The table was silent. This was unusual for the dinner table. Kylie sighs, making the only noise that anyone had heard for about five minutes, and continues to pick at her food. Sei was out doing a job for Bai Lan. Amy and Meg were silently eating, probably worrying over the other girl. Sei had been gone for a couple of days, but she checked in at least twice a day. Jo was leaning her head against the back of the bench, her eyes closed, not even bothering to eat anything and Kyohei was reading over a book that Kylie had let him borrow. Kylie sighs again this time getting a look from Meg. Kylie wanted to get Jo to say something, anything. It had been a little over a week since the incident in the bathroom and Kylie and Jo had barely said two words to the other. The only time they did talk was when Jo was teaching her hand-to-hand, and only then it was pertaining to the lesson.

"So, my father e-mailed me last night," Kylie says quietly, still looking down at her food maybe that would get Jo's attention.

Kyohei and Meg immediately turned to see what Jo's reaction would be, but the girl wasn't fazed and continued to sit in her trance-like state.

'Shit,' Kylie thinks to herself, 'What does Jo want?'

Kylie had had plenty of time to think about their little 'break' and she had decided that she really was in love with Jo and she could take Jo always being around Meg if she had to. That's what you did when you loved someone. Then every time that Kylie had tried to talk to Jo to tell her this conclusion, Jo would just brush her off.

"What did he want?" Meg asks curiously, turning her gaze to Kylie.

They all new about the bastard that Kylie called her father. Her mother had died when Kylie was six and her father had taken to using Kylie as a replacement for his lost wife. Which meant that Kylie received the beatings her mother had gotten, along with the rape and having to have the house spotless everyday and dinner having to be done right when he walked in the door. Kylie was very smart and an extreme hard worker, and had ended up skipping three grades in school. The school system had made her take a year in between the years that she skipped. She didn't mind though, studying kept her mind off of all of the shit that happened at home. When Kylie reached eleventh grade she had been given a chance to finish school in Tokyo and she immediately took the opportunity. But she had gotten into trouble and Jo and saved her. After that Jo would visit her every day after classes were over and soon the two had become very close. Kylie soon had to drop out when her father stopped paying her tuition. He had made it very clear that she was only finishing eleventh grade when she transferred there and then he expected her back home for twelfth grade. So, when he stopped paying for her tuition, she decided that she wasn't going back home and Jo had invited her to stay with them. Something that Sei had not taken kindly too at first. But soon they all grew to love and trust Kylie. Her father tried numerous times to talk with her, but she would never answer the phone. It had been Jo's suggestion to change her number and e-mail address. Kylie had agreed to change her phone number, but she still needed some way to contact her father. Even if he was a bastard, who she never wanted to see again, they were still the only family that each other had. But now he would only contact her when he needed her to send him money for drugs or alcohol.

She had gotten a part-time job after dropping out of school, because even if she was living with Sei, she still wanted her own income. It felt wrong depending solely on someone else for everything. She had the hardest time finding a job, because she was only fourteen, but she had found work, working for a man in his late-thirties. He was an entrepreneur and needed the extra help or so he claimed. He already had over six employees working in a little shop that he had set up. He had taken pity on her and decided to hire her on a trial basis. After she proved that she was a hard worker, he had offered to pay for her tuition, so that she could finish school. She was so happy, but she couldn't use him like that. She had even rejected Sei's offers of paying tuition. Then she found out that he had already paid it and that the money was non-refundable. She had reluctantly went back to finish her last year, still working for him swearing that she was going to pay him back by working in the shop. She had finished school when she was fifteen, since she had proven to the school that she knew the information. The school had let her skip a semester. And so she had graduated not long after starting again and by that time the man had grown ill. He had always looked after Kylie as if she was his own daughter. His other employees were extremely jealous of how well Kylie was taken care of. He had even offered to let her move in with him, but by this time Kylie and Jo had been dating for a little over a year and Kylie had not wanted to leave them. Kylie worked for him for another year before the man had to go to America. His family, parents and siblings, had moved to America and they wanted him to be with them if the sickness got to be so bad that his body shut down. He had left the company in charge of one of his sub-ordinates. She had decided that the company had too many employees, or at least that was the reasoning that she had given to Kylie when she fired her. She hadn't heard anything about the man since he moved to America, except for a letter he sent her claiming that if he died, that she would be well taken care of. He had known about her father and never wanted her to have to worry about things like that. He had really loved and cared for Kylie. But he had been smart and along with paying her tuition and regular work wage, he had set up a savings account for her. It contained about forty-six thousand in US dollars and he had given her his family ring, claiming that she was his only daughter and she always would be.

"Money of course," Kylie says finally putting her fork down on her plate, "But I have no more to send him."

"What?" Meg says, they knew about the savings fund. Kylie had offered it to Sei for giving her a place to live, but Sei had refused the money.

"Over the last two years I have sent him basically my entire account. I have a few thousand left."

"How did you manage to send him everything?"

Kylie shrugs, "It adds up. A thousand one week, maybe two thousand two weeks later."

"Fucking idiot," Jo finally mutters.

Kylie thought that she had been ignoring the conversation, but she should have known better than that, "Excuse me?"

Jo opens one eye and looks into the angry green ones before closing it again, "You heard me, Kylie. Shane had wanted you to have a better life and had given you that money so that that could happen. Wasting it on your father is a very idiotic thing to do, making you an idiot."

"He's still my father, Jo. I'll help him if he needs it."

"He's still a bastard, Kylie. Would he help you if it as you who needed money or something? I don't think so, so why should you do the same."

"Because he's my only family."

Jo finally opens both of her eyes and glares at Kylie, "Funny, because I thought that we were your family. I also thought that that ring you wore on you finger, meant that you were Shane's family as well."

As Jo finishes speaking she gets up and walks to the door of the RV, "Lesson in ten minutes," she says coldly before walking outside.

Kylie sighs, she hadn't attempted to imply that they weren't her family, of course they were, "I'm sorry you guys."

No one was even eating anymore, just watching the development between the two or them.

"You guys are my family and I'm sorry that I said you weren't."

"You never said that," Meg says shrugging, "Jo is just taking things a little literal right now. We know what you meant. So what are you going to do about your dad?"

"Explain to him that there's nothing I can do. I just don't have the money right now."

Meg nods her head and resumes eating. Amy and Kyohei following her lead decide to do the same.

Kylie runs a hand through her hair before she stands and decides to follow Jo, maybe she could get the girl to talk before her lessons. Meg and the other two watch her before Meg rises her eyebrows and they turn back to their food. None of them wanted to be in the fight between the two angry teens.

"This is going to be interesting," Meg mumbles before taking another bite of her food.

Hello again. I apologize to my readers, because I told them that I would have a sex scene in this chapter and it ended up not happening. So, again I am very sorry and it is coming. I'm heading to bed now and as soon as I wake up tomorrow then I will write the scene up and I promise that it will be posted tomorrow. I really would have had it in this chapter, but I wanted to get a little more into Kylie's background and why she's in Japan. So, expect that tomorrow and love to all my readers and reviewers.