Hi everybody!

I am SOO sorry this update took so long. I promise chapter 5 is gonna be up before the end of this week. Pinky swear!

Anywhoo. This chapter has a few innuendos too, so brace yourself.

And lastly, I just wanted to give a HUGE shout-out to the amazing people who favourited, followed, or reviewed JLM. It means so much to me that you took the time out of your busy day to read my rambles.

Now. ONTO CHAPTER 4!

Disclaimer: I don't Ouran. But Melody is mine~


Now Melody knew there was something very very wrong. Kaoru didn't vacations. He worked.

Melody was a bit of a workaholic herself, but at least she knew how to have fun. How to kick back, let loose, and let her proverbial stick in the mud slide a little.

The drive out to Karuizawa was stunningly beautiful. Melody tried to imagine Kaoru strolling through the markets, camping out in the forests, or simply relaxing at a resort.

He must be going crazy.

It hadn't been hard to find out where he had gone. She'd simply called Kyoya and demanded an update. And Kyoya, being Kyoya, knew right off the bat.

Melody suspected Kyoya knew something about her and Kaoru, but if he did, he hadn't let on, so she'd let her suspicions slide- at least for now.

Maybe she had stretched the truth a little- convincing Kyoya that her urgent need to talk to Kaoru was due to some imminent emergency in the fashion industry, but frankly, everything felt like an emergency. Everything since he'd left that morning.

Following the directions given by the robotic voice of her GPS, Melody turned off the highway and saw the cerulean blue of the ocean winking out at her through the trees, the refreshing trees calling her towards them. She could imagine herself, perched on a bluff with her sketch pad, already coming up with a new fashion line filled with greens and blues.

But she wasn't here for fashion. She was here for Kaoru.

And she was here for herself. Because if there was even a remote possibility that they could-

No. Don't think like that, Melody scolded herself. You know better than anyone how this is going to turn out.

Pulling up her car behind Kaoru's at the Karuizawa resort, Melody paused to take a breath, inhaling the refreshing scent of earth and sunshine.

Melody, while spontaneous, was not stupid. She knew what she was walking into. Kaoru was going to hate that she was here. He was going to know that she knew something had gone wrong at his latest show. And odds were, he was going to take it out on her.

The question was- how?

Never one to back down from a challenge, Melody squared her shoulders and marched in, demanding to know Kaoru's room number.

Heart racing wildly, just with the thought of seeing him again, Melody raced to his room, throwing open the door to see him sitting on the balcony with a cup of instant coffee.

"This place hasn't changed at all. I haven't been here since we followed Haruhi here in high school."

"What are you doing here?"

He'd asked the question without even turning to look at her. It was as if he had a preprogrammed manual of how to tick her off. But he didn't seem necessarily surprised that she'd shown up. Almost as if he'd known she would come all the way down to find him.

Melody felt her throat clench, so she said the easiest thing she could think of: "Haruhi was worried about you." She inwardly cursed at herself for being a coward.

"And I'm worried about you."

Still not turning to face her, he replied in a flat, deadpan voice. "You need to go."

Melody almost laughed. He knew better than anyone that she wasn't going anywhere. Walking around his spacious suite, she stated, "I've been meaning to take a vacation. I'll take it here."

She saw a muscle in his jaw twitch. "I don't have time for your games, Melody."

"That's funny. From what I heard, you have nothing but time. Four whole weeks of time."

In a flash, he was up on his feet with his hands on her shoulders, pushing her towards the door. "You're leaving. Right now."

Melody wasn't scared of him. Even though his furious expression and steel-hard grip suggested that she should be.

"I'm not leaving. Not until you tell me why you came over to my house. Not until you tell me what's wrong."

"I'd gone through all my models. You were passably cute."

Ouch. That one hurt.

She saw a flash of guilt in his eyes, but it was quickly extinguished and replaced with the furious expression he'd been wearing earlier. What happened to the Kaoru she knew? And why couldn't she just let this whole thing go, and skimp back to her old life, without Kaoru and all the complications he brought?

Melody already knew the answer to that. Love.

"And now, I want you to leave me alone."

There was a hardness beneath his words- a lifelessness that broke Melody's heart. Not because of the indifferent attitude he was treating her with- although she did admit there was a little bit of hurt bubbling up- but because it was so painfully obvious how much Kaoru was hurting. She couldn't leave him. At least not like this.

Emphatically looking around the cabin, Melody sighed, saying "it looks like you have plenty of room here. Besides, you wouldn't turn out family, would you?"

"Don't go there Mel," Kaoru warned darkly.

"Where else would I go, Kaoru? Maybe I'll just go to Tamaki's house and tell him how I came all the way down to see you, only to-"

Half expecting him to throw her down the balcony at this point, Melody was pleasantly surprised when he cut her off with a kiss. He tasted like instant coffee.

Will I ever get enough of him? Melody thought to herself. No. Never.

When they yanked themselves away from each other, Melody was the one looking away, refusing to meet Kaoru's eyes.

Because for the first time in her life, Melody cared too much. And her heart was going to get ripped open because of it.

Love sucked. Especially when it only went one way.

"I'll let you stay on one condition," Kaoru muttered darkly. "Nobody else ever figures out about this. About us. Outside of these walls, "us" does not exist."

Ouch. Message interpreted: Melody would be nothing more than a booty call for him.

Despite the ache in her heart, despite the fact that he hadn't said one nice, kind thing to her since she'd arrived, despite he hadn't even bothered to apologize for leaving her house without a goodbye, Melody wanted this.

But for some reason, she couldn't just give Kaoru everything but the kitchen sink at his command. She wanted more than just a fling- something to take his mind off his current predicament- she wanted something real. A little part of her heart actually felt like it was breaking. This time, entirely for herself.

Kaoru leapt at her hesitation. "Swear. Now. Or get out."

Hardly able to believe her fingers were trembling- when was the last time she had felt this nervous, this unsure? - she placed her hand over her heart. "I promise," Melody said, as she waited for Kaoru to say something- anything. He stood there as if he had turned to heartless stone and watched her vainly trying to suppress the shivers that went down her spine.

"The full thing. Swear it to me, Melody. On your mother's grave, swear to me that nobody ever finds out about us."

She swallowed and shook her head. It was at that moment she realized something shocking: this fling, or whatever it was, wasn't going to be enough. Not for her. Even if he acted like they were simply "friends with benefits," she had to know that at least a small part of his heart was involved. And if it turned out that it wasn't, well then she was going to have to do the hardest thing imaginable- she was going to have to walk away from Kaoru, and any chance of a future togeth-

No. She needed to stop doing that. Needed to stop imagining that there was even the slightest chance that he could fall for her.

Still, even if he was never going to fall in love with her, she couldn't risk being his booty call if there wasn't a chance at their being friends after everything was over. After this craziness had finally come to its inevitable end.

Her heart felt like someone had been kicking it with steel-toed boots as she said, "You don't like me."

She read his surprise at her abrupt statement loud and clear. It wasn't what she planned to say, but now that she had, she couldn't hide from the truth of it.

"I like sleeping with you."

Oh wow. That one actually hurt.

But what had she expected him to say? Oh no, Melody. I absolutely adore you.

As if.

"I love it too," she said softly, desperately trying to mask her spiralling emotions. But she couldn't. She could feel her cheeks falling, her lips starting to quiver despite her attempts at control. "So that's all this is?"

A flash of anguish flickered across his face. And then, instead of answering, instead of breaking her heart the rest of the way, instead of grinding it to dust in between his fingertips, he moved closer and brushed a stray strand of hair away from her face.

She blinked up at Kaoru, knowing she should leave, telling herself to leave, but then his mouth was on hers and it was such a gentle, sweet kiss that she simply melted into him.

Thank gosh. She didn't have to leave him.


He wasn't alone.

Melody had dropped everything in her life to come here to be with him. She'd given her body to him, then given him her heart as well. And even after he'd walked out on her the night before without one kind word, she'd come to find him. He didn't need a flashing billboard to see how much she cared about him.

And in return, he was hurting her. Over and over again, he was lashing out at her, making sure to let her know that to him, she was equivalent to a cheap call girl.

When the truth was she was anything but.

When the truth was that he didn't want her to go.

When the truth was that even after only ten minutes together at the resort, he knew if Melody left, he'd feel the echoes of her everywhere he looked for the next four weeks.

Maybe for the rest of his life.

The power of these realizations had him reeling.

Her mouth was so soft beneath his. Last night, they had been too caught up in the moment. Their lips had been rough, both of them drunk on the dizzying passion in the air. Now, he had the time to learn the curve of her lips, the sweep of her tongue.

Pulling back just far enough for the tips of their noses to brush, he whispered, "I like you. More than you know."

Now she was the one kissing him. If Kaoru could, he would have told her how sorry he was, but his emotions were still too tangled, a jumbled mass of letters he was unable to formulate into words. Lightly stroking her hair, he murmured, "You're beautiful."

Right now, he wanted so desperately not only to give her back what he'd taken from her the night before when he'd been completely out of control, he needed to give her the most important thing of all.

His trust.

The question was, could he do it?


And that's the end of chapter four!

I hate to be one of those people who beg for reviews, but please, please, please review!

Thanks a ton!

XXX