There are parts of this chapter, when Cole see's November in her room that I wrote before this book even started. It's almost what the whole book is based around.
I hope yous ENJOY..
Thankyou to those who always show support, I am going to be starting dedications again, and yous will probably get another thankyou even if I have already thanked you anyway lol.
Cole's POV
"I can't believe you didn't get with anyone last night." Link asks and I just shrug.
We had gone to the club with the guys last night, well the guys and Lacey. But she was basically one of us anyway.
"I um." I start and he rolls his eyes at me, sitting down across from me with a coffee.
We were in the local diner, the one I came with Nova. We needed hangover food. It was about midday Saturday, Linc and I were the only ones who managed to drag ourselves out.
"Yous are just casual anyway aren't you?" Linc asks and I nod.
"Well yeah but i just don't care about any of the other girls, like they were fit but not November fit."
"Whipped." He chuckles and takes a mouthful of his drink.
I just frown, maybe, but like it's just her.
"No like I get not actively seeking someone but these girls were literally pulling moves." He says.
"I just wasn't interested."
"I was just surprised." Linc says.
"I was surprised with you." I say shaking my head at him. Linc hadn't come back to mine like we agreed, he stayed somewhere else.
"Who was she?" I ask.
"Just a girl from the club."
"Mate it's literally been like two days since Rose, well three now but-"
"Yeah I know, it's bad aint it? But I am going through a breakup, needed a rebound."
"Can you rebound when you were the one that ended things?" I chuckle and he sends me a little guilty look but we just end up laughing.
Fuck sake Linc.
I rub my head in annoyance but admittedly amusement at him and take a gulp of my coffee, I was too hungover today.
"Isn't that one of the Vix's?" Linc says to me quietly and I tense.
"Hopefully not." I mutter and look up expecting to be Stuart, but I stare hard when it is fucking Yuen.
He is entering with a few other lads, the whole diner atmosphere changes but the lady behind the counter just smiles and laughs at something he says, he is smiling at her and I don't drop my glare when his eyes scan the rest of the joint.
"That's Nova's ex." I say and Linc looks between us hesitantly.
"Yuen Vix?"
"Yeah." I say and my eyes leave his amused ones and meet Lincolns.
"I will be back."
"Woah Cole, sit the fuck down, what are you trying to do?"
"I am just curious." I say and stand properly. "We know each other."
I pick up some cash and head towards the counter, not paying the group any more attention other than smiling charmingly at the waitress as she leaves them and walks to me. Yuen and that take a seat up at the bar, and I just lean a few stools down.
"What can I get ya?" She smiles and I grin.
"Just another coffee."
"Black?"
"Sure." I say and she blushes as we make eye contact. Right.
I wait patiently and watch her and not them as she goes around and makes the coffee. But I can feel him looking, I can tell he is about to come over so my head snaps to his.
"Yuen, mate, nice to see you." I offer.
He chuckles.
And walks towards me, leaning his back on the side next to me.
"Didn't I say that if I saw you again I would make your life a misery, Cole?"
"I mean, you did." I answer him. "But it was right after I had you on the floor, bleeding out of your face so I gathered we both knew the plausibility of that threat."
His cold eyes flash and I have to clench my fists on the counter so I don't wrap my hands around his neck.
He was what four, five years older? He looked a fucking mess.
"Well you see, I have probably twice as many people you do." He says and I laugh, looking at his scrawny back up team.
"And I could snap everyone of them."
I grab my coffee and grin at the waitress. "Thanks beautiful."
I just wanted to see what colour she would turn, it was pretty dark. I nod to her and then turn my back to Yuen and start walking away.
"Bit fucked to call another girl beautiful isnt it? We both know there's no one else like November."
I freeze as he says this, my back fully tense and I turn around to him slowly.
"Don't say her name."
"Why? I knew it before you did. Groaned it before you did." Yuen smirks and I couldn't help it, as quickly as I had grabbed my coffee, it was falling to the floor and I was lunging at him.
Linc had me held back immediately, I never even got to him.
Yuen smirked.
"You need to be careful Harrington." He says and I struggle against Lincoln. "November is always going to be mine, it's hilarious that she thinks she isn't."
"Oh god." Lincoln mutters and I see red.
Suddenly a few more arms are holding me back, random guys from the diner and I am absolutely burning with anger.
What a fucking freak.
"You fucker." I grit and he just fucking smirks.
Then he nods to me, as if I had just confirmed something to him and he turns and leaves, his boys following after him.
"You need to get out." The girl from behind the counter says and I narrow my eyes at her but then realise I am literally being restrained by four blokes and glaring at a waitress
Maybe anger issues weren't something that just go away.
But fuck it, he needed to pay for everything he did to her.
I shrug them off and turn to Lincoln and he just grabs his stuff of the table, pushing me towards the exit.
"You really just wanted to antagonise the guy?" He mutters, annoyed with me.
"I wanted to know if he knew." I seethe and I just, I cant get this feeling off my chest that something is so wrong with November.
Maybe she found out that Yuen knew about us, I guess that makes sense. For it to trigger stuff.
"I am going to Noves." I say and walk towards my car.
"Wait, Cole. Didn't you say she said she needed space? Sage literally said to you yesterday at school that she was fine, that she needed to just be left alone for a little bit."
"Yeah but no."
"Cole." Linc says disapprovingly and I just grit my teeth together at him.
"I just need to know she is okay."
"Mate you need to listen to them if they say they don't want to see you."
"Quite frankly I don't."
I walk away from him and he just stands in the middle of the parking lot shaking his head at me.
I just needed to see her, I didn't get why that was an issue.
Why Sage was telling me that Nova was okay but that I couldn't go see her.
Like what the fuck?
It didn't take me long to get to her house, but I knew something was so wrong as soon as I used the spare key to enter the front door.
She started leaving a key out for me, I told her I could just take one but she said that too many people already had keys.
I argued with her, but sometimes she just shrugs and carries on doing what she is doing. As If she accepts your point you are making but that it makes no difference.
In those moments I never know whether to strangle her or kiss her.
She could be such an annoying ass sometimes.
I make my way quietly into her front room and call out for her softly, letting her know I was here but I knew there was a reason why I just let myself in instead of knocking.
When I pushed her bedroom door open, my eyes zeroed in on her.
I hadn't seen her like this before, asleep but in so much pain. Admittedly her room was normally messy, it was normal to find scraps of paper filled with her thoughts or images cluttered on every surface and normal to feel that slight scratch at the back of your throat as acrylic paint fumes filled the room as if claiming her as their own.
But I hadn't seen her room like this before.
She was wrapped, asleep in bundles of blankets in the bottom of her wardrobe, the doors open, her tiny body looking even more fragile than it normally does, there was writing and paintings on the walls in all these different languages, it looked beautiful but chaotic-two words I'm learning that describe her perfectly.
There are days old plates of food that had hardly been touched, her clothes were spread about her bed and it seems as if she'd set up camp in her wardrobe. All her bedding lay in the bottom of the wooden box and I can't explain the unsettling feeling I got when I realised that in the bottom of the open, almost empty wardrobe was endless packets of pills- all untouched as if she was showing herself she had the choice.
What the fuck?
My eyes were drawn to the walls but I just stood there frozen, staring at her sleeping face.
I'd become totally and uncontrollably intoxicated with her in the past few months and although I had been so bloody sure that whatever this was between me and her was a good thing, I knew in this moment that what I was feeling for her could eventually kill me.
This is what she meant by love destroys.
Her room was pretty large, but the heaviness of what was on the walls made it feel like they were slowing closing in on me. The walls were full of endless paintings of different things like stars, and nature and different lyrics of different songs. Some happy, some about love, a lot about pain.
It was so painful. Her walls.
All of our names, her friends, mine. Painted in small letters in-between clouds that were contrasting in lightness, this was... unlike anything I had ever seen.
It was beautiful there was no denying it. But it also terrified me because as I look down at this girl who I was learning I hardly knew, I saw the inside of her head, and it was a scary place.
It was like her mind had exploded and scattered across her room, as if it was just too full and she couldn't keep it all in anymore.
Ever since I met her she had this look about her, that look of otherness, that she could see everything, from the minute details of a situation to the whole picture and she always made you feel like she was listening to you even when I could tell her thoughts were also miles away thinking about something totally unrelated but equally as important.
November was in love with the world but she also hated it, and that is what was shown here. She was full of contrasts, being torn in two and I just, I just blinks and swallowed roughly.
Why were there so many pills surrounding her?
Had she taken anything?
Suddenly then my phone interrupts my thoughts as Nova's best friends name jumps onto the screen, I can't believe she fucking told me November was ok.
Sage.
"What do you want?" My voice was meant to convey my anger towards her but I hadn't realised a lump in the back of my throat had formed from seeing the awful state Nova was in and so instead of anger, my voice was broken, desperate.
She would know I was at Nova's.
"Where are you?" She asks hesitantly and I just make a small confirmation noise, as in yes I was where you thought I was.
Fuck.
November Grace are you okay?
"For fuck sake Cole I told you not to go there! Are you at her house? How'd did you get in? Did she let you in?" Sage had the audacity to be angry with me?
Who the fuck did she think she was?
"Are you joking? You told me she was fine, that she didn't want to see me. You are going about your normal day as your friend is not ok, I thought you guys had like a good friendship but you obviously don't give a shit about her. Why the fuck is she here alone?"
By this time I've walked out of Nova's room, I didn't want to wake her especially since I have no idea how to help her. What to say, what to do.
My head stuck on the words on the wall that I just couldn't miss.
They were the biggest ones.
'Yuen did it.'
"Get out of her house Cole, I know you think I'm a shitty friend to leave her like this but I know her, I know there is writing on the walls, there always is. Is she asleep in her wardrobe still? This is just what she does sometimes. Razor blades close to her, I have dealt with it all. We are dealing with it Cole. You have known her a few months I have known her years mate and she's never gunna forgive me for letting you see her like this." She is basically shouting this down the phone and I just, my head is so confused.
Is this a low that she talks about? It looks as if her brain is scattered.
"How'd you know there's-" I stop myself as I realise that Rose and Sage had probably been here, and that Nova must do this often enough for them to know her habits.
"No okay Nova is not fine, but I can't skip work, or school every time she does this, I used to believe me and I've learnt that when she crashes, she crashes for a long ass time which gives me and Rose time to go to school or get homework done, or get fucking lunch and then check on her and take away any shit that we think can hurt her."
"Why the fuck didn't you tell me?"
"Cole tell you what?"
"That she wasn't okay."
"Cole it's none of your business. You shouldn't be there. She wanted space from you."
I think back to Sage's words, skipping over the fact that she doesn't agree it is my business and I zero in on the whole hurting herself thing.
"The are not razor blades." Is all I can reply.
"There aren't?"
"No."
"Oh good, that must mean she hasn't woken up yet."
"There are pills though." I say, choked and Sage just sighs.
"I know, she wouldn't let us take them. But pills are better."
"What the fuck is going on?" I ask, running my hand through my already very dishevelled hair.
"It's just a thing, she is just struggling at the moment."
"And so she sleeps with enough pills to kill her?"
"Yes."
"And why the fuck would you say that was good?"
"I didn't, I just said it was better. Look, Nova wont leave her room when she is like this and well November cant take pills without water, she is rubbish at swallowing." Sage's voice almost conveys a smirk. "I am sure you know this."
I can feel my lips tugging at the side of my mouth at that, almost smiling. But it fades quickly. "Sage you need to get her help- this isn't normal."
Sage's voice suddenly turns cold. "Cole she was doing good before you came into her life. She had help, she went to therapy, took all her medication. She hasn't had an episode like this in like a year, she was sticking to her routines that helpled her, she was doing good. And now she's spending all her time with you and she obviously hadn't told you anything so I am guessing she's stopped going to therapy, stopped her routines."
"Wait so you are saying this is my fault? That she is suffering because I-"
This is what they meant when they said I wasn't good for her.
"No that's not what I'm saying, it's just-don't blame this on me, me and Rose are about to leave here and come back and we'll help Nova repaint the walls like we've done a hundred times and we'll put her clothes back into her wardrobe and we'll make her laugh and feel human again, but you can't be there."
"Me? Why can't I be there? I care-she's my friend?" My voice is matching Sage's previous cold one now and I can't help but feel protective of Nova especially knowing that this is my fault.
"You just can't, you need to get out of her house. Don't you realise, that she will never speak to you again if she wakes up and you've seen her this totally open? I bet she hasn't even told you about anything yet, but you've now seen her in one of her darkest moments"
"I know shit Sage, she told me about the depression, she told me about her mum, she told me about Yuen, about Ryan, about her childhood, about her brother."
"She told you about her mum?" Sage asks.
"About what it was like growing up with her mum having bipolar."
"Then you are smart enough to figure it out Cole, that this is not depression." She says and I cant help it, I walk back into Nova's bedroom, taking in her frantic words, the way her furniture is all misplaced, it's so eery.
But oh.
I am a fucking idiot.
"This is mania? The way she was acting the last week or so?"
Nova has bipolar, not depression.
Fuck I am an idiot.
"You really need to leave Cole, it wont be good if she wake up." Sage says softly and I just sit on the end of Nova's bed and stare at her face.
Her beautiful face.
Ignoring her pleas for me to get out, I mind was spiralling to all the times I kept her out just driving around, or walking, to all the times she said she was busy but I just turned up anyways. To the times where she told me that she needed to stay away from trouble and I told her that she didn't.
"This is my fault." I say. It was a statement rather than an question but Sage decided to answer it anyway.
"No it's not, I'm sorry I said that, Nova's gunna be so annoyed that I told you-"
"Thanks for telling me, don't worry this won't happen again. I'll stay away from her."
My body felt cold, all over as if I slowly sinking into in ice cold water, although for the first time in a while I didn't feel like I was drowning.
"No! Cole don't be a twat you haven't done anything, you can't just leave her because of this." I could hear the desperation in Sage's voice but I knew that this was the best thing I could do for November.
"You said it yourself. She was fine before I came, that she stopped being okay since I came into her life. I don't want to stop seeing her, but that is the only thing I can do to help her."
Sage was pressed.
"If you stop speaking to her now, god help it Cole, you'll destroy her. You think you're being the bigger person or whatever but in reality, you will be hurting her even more. I don't know how much more she can take. If you do this, I won't ever forgive you and I know we're not friends. God I don't even understand how you and nova became friends or whatever the fuck you two are. But if you stop speaking to her because of this, and then decide you miss her and you want to come back into her life- which you will, I will make your life hell."
"I know I haven't been supportive of you two but I was coming around, Rose and I have been watching as you make her smile and you literally calm her down, which nobody has ever had that effect before. My best friends glow was slowly coming back, so it was fine Cole, but if you do this, I don't care if you're the dangerous guy or whatever, if you do this I will make it that she hates you just as much as I will."
Jesus fucking Christ.
I hung up.
The uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach which arrived when I first entered Nova's room begins to boil up but instead of despair it turns to anger.
How did everything get so fucked up?
She wasn't perfectly ok all of the time, I knew this. I could feel it radiating of her sometimes, but I didn't realise it was this big. This serious.
She never fucking told me.
She was fine. She excited me, she was so different than all the other girls I know, she literally didn't give a fuck about anything but then she also did. She cared so much, and her heart was fucking huge.
And I was slowly creeping into it, I knew that. But she was right, that wasn't okay.
I need to stay away from her, she needs to be okay.
November feels everything and I don't want to add to that.
This thing between us, its intense. I mean, I can feel her around me before I can see her, intense. It's fucking with my own brain, and now she's really not ok and nobody can tell me that's not because of me.
The anger is boiling in my stomach and I just, just look around the state of her room. My eyes catching, papers laid out neatly on the desk.
I don't really know how, but then my eyes were scanning Ryan's letter. My best friend. I didn't even look at mine, I saw what I needed to confirm my suspicions.
She was saying goodbye, I knew what these letters were.
And the ice I felt as I realise November was literally on the edge of disappearing was turned to fire as I read what he did. What he did to Ryan.
'I am so sorry that you died because me, because he was angry, jealous. I am so sorry.'
Yuen did it.
It makes so much fucking sense.
...
"I am here to see Yuen Vix." My voice was cold.
I stared up at the lad on the door, as he took me in and I gave him a scathing look.
How I had gotten here from Nova's in less than 0.1 seconds I didn't know. I was so angry.
I am sure it probably took me longer to get to Yuens. I don't even know whether I shut her front door.
God.
My fists clenched.
"Yuen's not-"
I pushed past him and made my way to his office, I knew where it was. I turned my nose up at the group literally shooting up as I walk past them and knock loudly on the door.
"Who?" His grating voice asks and I just pushed it open.
He was sat there, with four other guys and his eyes looked shocked at me.
I was held back immediately, as soon as I tried to get to their precious fucking Vix.
"Wow two times in one day." He smirks and I push towards him.
He nods to his guys, the ones holding me back and I was almost sure they were going to let me go but then instead I was pushed up against the door a blade to be abdomen and another to my throat.
"You think you can just storm in here." He chuckles. "I say the word and you are dead."
"Then kill me. Wouldn't be the first time would it?" I say and he froze.
"Leave." He commands and the guys look at him utterly confused.
"I said get the fuck out!" Yuen shouts at them and in less than five seconds we are in the room together and then well, Yuen is pinned up against the door by his throat.
"You fucking killed Ryan." The anger is seeping through my voice.
"She told you." He chokes, his eyes still filled with amusement and I squeezed harder, his hands coming up and clawing at mine as I stared deeply into his ones that were becoming more and more bloodshot.
"You say it is so easy to kill me, I could probably snap your neck."
"You should be pleased." He chokes. "You wouldn't have met her, she would still be mine."
I released him.
"She is not and was never yours." I say and he is bent over, coughing, spluttering onto the floor.
My knee comes up into his stomach and he falls to his knees.
"Stay the fuck away from her."
He laughs, just as I was about to leave, the fucker laughs.
"You realise now that she told someone, that our deal is broken, that she is mine again. That I don't have to stay away."
What?
The fuck?
"She never told me psycho."
"Then how do you know?"
Is, it was written across her walls, an answer?
"What deal?"
"We agreed that I would let her go on the condition that nobody found out." He says smiling a sick ass smile at me. "You found out, so she will have to come back to me."
"Stay the fuck away from her." I say and start walking towards him again and the weird tosser laughs, holding his arms over his face as if I would kick him in the teeth.
"But I don't have to now."
"Yes you fucking do." I grit and he gets to shaky feet.
"No, I don't mate. She is mine again."
I don't know who threw the first punch, but suddenly my fist was slamming into his face whilst his pounded into my side. Blood pooled into his mouth as I felt the pain pound over into my ribs, then his spat, covering me in his blood.
We stumbled apart for a brief second and then we dove back towards each other, both of our faces conveying so much hatred that I will forever remember the way his gleamed as if he enjoyed this shit.
He threw his body weight behind the fist that edged closer to my face, it hit my jaw with such force I knew lips, cheeks, something fucking split and I let the blood drip out of my mouth. Pain erupted from the point of impact.
With my own two hands I grasped his head in my hands and pushed it down as I brought my kneecap up to his nose, there was a blunt crack and I released his blond-haired head.
Crimson leaked from both his nostrils and his nose was twisted right and I smirked at that.
His eyes were hooded, I know his head was spinning and I ducked away from his right fist but his left one hit my ribs again, my guts smashing together, blood vessels bursting and I groaned, my fist colliding with his fucking jaw.
My punch held as much impact as I fucking could and he was on the floor after that and I was bent over him, my hand holding onto my ribs and my other bruised and cracked knuckles wiping the blood from my own face.
"You dare come near her again and I will go to the police, not about Ryan but about who you are, what you do, the drugs, the trafficking, I will tell them about how you fucked a 16 year old girl, how you abused her, manipulated her. I know lawyers, I know detectives, I know crime fucking scientists, you mess with her Yuen and I swear to god I will destroy you."
He face was covered in blood, as I spat my words into his. Who knew who the blood belonged to, his or mine.
"You think-" He chocks a laugh, blood evident in this throat as he gurgles. "You think you can pull this shit down with the cops, you are threating to grasp."
His laughter is bitter, condescending, wet. "We will kill you, my father will kill you before he lets that happen. You remember him right? He's your pal isnt he? He wont be if I tell him you threatened me with that bullshit. That is the worst thing you could do to us, he would kill you for even saying it."
My hand is around his neck again, pulling his head towards me so our faces are flushed.
"You forget I was here Vix, I was here and I know that the actual worst thig someone can do is kill another member. Yours trumps mine and I will tell him what you did if you ever go near her again, if I ever see any of your men near her I will tell your father exactly what you did to Ryan and your ass will be strung up. Because he will kill you for that, not me."
"My father wont kill me." Yuen laughs and I drop him back on the floor, his head colliding with the wood loudly.
"He will. So your deal is with me now. You come close to November, I will tell your father everything and I will also tell the police what you did."
"You will get yourself killed." He laughs and I shake my head.
"No I will tell your father first and then I will make a statement about what you did to November, the evidence is all there, etched on her fucking skin Yuen, he wont protect you after he knows what you did to Ryan, he will disown you and then you will be on your own and you will be inside."
I get back in his face, my body leant over him. "You know what they do to child molesters in prison? They get pay back."
"I am not-"
I swing my fist into his already broken nose and I feel my hand crack, or his nose crack. I don't know, I just know he's out cold and I am in so much fucking pain It is almost hilarious.
Fucking November Grace.
You are going to be okay after this, you have to be.
I will stay away.
He will stay away.
You will be okay.
So I leave, stumbling through his office doors and his lads are smirking when they see the state of me.
They don't know he's out cold yet covered in his and my blood.
So I stumble out of the front doors and drive to the only place I can think of.
To Brandon and Lottie, as they are staying with us this weekend.
I drive home, my vision blury, blood still dribbling out of my mouth and my white top is covered in his blood, my face splattered.
I look so bad.
I feel so bad.
So I drive home and instead of hiding, instead of clearing myself up.
I actually ask for help.
And they help me.
I have never written a fight scene before. But I tried. Also what did you guys think? Are you happy Cole did what he did and went for Yuen, are you angry with him for saying he will stay away from Nova?
He did promise her that he wanted all of her, that he wasn't going to run away...