She knew they wouldn't like it. Her parents, she knew they wouldn't like the idea of her loving another girl. She knew how they felt about that kind of stuff, that it was wrong, disgusting even, but she also knew she couldn't keep it from them forever. Nor did she want to. She wanted to be free to be with her girlfriend without the secrecy, without the fear of someone seeing them together.

She didn't expect them to be okay with it, but she also didn't expect them to go this far…

"Are you sure Tori?" asked Holly, the girl's mother. Tori nodded. Yes, she was sure. She had always been sure, ever since the first time she laid her eyes on Jade. "We'll get you help, a therapist." David, Tori's father, nodded. "They'll fix you. It'll be okay." Holly tried to pull her daughter into a hug but Tori refused, pushing her mother away. She had expected this to happen.

"I don't need to be fixed, Mom. I don't want to be fixed."

"Well you can't just keep living like this," said Holly.

"You act like I'm suffering. I'm fine!"

"So you like being like this?" snapped David.

"Like what? Gay? Lesbian?" Her parents flinched at the words. "Yes, I like it. You know why? Because I have Jade. I love her."

"Don't say that," said David through gritted teeth. He was growing tenser every second. "Don't say you love another girl."

"But I do." Tears started to appear in Tori's eyes. Why couldn't they just accept her for who she was? Why couldn't they see how happy she was with Jade? In a perfect world that's what would have happened, they would have accepted it, been happy for her, but as Tori knows, this isn't a perfect world. She would've been a fool to have thought otherwise.

All of this, their reactions, their trying to fix things, it was all expected; what came next wasn't. David hit her. He slapped her clear across the face, leaving behind a stinging red handprint. "Go pack your things."

"Wh-what?" stuttered Tori.

"Pack your things. You're leaving."

Tori, fearful of her father's sudden bout of rage, obeyed his orders and within half an hour she was standing alone in the dark alleyway behind her house, trying desperately to get a hold of her girlfriend on her cell phone.

…So that explains why Jade is now sitting on the damp ground in a dark alley with her girlfriend's head resting on her chest, trying to get her to stop crying. Jade hates seeing Tori cry. She also hates what David did to her. How could he kick his own daughter out of the house for something as simple as her finding love? Jade didn't understand it. Tori didn't do anything wrong. It's not as if she had committed a crime or something. Or had she? Maybe love was her crime.

Jade, just now noticing that her girlfriend had fallen asleep, is disrupted from her thoughts when Tori starts to breathe heavily and twitch as if she's having a nightmare. "Shhh, Tori, it's okay baby," Jade says softly into the girl's ear as she rubs her back comfortingly.

Within the next few moments, Tori wakes up. "Jade," she says as she lifts her head to look at her. "Thanks."

"No problem."

"I mean it Jade. Thank you...for everything."

"Tori," Jade says as she places her hand under Tori''s chin, tilting her head up to look into her eyes, "I would do this any day, for you. You mean everything to me. I love you." Then she gently guides Tori's head back down to rest on her chest. They stay like that for hours, the two of them.

Tori doesn't care what her parents think, she's happy. She loves Jade, and Jade loves her. That's all that matters.