakes, I'll do it tomorrow :)
Vote, if you kind of understand Blake better.
Comment, if you want Freya and Xavier to be okay.
Fan, because you love me x3
Update: Probably Sunday or Monday
Teaser: "You've never said you cared. Ever."
Question: Avril and Blake? Yay or nay?
~JJ :)