A/N: Yay, a summer fanfic! I've been waiting and waiting to write one, and I fully intend to complete it. I think you guys will like this one. I hope it's a success! xD

full summary: When Miley enters an abusive relationship, she hides everything in hopes for future happiness. But the only true happiness she'll learn to find is with someone else, the one person who knows her secret. The only one in the world who can save her.
Rated T+ for mature content/language. Oh, and tons of drama.

Btw, I know it's going to sound weird, but in this story, Miley is just Miley. No Hannah Montana. And Jake Ryan, her boyfriend, is just Jake. Plain and simple. No celebrity interventions; we're keeping it light here. Thanks. :D

Oh, and just as a heads-up, this is not a Loliver, but in some ways, it is. You'll seeeee!

The entire fanfiction is told in Oliver's point of view. Read & enjoy!

Only Hope.

She was the one who asked me out. She did it first.

I couldn't object. She was my best friend. No feelings for her whatsoever.

But she said she liked me. She said she really, really liked me.

And I couldn't say no. Like I've previously mentioned, she's my best friend. I convinced myself that, eventually, I would learn to love her too.

It's been three months; we're this close to graduation, and nothing has changed. Lilly Truscott is still my girlfriend. Nothing's changed.

The truth is, I've been in love with someone else.

--

I'm cramming books into my locker when a familiar voice whispers into my ear, those loving arms wrap around my waist, pulling me in. That same silly smile. "Hey," says Lilly in a soft voice. She isn't the most affectionate girlfriend in the world I'll admit, but she does have her girly moments. "Two weeks left."

I turn to face her and grab hold of her hands. I'm trying the best that I can. "Yeah," I smile. "Well, first senior activities and SATs and all that crap, yes. Then graduation. Then summer. Then…"

"College," she breathes happily. Lilly's been so eager to get out of high school it's like watching the Energizer bunny. She plans to go to UC San Diego—ironically, where I've also been accepted. She wants to become a teacher, if not a professional skateboarder. That's her crazy dream. Me, I dream a lot smaller. I hope to major in photography or something different. I don't really want to be a doctor or a lawyer, as much as my mom hopes. I just want to be an Oliver.

I chuckle. "Okay, let's not think about that yet."

"Why?" she pesters. "It's almost here, Oliver. We're moving on to that new chapter in our lives. We can't depend on our families forever."

I don't think I ever depended on my mom and brother, my only family; at least not while I was growing up. Probably for a few money situations and my transportation needs. My mom's a cop, so she's basically never home and I have to make dinner for myself. My older brother Mason is in college with a lot of girlfriends. I guess that's pretty self-explanatory.

"I guess. I don't know. I just don't wanna…think about it."

Lilly gives me a concerned look. For the couple months we've been together, she's been doing that a lot. Before she never even cared, or at least acted like it. "Are you scared of leaving?" She squeezes my hand. "I'll be with you."

That's what I'm scared of the most. Being with Lilly when I know I don't love her. Hurting her, my companion, my best friend since kindergarten. Seeing her crumpled face when she finds out the disappointing truth.

I can't let that happen. I'm going to love her, whatever it takes. On the outside, I'll be the best boyfriend I can be. The one Lilly truly deserves.

Inside, I'm freaking out of my mind.

I flash her a weak, but sincere, boyfriend-smile. "Yeah."

Lilly leans against my chest, not caring who's watching, not caring that the final bell has already rung and we're running late to third period. "Oliver, you love me right?" she asks, closing her eyes. Probably inhaling my scent—I'd put on Abercrombie aftershave this morning.

I have to force it out of my mouth. I have to really, really try, but it's not as easy as it seems. I tell her yes, that I love her with everything I have. I tell her I'm lucky it's her; and not some dumbass skank. I convince myself I truly mean it. I am lucky, in a sense. It's not like I don't know Lilly at all—she's my best friend. She deserves to be admired, looked at, cared for, loved. I should be grateful. I should be the one giving her all those things, that attention, and more.

"Do you love me with all your heart?" Lilly whispers, as if what I've just told her isn't enough.

I give her a kiss on the cheek for her plain satisfaction. "With all my heart," I reply through my teeth.

--

Miley Stewart and I are alone driving home from school that day. Lilly has softball practice—which doesn't make sense to me; the season's pretty much over—and Miley needs a ride home. So I offer. Besides, Miley's my other best friend, and I owe her a lot.

My car isn't the best. It's an old pick-up we got for a bargain at the used dealer by the freeway. I named her Sally. Her engine is busted, the gas mileage pretty much sucks, and going at only fifty miles per hour (if we're lucky) on the highway, she's the slowest thing I have EVER driven. She can be a pain in the ass, but hey, at least I have some way to get around.

Miley grumbles as we stop at an intersection. "Jeez Oliver, your car is a fricken' turtle."

I laugh. "Hey, don't complain. At least you're getting home. Which reminds me." I turn to look at her in the passenger's seat; brown eyes under a pair of huge white sunglasses, reddish hair tucked into a barrette, rays of sunshine bouncing off her light skin, giving her a rosy glow. Miley really is pretty, even when she's irritated. "Where's Jake today?"

She shrugs nonchalantly, pretending indifference. "He had an early gig with his band," she says. Like it's so easy. Jake Ryan is her boyfriend of almost a year. They've had obvious crushes on each other since middle school, so everyone all but died of relief when they finally got together. Lilly and I approved, but for me it was hard at first. Seeing Miley so involved with this one person, this guy she liked but hardly even knew.

Well, at least he was cute. In that weird, model-esque way girls seem to like.

"What an ass," I joke. "Leaving me with responsibility for you."

She snorts. "Hey, I'm not that bad." Then she breaks out into a grin. She looks really cute happy. I smile alongside her.

We pull up to her huge house at the edge of Malibu beach and suddenly it feels like the whole ride was only two minutes. I feel claustrophobic sitting in the truck next to Miley, like the doors and windows are pulling in or something. I need to get out of there, but something is stopping me from leaving.

Miley takes out her makeup bag from her oversized purse and pulls out the car shade with its tiny mirror attached to the back. She applies eye-shadow and lipgloss, but I don't think she needs it at all. She looks beautiful the way she is, naturally.

I can't help but ask. "Going somewhere, Miles?"

She's so distracted with the eyeliner I have to clear my throat to get her attention. "Huh? Oh, uh…yeah, you could say that." She finishes her eyes, moving on with the Mary Kay foundation appliqué. It's like watching metamorphosis, but in reverse. Miley was already a butterfly to begin with.

I wait what seems like months before she finally finishes. She hops out of the truck, grabbing her backpack and makeup kit, and waves at me before slamming the door. "Thanks Ollie," she smiles, her Very Cherry lipgloss shimmering in the sunlight. "You're a great friend."

My throat swallowed. I faked a huge grin. "Yeah, es no problemo."

"Sorry." She shook her head. "No habla espanol." And then she shut the car door in my face. I watched her go up the front path, stepping over annoying stones and random garden gnomes like an expert navigator, all the way up to the door, where she fumbled with a ton of keys on a massive keychain. I laughed quietly to myself. She finally found the house key, grumbling with irritation, and was in.

--

I'd met Lilly in kindergarten, through our moms, who just happened to park next to each other in the Oceanview Elementary lot. I was a stubby little kid, short with a mess of hair, already starting to grow out. From what I remember, Lilly was a gorgeous little girl. Her hair, long and blonde, flowed all the way down to her waist. I remember being so fascinated with it. And she had nice green eyes. Back then, she wore a lot of pink skirts and dresses because she was her mom's doll. Once she gained some independence though, and after watching a lot of baseball games and going to skate competitions with her older brother, she went for her own style—a preppy-punk look, funky hats and skater shoes, shorter hair usually pulled back into a loose ponytail, colorful hoodies, you name it. She got into skateboarding from her brother Chase when she was ten. It soon became her passion, her hobby, and she was doing it all the time, even when she was with me. It pretty much kept her sanity.

And then we met Miley.

Miley was the taller, skinnier Southern girl from Tennessee, with reddish/brown, medium-length hair and large, curious eyes. She moved in to Malibu at the start of our junior high years at Seaview, changing everything we'd once known. I mean, she arrived here with a bang, literally.

Lilly and I were down at the Malibu Surf Shop when we heard it. A loud yell, an ear-splitting bang! from the beach area. Everyone ran down to the water, wondering what had just happened, and Lilly and I—we were only eleven then—squeezed through the crowd to get a first-hand look. In the center of the mob was the lifeguard, Kelly, huffing and puffing against some stocky kid's chest. From what it all appeared, the kid was had drowned in the water and was knocked unconscious. His eyes were shut in a state of shock. He had mussy blonde hair and a shark tooth's necklace around his neck.

Miley—although we didn't know this yet—stood off to the side, hands over her eyes, crying. She was in a cute little one-piece with blue and white stripes, and her hair stuck to her head in a loose bun. Two older ladies surrounded her, comforting her. "My brudder!" she wailed. "Jackson!"

"Shh, shh," comforted one woman. "He's going to be fine. See, look what the lifeguard is doing!"

Just as she said this, Kelly leaned into the unconscious kid's face and did a mouth-to-mouth. I'd only seen this being done on TV shows, never in real life, so I was instinctively fascinated. Lilly on the other hand looked horrified. "What if he has like a disease?" she whispered beside me.

Miley was whimpering now. "Jackson!" she cried.

Kelly leaned in for another mouth-to-mouth CPR when the boy's eyes flung open. He was grinning from ear to ear. The crowd was stunned, and Kelly looked even more appalled. "WHOO!" the kid cried, jumping up and doing a little dance on the sand. "First kiss from a hot babe!"

He motioned for Kelly to come closer but her eyes narrowed. She was only 17, and she did make a pretty hot lifeguard, I must admit. "You stupid little brat!" she yelled, smacking the boy—Jackson?—across the face and stomping off. He grinned back like a proud mother. He was the first kid to ever try such a thing, so he got some respect (okay, and a couple of hates, mostly from Kelly's boyfriend) after that. Later I learned he was only thirteen years old. He was Miley's older brother.

"Jackson!" she screamed at him, kicking him in the shin. The crowd, with disappointed grumbles, was thinning but Lilly and I stayed for an after-show. Miley was punching her brother in the chest. "You idiot! You almost gave me a heart attack!"

He shrugged. "All in the technique, Miles."

"You are such an idiot. Dad is going to kill you when he hears about this."

"Hey, at least I got something out of it." He laughed again. "Kelly was hot!"

Miley socked him in the arm and turned around, seeing both Lilly and I standing there, watching. I stared down at my sandals while Lilly made the first friendly move. "Hi," she said cheerfully. "I'm Lilly. Are you new here?"

She cocked her head to the side, startled at this gesture. "Yeah. I'm Miley, and this is my idiot brother Jackson. We're from Tennessee." She had a funny little Southern accent.

Jackson introduced himself to me. "Did you see that?" he asked, pumping my hand up and down so fast that it was turning red. "Brilliant, eh? Technique, dude, technique. Completely genius." His voice had a slight accent, deeper than Miley because he was older and had hit puberty. Still, it was weird to hear a guy from Tennessee say the word "dude." He seemed pretty cool.

"I'm Oliver," I said. "Oliver Oken."

Miley flashed me a smile. Her hair was all wet; she'd let it loose so it went down to her shoulders, a tangled heap of brown and red. She could use a real Malibu tan, but she'd get one within days. California's so freaking warm anyway.

"Well, it was nice meeting you, Lilly and Oliver," she said. "But we have to get back. We're unpacking."

"Bummer," Lilly replied, as if she knew the feeling. She was being nice though. "Hope to see you guys soon…maybe Ollie and I can show you around Malibu sometime?" She looked around the wide beach, shielding away from the sun. "This is our turf."

Turf? I stared at her. Where the heck did she get a word like turf? Was this skater lingo?

Miley smiled and waved goodbye, pulling Jackson on the arm. She seemed strong, pulling her older brother like that. They trudged off through the hot sand and back onto the pier. Lilly turned to me once they had gone. "She seems cool," she said. "I don't know, I just felt like we're going to be great friends and I should talk to her. Might as well make a new friend anyhow."

"Yeah," I said dumbly, watching the familiar streak of red and blonde shift into the crowd of tourists and beachgoers. Kelly was at her post, grumbling under her bug-eyed sunglasses. Miley and Jackson were gone, lost in the sea of cultures, of beach bums and locals. They didn't have a circle around them; this time, they were in the circle. They were a part of it. I understood. Inside they were foreigners, outsiders doing their best under the radar to get by and fit in. And who knows, maybe we had helped them that day. Maybe we were just a stepping stone in their new lives. Maybe that's how things were supposed to be. And by some miracle, it had happened. We happened. And that was just the beginning.

Please review! I crave your feedback! (: