"I promised myself that I wasn't going to push you on this but I was talking to Jesse and the longer I waited the more it bothered me. I just want to know why it is so damn hard for you to love me," Wade said sitting at the kitchen table. He had waited until he was calm enough to talk about this like the adults they were.

"Because I'm messed up, I don't want to make you feel like that. That was never my intention," she sighed. Maybe they had rushed into being together. Maybe that was all on her, she thought she was ready to handle things with Wade after everything with Joel. She knew that Wade would never be like that to her. She saw how Wade was in relationships growing up and he was nothing but sweet and caring. The same he treated her when they were friends. That wasn't going to change now, just because of the crap she had gone through.

"Why can't you let me in?" Wade asked softly, reaching for her hand. Zoe let him twine their fingers together. "I don't like being left out, I wanna help you. Please let me in," he begged.

"I don't want you to look at me differently," she whispered, looking down ashamed of herself.

"Hey now baby, that isn't fair," he stated keeping his voice even, moving around the table to kneel in front of her. "I would never do that. Do you not trust me?" He asked his voice trembling on the edge of anger and sorrow. She shook her head, cupping his face with her free hand.

"I trust you, Wade, with my life," she told him on the verge of tears.

"Then what is this entire BS about?" He asked, not able to make any sense of what was going on.

Not saying a word Zoe headed to the living room, pulling Wade behind her. He was right there sitting on the couch. He watched her pace around the living room. He was going to wait for Zoe to say whatever was going through her mind. He needed to sit back and wait for the dam to break the rest of the way. He really thought she was nuts for even thinking he would look at her differently. She was always going to be his best friend, life experiences be damned. Whatever she went through made her stronger for being able to stand here before him ready to hand her heart over.

"I hate how weak and vulnerable I was, how I let someone control me so much, but I thought I loved him. Talking about this is hard enough just please wait until I'm done before you comment."

"Okay," he told her. Just hearing her say she loved some other guy was enough to make his blood boil.

She had just finished one of the longest days at school for the past few months. It was her second year at school and even though things with Wade were on the outs she was missing him like crazy. With her mind on Wade she rounded the corner running smack dab into a body. They had caught her before she was able to land on her butt on the floor.

"I'm sorry," she told him, her cheeks flush from blushing. "Thanks for saving me," she said looking down.

"You can make it up to me by getting a bite to eat," he told her.

"Um I don't about that," she told him shaking her head.

"I won't bite, I promise. Besides what else do you have planned for a Friday night?" He asked.

"Oh okay but I'm allowed to leave at any second," she told him, pushing some of her hair behind her ear.

"Deal," he grinned. "Joel Stevens."

"Zoe Wilkes."

Their night had been filled with laughs and Zoe found that she really liked Joel the things they didn't have in common brought them together.

She found herself spending a lot of her free time with him. Things had progressed from friends to dating on their own after a few months. She was happy, happier than she had been in a while.

It wasn't until she showed up 10 minutes late for a date that he got mad at her. She had even sent him a message saying that she was going to be late because of class.

"I don't get it Zoe. Things seemed good there. Were you using him to forget about me?" Wade asked interrupting Zoe's story. The thought of Zoe using some tool to forget about him angered him further. It wasn't right he wasn't going around using people to forget about her. He had let himself suffer for not doing anything to change the fact that he no longer had her in his life. He blamed Zoe for it too, but he could've tried harder instead of letting her go without so much as a fight.

"No though I must admit that when I was with him I still missed you and thought about you, at first. Whenever I did mention you in conversation because trust me it was a lot at first because whatever we were doing it reminded me of you and I wanted to enjoy those things with you." He let a smile grace his lips for a second before it disappeared. "We'd fight about you and I realized that it wasn't doing me any good to keep bringing you up, so I dropped it and I focused on him but you were always there in the back of my mind, Wade."

"Okay," he said slowly. "But things seemed to be good between the two of you guys, what happened?" He asked, wanting to get the root of the problem.

"Things are always good to start with. It wasn't until a year later that things changed. He became controlling."

"He didn't hit you or anything did he?" Wade asked, ready to fly to New York and beat the guy up.

"Threatened to but he never laid a hand on me. I thought I loved him and he fooled me and he broke me. He used me because he could. The thing is I know he wasn't like that, that it was just the friends he kept, telling him he had to. And I'm just afraid that it's going to happen again," she explained.

"Really nice, Zoe," he scoffed. "You know me. We grew up together. We've seen each other at our worst. And to think you see me as some monster because some idiot was. That's low even for you," he yelled, getting off the couch to pace around the room.

"I know you're not like that, it's on me." She wanted to say those three words because she did love him she was only afraid of the things that came next. The fights and all the bad things because the second she handed her heart over to Wade the easier it was for him to break her.

"I just wanna help you. I want you back," he sighed defeated, seeing the look of pain in her eyes. There was no way that he could just walk out the door and out of her life. No he was going to fight for her this time. To get his Zoe back, because he knew without a doubt that she was still in there buried away deep down.

"You being here is enough, Wade." He held his arms open letting her fall into his embrace.

"I've got ya. Always," he whispered kissing her temple.