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  "Seth kissed me last Christmas. That night that Aaron and I had the huge fight. After you left, Seth came back, and I didn't feel like being alone. We were watching a movie, I was starting to fall asleep, I should've stopped drinking when you told me to. He kissed me, and I think it was because I'd been thinking about Aaron, and I was half asleep, I kissed back. But then when I realised what was actually happening I tried to stop it. He was kind of on top of me, I had to "fall" off the couch for him to stop. He begged me not to tell anyone, especially you. Now I know why."

  Alexis' mouth formed into a sneer. For a moment Jess thought it was aimed at her until Alexis spoke.

  "Are you okay? That son of a bitch, I told him to leave you alone. I warned him. He took advantage of you. God I hope I broke his nose."

  "But what he just tried to do to you, that's so much worse than just a kiss." Jess hadn't told Alexis what had happened to gain her sympathy or take away from what had just happened. She wanted her friend to know she wasn't alone when it came to Seth. Wanted Alexis to know that she believed, and maybe know that she was believed in return.

  ◆◆◆

  Lucas arrived at the party an hour later. The two girls hadn't left Aaron's room since they'd been locked in. It was only when Lucas confirmed that he was alone that Jess retrieved her keys and unlocked the door, allowing Lucas into the converted shed. He took in their puffy eyes and red noses and was immediately on high alert.

  "What happened? Are you two okay?"

  Alexis nodded from her place on the bed. She was well and truly exhausted, and all she wanted to do was go home and curl up. Jess' confession had filled in a lot of gaps that Alexis hadn't even realised were there. The picture that those missing puzzle pieces revealed wasn't a good one. It was certainly not one that Alexis wanted to reveal to Lucas here. Even if Seth had gone home.

  "We're okay, I just want to go home. Will you take me?"

  The concern etched deeper into Lucas' face but he didn't argue. Alexis and Jess said their goodbyes, Jess promising to pass on Alexis' thanks to Aaron. Jess was going to fix herself up before she re-joined the party. Aaron had texted them half an hour ago mentioning that people had seen Seth leaving the party with blood down the front of his shirt. Brennan and Marty had gone with him. That was the only reason that Alexis felt comfortable leaving Jess, knowing that Seth was gone.

  It only took a few minutes to walk back to Lucas' car but they felt eternally longer for Alexis. She knew that she had no reason to fear Lucas' reaction to what she was going to tell him. She knew in her heart that he wouldn't blame her in any way. But her head wasn't as cooperative. It kept throwing hypothetical scenarios at her about how Lucas might perceive the... incident. She didn't even know how to classify it in her head. She'd stopped him from taking things too far, so was it an attack? He'd still tried though.

  Rather than taking her straight home Lucas drove up into the hills to the ZigZag. The lookout was named for how the road zigzagged down the hill and had look out points at the end of each hair pin turn. Very clever.

  His left hand rested on her thigh for a majority of the drive, only leaving once he reached the ZigZag and returned both hands to wheel. It was unusually quiet for a Saturday night, but Alexis wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth as Lucas parked on the red dirt, a large boulder illuminated by his headlights. Once the car was turned off, Lucas turned in his seat to face Alexis.

  "So, are you going to tell me what happened?"

  ◆◆◆

  When Alexis told him what happened at the party, he'd wanted to drive back just to beat the living shit out of Seth himself. The only thing that had stopped him was when Alexis told him that Seth had left not long after she broke his nose. It also didn't help when she wouldn't tell him where Seth lived.

  Twice.

  Twice now his girlfriend had been in danger.

  Twice now she had been attacked, and he hadn't been there to stop it. To protect her.

  It didn't ease his guilt knowing that she was more than capable of protecting herself.

  After she'd finished telling him what happened, Lucas had gotten out of the car and gone to her side. Within a few seconds he was sitting in the passenger seat of his own car, Alexis in his lap, her head against his chest as he held her close. They'd stayed like that for almost an hour, ignoring the sounds of passing cars and headlights flashing as they went by.

  It was as they sat like that, Alexis told him about what Seth had done to Jess. She kept telling him that she should've stayed that night. She'd told Seth to leave Jess alone, practically begged him. But she should've stayed. He hated how responsible she felt for what that asshole had tried to do.

  "Lex what he did, taking advantage of Jess like that, it isn't your fault," Lucas said.

  "But if I had stayed. If I had just told my parents that I needed to stay that night, that Jess needed me, he wouldn't have had the chance," she stared at the boulder in front of the car.

  "Look, from what you've told me he would've tried something sooner or later. Whether it had been that night or another," Lucas said, rubbing circles on Alexis' back. The car was filled with silence for a few minutes, the only sound coming from his hand against the material of her shirt. After a little while Alexis turned in his lap to look at him, her eyes brimming with tears.

  "Why did he even try? He didn't want to be open about our relationship for almost a year, too afraid of what our friends would say. And then he chooses now, when I've moved on and I'm happy with you, to try and literally force his way back in. We promised that no matter what happened, we were friends first. He was supposed to be my friend. Why did he do it?"

  Lucas was at a loss for words. Nothing he could say would make it better.

  As strong as Alexis was, she was still human. She could beat someone twice her size to a bloody pulp if she set her mind to it, but her heart was just as vulnerable as any others.

  "I don't know baby... I really don't know."

  Chapter 20

  Alexis dragged herself from her bed the next morning. Keeping the shorts but opting for a long-sleeved shirt, she dressed in her workout clothes and sent a few 'good morning' texts. Going down to the basement to train was the last thing she wanted to do on a Sunday morning. After last night all she wanted to do was curl up in bed and wallow. But there was a part of her that didn't want to do that. A part of her that was pissed. Seth had broken her trust and he'd hurt Jess.

  Jess.

  Alexis needed to make sure that Jess was okay. The night before had been a whirlwind of emotions and confessions. Now that she'd had some sleep and a chance to process everything that had and hadn't happened, Alexis knew that Jess needed her. She hadn't missed the relief in her friend's eyes at being able to finally share the events of that night. Jess had probably not spoken a word about it to anyone since it happened.

  After working up enough of a sweat so that she didn't feel guilty about only doing half of her workout routine, Alexis showered and put on a fresh pair of shorts, matching them with a long-sleeved top. The weather was doing weird things with the change of the seasons, one minute it was sweltering and the next it felt like stepping into a walk-in fridge so her covering up wouldn't be suspicious.

  "Morning all!" Alexis said as she bounced into the kitchen for breakfast. Her parents turned to her with a scrutinizing eye.

  "Who are you and what are you doing up this early?"

  Alexis almost objected but then she saw the clock behind her dad's head. It was only eight in the morning... on a Sunday. And she'd been up for two hours already. Alexis felt her expression morph into one of horror and disgust. Doing the math she realised that she'd only gotten three hours of sleep.

  When Lucas had dropped her home she'd dodged a conversation with her parents, begging off that she was exhausted and just wanted to get some sleep. That was at eleven. Then she didn't get to sleep until near three in the morning. She'd spent almost four hours tossing and turning, putting together all the pieces and replaying
the events of the evening in her head. Trying to figure out why any of it had happened.

  Just like Lucas, she still didn't have an answer.

  "I'm going to see Jess," Alexis said, realising that her parents were still waiting for her to answer them.

  "Didn't you just spend all of yesterday with her?"

  "Yes dad, but sometimes best friends spend more than just one day together."

  "Alright you smartass, eat your breakfast." He shook his head at her and slid a plate across the counter towards her. It was the standard Sunday breakfast of bacon, eggs, hash browns and tomato with a glass of pineapple juice.

  "So did you have fun last night?"

  Alexis knew that she should answer her mum's question truthfully. They wouldn't be angry at her for what happened. She knew that. It wasn't her fault. She was defending herself. She could tell them.

  But she didn't.

  "Yeah, it was alright. Kinda sucked that Lucas wasn't there for all of it, but once he got there it was better." Maybe that was as close to the truth as she would ever get. For the remainder of breakfast Alexis made small talk with her parents, discussing their plans for the day. Before Alexis left the kitchen her mum called her back.

  "Don't forget to ask Lucas over for dinner this week. It's school holidays so you don't have the homework excuse."

  "Ugh, yes mum, I will organise with Lucas for him to come to dinner and get back to you, I promise."

  It wasn't that Alexis didn't want Lucas to meet her parents, she did. It was more that she was worried about how her dad would behave. He was a very stereotypical protective dad when it came to her dating. He didn't like it, no one was good enough, and he'd try and scare anyone away before they even made it to the dinner table. It was all of that that she wasn't looking forward too.

  For now though, Alexis had bigger fish to fry.

  ◆◆◆

  Before Alexis had even knocked on Jess' door it was flung open. No matter the time of day, Jess always managed to look amazing. Alexis kind of hated her for it.

  "Good morning lovely, would you like some coffee?"

  "Good God, yes!" Alexis loved the coffee at Jess' place. They had one of those coffee machines with the pods that always made a perfect cup of coffee.

  By the quietness of the house Alexis figured that Jess' parents were out for the morning, which was definitely a good thing considering the conversation the two girls were about to have. Alexis waited until they were both seated on the chaise lounge, hot coffees in hand.

  "Jess... what you told me last night, about what happened at Christmas with Seth, are you okay? With everything that happened last night I don't know if I asked you that."

  "You did. It was actually the first thing you asked me, so don't worry. Look, it's fine, Seth apologised a few days later, and we haven't talked about it since." From the look in Jess' eyes right then, the whole thing was anything but fine.

  "That's not an answer," Alexis prodded softly. Her free hand reaching out to squeeze Jess'.

  "I know."

  "Why haven't you told Aaron? He's not going to blame you for what happened."

  Jess was quiet for a minute, and Alexis wondered if she was going to answer at all.

  "At first I didn't tell him because we'd just fixed things, and I didn't want to bring more drama into it. Then it just never felt like the right time, and the longer I waited, the worse it would be for me to tell him. Now I just want to forget about it."

  Alexis could understand that. She didn't agree with it but she could understand.

  "You said that Seth apologised?"

  "Yeah, only after I ignored him for three days. Then he begged me not to tell anyone, especially you. I just told him to forget about it because I planned to. Then we never talked about it again. He's still really handsy whenever we're together, and it's just so awkward. I push him away and tell him to stop, but he doesn't get it. So I've just been trying to avoid being alone with him."

  Alexis scoffed. That was Seth through and through. She wished that she'd known his true colours before ever getting involved with him.

  "Why didn't you tell me? I would've run interference, forced him to back off, something, anything. I could've broken his nose earlier."

  Jess just smiled at her.

  "I know that you would've. I didn't mean to keep it from you. Just every time I went to tell you, I chickened out."

  Alexis nodded sympathetically. She knew that feeling all too well. For a year Alexis had been wanting to tell Jess about her thing with Seth, but it took him attacking her for her to suck it up and do it. Even then, she'd been getting over a panic attack.

  "Lex, how are you doing?" Jess startled her from her thoughts.

  "Me? I'm fine." A lie. Not much better than when Jess had said she was fine.

  "What Seth did, nothing excuses that."

  Alexis remembered the way his breath had washed over her face, the stench of beer. She suspected that he would just say that he was drunk and didn't remember or was messing around. He'd never admit to it being what it was.

  The two girls sat there, silently contemplating their separate encounters with Seth's darker side, wondering how it was that they had missed the signs along the way.

  Finally Alexis spoke the question that had been sitting at the back of her mind for longer than she wanted to admit.

  "Why do we stay friends with people even when we know that they're toxic?"

  Chapter 21

  Lucas was waiting for Alexis. He'd been pacing the front entry for five minutes, peering through the windows every time he heard a noise outside. When at last he heard the unmistakeable sound of tyres on gravel and the slam of a car door he had the front door open before Alexis was halfway up the path.

  It had been three days since he'd picked Alexis up from Aaron's party. Three days since she'd told him about her run in with Seth. She'd done a good job of calming him down before he dropped her off that night, but he'd woken up from a nightmare the next morning and beaten the boxing bag in the garage until his knuckles bled.

  He should've been the one comforting her, and yet she was keeping him calm.

  Every time he thought of Seth, of him pushing his tiny - well tiny to him - girlfriend up against a door, trying to convince her to go back to him, the urge to beat Seth's face in had been his constant companion. Now though, Alexis was here.

  Too impatient to wait for her to make it the last five metres to the door, Lucas went out to her, grabbing her up in a hug that had her feet leaving the ground. Her arms went around his shoulders, her face buried in his neck. The warmth of her breath against his skin drove him crazy in all the right ways. Just having her in his arms made every bad thing disappear. He knew that in his arms, she was safe.

  "I missed you," she murmured the words against his neck, and he had to put her down before he did inappropriate things to her on the porch. Once she was on her own two feet he leant down and kissed her softly on the lips.

  "I missed you too." The smile she gave him was like seeing the sun rise. He could've watched it all day.

  "Come on, time for you to meet the parents."

  ◆◆◆

  When Alexis had been preparing herself to meet Lucas' parents, she at no point thought that she would be avoiding eye contact with her father's new head of security. Her mind was running a million miles a minute. How was this a thing that was happening at that very moment in time?

  "Lex, this is my dad Andrew and my mum Louise."

  Alexis shook their outstretched hands, looking at Andrew Peters for no more than a second.

  "Hi Mr and Mrs Peters."

  Louise laughed gently. "Oh, Alexis please, we don't stand on ceremony here, Andrew and Louise are fine."

  Alexis had no idea what to do. Her two worlds were colliding in a way she'd never expected.

  "Alright well if we're done having a party in the hallway, I'll give Lex a tour."

  She had never been so grateful for someone's existence. Smiling awkwardly at Lu
cas' parents she followed him through to the rest of the house. She'd never had to deal with this kind of situation before.

  If the people around you don't know that you know each other, then you don't know each other.

  Her dad had told her that once. They'd gone to some party when she was little and a man that she'd seen at their house had walked right by them without even a glance. She'd asked her dad why his friend had ignored him, and he'd explained that sometimes the relationships within the Family were a secret. That was one of those times.