When he woke up she was gone.

When he had first awoken drifting in a land between sleep and consciousness he had felt so peaceful, so invigorated that for a second he hadn't even remembered what she had told him last night. Then the realization had dawned on him and he, instead of sitting bolt upright and rushing out of bed, had suddenly felt as if he weighed the world and he curled up in a ball a sickening anger gnawing in the pit of his stomach.

He knew then she would have left and it didn't take much investigation to confirm his suspicions. The living room where they had talked last night was empty and the only evidence she had been here was the pair of empty glasses on the coffee table and two wine bottles, one still half full, beside them.

For a second he briefly entertained the idea her departure had been movie-esque, that before leaving she had planted a kiss on his forehead and left a perfumed note on his pillow. He knows Jenna though, more than she'll ever know, she knows how she thinks and he knows she would have rushed out of his apartment the very second she had awoken, that's if she had slept at all.

He didn't know what he had expected. He guesses the stupid optimistic part of him had hoped she'd stayed with him and he'd have cooked her breakfast and made her coffee and they would have driven to work together, ignoring what the production team thought. Ignoring what anyone thought. Last night was still a blur to him but he will never forget the way she had opened up to him and told him the truth, he will never forget the way her voice shook and broke in a way so, so different from the confident Jenna who met him every day on set. He will never forget the shaky words that had left her and the bullet hole each one had punched in his heart. He will never ever forget he look on the face as she had spoken, he had only seen that look once before and it was when he was a young boy and he had come home from his Grandmas to see his mother sat on the sofa, face blank and staring but her eyes full of pain that could never be expressed in words just staring at his father's bags packed in the hallway. It was the look of someone who has given up all hope.

His phone rung sharply, puncturing his thoughts and in his haste to reach it he bashed his leg on the table. Cursing loudly he grabbed his phone and for a second his eyes didn't adjust to the harsh glare.

Stephen.

He let the call ring to voicemail and rubbed his bruised leg in annoyance.

He was annoyed at Stephen for ringing and not being Jenna, he was childishly annoyed at the table for getting in his way and punctuated his annoyance by kicking it from him ignoring the pain that flared up in his toe. He was annoyed at himself.

Because when Jenna had told him he hadn't known what to say, so horror struck was he by her words. She had opened herself up to him and he had just sat there, dumbfounded until words were no longer an option and he had mustered her in his arms in an attempt to draw comfort although he was not fully sure who for. She had been still, so still he thought she may have drifted off and that's why he had finally succumbed to sleep. He had expected in the morning for her to be there and they would talk about it and he would stroke her hair and whisper to her it would all be better and somehow in the morning he would just know what to do because that's what the morning was for right, a clean day?

He knows now she had never slept at all.

When she reaches his house she is numb. All her worries, all her angst, all her turmoil had eaten away at her as she had driven here and now she is numb.

She knows her fate and knows her punishment. This is why she build walls.

This is why she blames herself for letting her walls get knocked down last night. Walls that had starting building up the second she had slipped from his grasp in the early hours of this morning. Walls that after just a thirty minute drive were suddenly stronger than ever before.

Suddenly she is terrified and that startles her. Her head had been resting on the steering wheel but as fear and adrenaline course through her veins she shoots into a rigid sitting position and stares out of the car window into the soft light dawn was bringing.

She knows it wasn't just the alcohol though, somewhere she knows that it was Matt who drew the truth out of her when his soft gaze had fixed on her face, when he had touched her hand with the slightest of touches but it had felt like an electric current had passed through them. Even though she had been drunk she still remembered the tension between them when she whispered his name, the air between their lips had bristled with someone she hadn't quite understood and she remembered how inside she had been begging for him to kiss her but at the same time was terrified that he would. Even now she still remembers the stinging rejection as he had pulled away and it is now she feels the embarrassment of last night, how desperate she must have looked to him cuddling him and then crying and then telling him. She shouldn't have told him.

Why had she told him?

She can let herself get over the pathetic teenage girl with a crush act. She can just about forget crying into her wine in front of him and with time she will erase the feeling of almost kissing him from her memory.

But telling him.

She had changed everything.

It wasn't until she was sober that she had realised her mistake, her drunken and clouded judgment had actually taken ease in sharing her secret and drunk she hadn't had anything left to say to make excuses and had just been content from gathering comfort in his arms. She realises now that it was only the alcohol clouding her sense that had made her happy to just lay with him because as the hours had passed and she had sobered up the horror of their situation had grown on her. That's why she had slipped out of his arms and found rest on the hard surface of his cold kitchen tiles. She had been freezing and uncomfortable but she welcomed the pain it brought, her shivering had distracted her from remembering the huge mistake she had made. No longer could she pretend it wasn't real and no longer could she use work and Matt to hide from her problems, now they would never end, now there would be no release because the one person who's opinion she cared about would no longer be able to see her as Jenna and would always be clouded with disgust and pity when he looked at her.

For her the horror would never end.

Suddenly she was very glad that the Christmas Special was growing closer and closer.

She opens the door and Jake is stood there waiting, he must have heard her car.

He doesn't just look disgusted, he radiates it and some instinct in her tells her to make excuses. She doesn't though. Even in her broken state she won't give him the satisfaction of knowing she is afraid.

He is silent and that fills her with terror but even as he moves closer and she can feel his breath on her neck she is thinking of Matt.

She is thinking of how she would endure this torture for the carefree days she spent with him on set, when she could pretend none of this happened because he simply hadn't and would never know.

Now she's lost that as well because as usual she can't keep her mouth shut.

She doesn't stop thinking of him even when Jake throws her to the floor, even when he rips off her dress and punctuates his anger with a slap which twists her head back.

She is still thinking of Matt of when she hears Jake's car leave and she is still thinking of him as she crawls to her bag and texts Stephen explaining her absence at work today.

He is the last thought on her mind before she succumbs to the darkness enveloping her.

Suddenly it no longer mattered their days were numbered.