This takes places after everythign with Mr. Craig is over. Luke is gone again, Robin and Patrick are still living at Wyndemere, Nikolas and Emily are back together, and Lulu has moved in with them.

I know what I want to do with this story, but I'm not entirely sure how I want to get there, so you'll have to forgive me if my timeline's a little off. I'm bad about updating, but I promise if you keep bugging me, I will!

The first chapter is a little confusing. It's supposed to be.

I hope you like it!!

October

Lulu

I sat rigidly in the comfortable chair across from Dr. Winters. Lainey. She told me to call her Lainey, which was just weird. She had sat across from me patiently, never being patronizing or condescending. If I had been around her in any other circumstance, I probably would have liked her. But she was here to analyze my thoughts, a thought on its own that terrified me.

If I hadn't been so afraid of my own thoughts, I wouldn't have been here now.

Lainey took a sip of her water and went back to holding my gaze. I wondered about where she lived and who she lived with. I wondered why she was here today, listening to me. I wondered what she would think of me, and whether she would even care after our session was over.

"So. . ." I asked her. "Where do you want me to start?"

She leaned forward, as if what I was saying interested her. "The beginning seems as good a place as any."

I resisted the urge to glare at her. Of course the beginning was a good place to start when you were starting a conversation. You don't come into the middle of a TV show, then watch the end, and then the beginning. That was just stupid.

"I, um. . ." I lowered my eyes, surprised at how much I wanted things to come out honestly. "What if I don't know where the start is?"

"I've been around your family for awhile now," she told me. "And I've seen some things. Mind if I take a few guesses?"

I shrugged.

"Did it start when you moved it with Nikolas?"

I shook my head. "I was happy when I moved in with Nikolas."

"Did it start after that?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so."

"Was it when your dad left again?"

I shook my head again. "He's been doing that my entire life. The only time I recognize him is when he's leaving."

"Was it when your mom went back into a catatonic state?"

I shook my head, but didn't say anything. It hadn't started everything, but it still upset me. And I was cranky and, as Lucky had predicted, my head was hurting constantly.

"What about when you had your abortion?"

I was surprised at how easily the words rolled off her tongue. She didn't say it like it was nothing, but didn't avoid the word like most people did. I just shook my head.

"Was it when you slept with Dillon?"

I shook my head again. I closed my eyes before I started to cry, but hot tears picked at my eyelids. I opened them and they fell silently. My voice remained steady.

"I don't think that there was really a start. I mean, obviously there was a start, but I don't think it was any one thing that did it. And eventually I realized it had started, but I didn't know when or how. Does that sound crazy?"

"Not at all. I hear it from a lot of people."

"Once I realized just how bad things had gotten, it was all already over."

She nodded. "So why are you here?"

I shrugged and again wouldn't meet her eyes. "I'm going to be a year behind everyone in college now. I don't like that."

"You know, it's not that uncommon. I took a year off before I went to college."

"You did?" I asked. "Why?"

She hesitated for a minute, and then smiled an almost bittersweet smile. "I'll tell you about it another time. But school isn't the only reason that you're here now, is it?"

"I was hurting people with what I was doing."

"So you're here for them?"

I sighed and finally admitted what I had been afraid to admit all along. "And I was hurting myself."

Lainey nodded slowly. "I'm glad to hear you say that."

I just shrugged. "So I guess that brings me back to my first question."

"Which was?"

"Where do I start?"

"I want you to start wherever you want."

I closed my eyes and traveled back. The memory of me getting here was only too clear. So much around it was fuzzy, but that one moment, the moment I realized what I was doing to other people, my ultimate moment of shame, was still perfectly clear to me.

"What have you got?" Emily asked Epiphany, coming into the emergency room they had wheeled me into.

"Teenage Jane Doe," Noah Drake had told her. I couldn't move, I couldn't talk. I couldn't tell Emily that it was me.

"It's not a Jane Doe," Patrick told his dad harshly.

"Oh my God," Emily said softly before Patrick had a chance to warn her.

Robin came up to Emily. "Em, you need to get out of here."

"Who is that?" Noah asked Patrick.

"It's her sister in law."

Emily stood there, paralyzed, perfectly in my frame of view. She had turned pale and looked sick. She looked like she was going to cry."

"Em," Robin said, coming in front of her. Robin covered most of her, but her face was still perfectly visible from where I lay. I didn't think it was possible to feel any lower. But I kept feeling smaller and smaller. "Em, you need to get out of here."

"Oh my God," Emily said again.

"Em, she's family. You know you can't be in here. I'll come get you when I know anything else."

"I'm in the middle of my shift."

"Not any more," Patrick told her. "Go and wait."

I saw her looking at me one more time, before she was ushered out by Robin. But I don't know who was gone first- me, or her.

I shivered, coming back to reality. I still felt unbelievably guilty for that. She had promised me that it wasn't my fault. I didn't know that it had been her before. I pulled my sweater tightly around me. It was a brown oversized sweater, one that Milo had brought for me. It was his college sweatshirt, my favourite to steal from him when I was at his apartment where the air conditioning was always blasting. It smelled like him. With it came a thousand other memories, but all I could focus on was that night in August in the park.

"I love you," he had whispered to me as we walked through the park after seeing a tacky comedy. He had pulled me into him so that his face was right by mine. His brown eyes looked so warm and vulnerable. When I didn't respond, he kept talking.

"I'm sorry if it's too soon for me to say it. It just came out. . . I'm sorry. But I love you."

I unexpectedly found myself crying. The moon behind him illuminated his face. I couldn't imagine a more perfect night, a more perfect way of saying it. I couldn't imagine anyone I would want more to say those three words to me.

"Please," I whispered, almost begging. "Please don't say that."

"Lulu. . ."

I shook my head, and found myself crying harder. "Please don't say that," I repeated, then pulled away and went to sit down on the nearest bench. Milo slowly came over to me. I sat sideways and he sat down behind me, softly pulling my blonde curls back behind my shoulders.

"What just happened?"

"I like you," I had told him. "I think I even might love you."

"So what's wrong?"

I turned to him. "You can't love me. Every time I love someone something happens to them. And I care about you too much to let that happen to you. So please, please don't love me."

I opened my eyes again and Lainey was watching me. She didn't look annoyed or amused or anything else that would have made me want to hate her. She watched me like my face was telling her as much as my words ever could.

"I guess," I told her slowly. "I guess it was when I moved in with Nikolas."

She nodded. "Then let's start there."