Hi everyone :) I am so sorry for the late update. I have had a lot of family stuff going on, but things are finally getting back to normal.

Thank you to everyone who has put this on their Alerts/Faves/Reviewed it. It means SO MUCH that you would take your time out of your day to not only read but then type out a review. Please continue to let me know what you think and if you have any ideas for where this is going. One thing I am struggling with is that the logical thing would be for the Russo's to report this to the police, but I don't want the story to become completely taken over by the criminal justice side of things. If any of you had any ideas regarding that it would be awesome.

Thanks so much and again PLEASE REVIEW!

Here is chapter 7.

It was dark. The kind of dark where you can't see anything and you wonder whether your eyes are open or shut. Alex felt in front of her for something, anything, to grab on to, familiarity, safety, but found nothing. She turned around in the pitch-blackness and suddenly, lit up in the darkness like a devil in the night was his face.

Javier.

Alex backed away blindly, fumbling feet tripping over each other and she seemed to be standing in what felt like sand. The beach. That beach.

"No...I won't let you do this! Not again. Not again." Alex's voice was scared, small.

Smaller than she wanted it to be.

She wanted to be a tiger and roar, scream at him for all she was worth, kick out and claw at him until he was bleeding on the floor, the way he had left her.

Suddenly her sandalled feet clumsily entangled in one another and she lost balance, going down, down and further down until she felt she was going right through the sand and into hell itself. She opened her mouth and screamed, and right before she thought she saw the flames she woke up and saw a fluorescent light, felt the scratch of a blanket against her legs, and felt her mother's cool hand on her clammy forehead. She breathed quickly, shallowly, trying to catch her breath, trying to sit up, trying to make sense of the dream, the room, everything.

"What….where am I? Who…?" Alex was confused.

Theresa ran her thumb across her daughter's forehead and tried to quieten her.

"The doctor gave you some more drugs to help you sleep. You needed it, to get better. You're still in the hospital and you've been out for twelve hours. It's OK, your dad is here and your brothers are back at the hotel packing. We're taking you home."

"What…you mean she just gave me medicine and made me fall asleep to help me get better? You think it's going to help me get better, dreaming about all of this, seeing his face everytime I close my eyes?! You can't just make me sleep and pretend when I wake up everything will be fine!" Alex's voice was thick with angry tears.

Theresa looked confused, but before she could form a sentence of reply, Alex got out of the bed she had been confined to for the past 36 hours and, folding her arms protectively across herself, stormed out of the room and into the corridor beyond, walking wherever her bare feet took her. She heard her mother's voice behind her, calling out, half-despairing, half-annoyed.

She knew what her mom was thinking, she could see it in her eyes: there she goes, that little girl with no innocence left, how can she ever be the same again? Poor thing.

It angered Alex. It really did anger her, the pity and sympathy she saw in her mother's face. She didn't want sympathy. She didn't want everyone to tiptoe around her and try and pretend nothing had happened. She didn't want them constantly asking if she was "OK" but never actually asking her how she felt, what she was thinking, if she wanted to talk about it. She didn't want their hushed voices in the next room, discussing her, but never facing up to what had really happened to her.

Alex shuddered at the thought of school, of Harper, of going back to New York. Her mother would tell a few people, in that closemouthed, vague way mother's spoke about such incidents, and they would look at her with soft, sympathetic eyes and say behind her back "That poor girl. So sad what happened to her."

And it made Alex want to scream out, to stand before them and say "I'm right here! I survived!" because she did and here she was in the hospital, barefooted and looking younger and more vulnerable than ever before, but alive, and prepared to fight.

And despite the cuts and bruises on her face, the marks on her body, she wanted to show her mom, her dad, her brothers, that one day she would be the Alex Russo she once was, not merely a shell of the happy and confident girl that had gone to the party on the beach and never come back.

But then she looked up, and she looked into the face of someone that would make it very hard for her to be that old Alex again. And she was sure she wasn't dreaming, but she felt immobile, as if her feet were held to the floor by pure fear.

No, no. She wasn't dreaming. She was awake and this was real.

Javier.