Hey, guys! I am SO sorry I have taken so long to update! I've been busy releasing my first book, and I haven't had a lot of extra time to work on projects until now. I'll try and get back on updating more regularly. Thank you to everyone who has been following this. J

Breathe in...breathe out…breathe in…breathe out…

"What are you doing, Jetta?" Tate's voice echoed to me, startling me out of my zone.

"I was meditating. You know, finding my inner zen."

"No, I don't know, actually."

"Hm. Well, come sit here then and I'll show you. Legs crossed, spine straight-"

"This requires a lot of rules." Tate interrupted with a smile as he sat beside me.

"Indeed. But energy flows better through a body with straight posture and meditation is all about letting the energy surge through you."

"How long have you been doing this type of stuff? The meditation, Ouija boards, all of it."

"Well…I grew up in a small town terrified of anything they couldn't understand so for a part of my life, I went by their Christian ideals, but when I turned thirteen something just…I don't know, really, something just kind of changed in me; a switched got turned on, if you will, and then I immersed myself in all the things I could learn about this way of life opposed to what I had known before and well, here I am."

"I find your dedication to it admirable. Attractive too, actually."

I giggled, "If only the citizens in my town had thought the same. They swore I was the devil."

"If they thought you were the devil, they should have got a load of me."

I turned my face to Tate, his facial features turned up in a twisted smile.

"Ah, yes, seeing as I'm not the one here who shot up a high school."

"I do think about it sometimes…what it was like to watch the color drain out of everyone's faces in their last seconds of life."

His eyes had gone blank, his expression showing no sign of emotion, and suddenly a chill shot up my spin as I imagined the boy I had grown to love pointing a shotgun at innocent bystanders and pulling the trigger.

"See, that's the problem. There's something in you that enjoyed that experience. Quite frankly, it's somewhat disturbing."

"I thought you were okay with everything…I thought you had accepted my past-" he started, becoming quickly defensive.

"I am, Tate, but I don't want you feeding off the negativity from it. Deep down, you're a good person, but we have to get the darkness that has tainted your light out of you. I promised Constance-"

"Why the hell would you promise her anything?"

"I want you to have a relationship with Michael! You know, your son? But she won't allow it until I help you with your obscurity!"

By this point, I had stood and begun to pace the room. This was the first fight Tate and I had experienced and I had already decided I loathed it.

He sighed, running his fingers through his blonde locks of hair while staring at the floor.

"I'm sorry, okay? I'm a fucking mess and I admire that you want to help me, but what if I'm too far gone to save?"

"No one is too far gone to rescue and most especially not you, Tate Langdon. I won't accept that."

"But the things I've done-"

"Everyone has flaws."

"Oh, so everyone massacres high school students because some dene and demanding feeling of destruction overtakes them?"

I halted my pacing to glance at him. "Wait, did you say there's a feeling that comes with it?"

"Yeah, it's like…something that's not me takes over my body and I just feel this overwhelming sense of blackness wash over me. It's like I'm not even in control anymore and I'm just carrying out these things in my head that make sense at the time: sparing people from the piss and shit in the world, taking innocent people's lives. I don't understand it, Jetta. I want to be so much more than that, but somehow I end up in that mindset and I'm scared that it comes from within me."

"It's the darkness of the house, it has to be."

"But what if it's not?

"Then I guess I'm in love with a psycho ghost who has a child and skeletons in his closet…literally."

I glided to him then, wrapping my arms around his head as he nuzzled it in my stomach.

"It's going to be okay, Tate. We'll figure this out together."

"Teach me how to mediate like you were." He suddenly pleaded to me.

I nodded and sat back down beside him, letting him observe me as I crossed my legs and rested my hands on my knees so he could do the same.

"Now, breathe in…breathe out….breathe in…breathe out…"

In silence, we sat together and I allowed myself to be lost in the sound of Tate's breathing.