As the sun rose Clara stirred in Tate's gentle hold, he smiled and placed a kiss on her cheek. Clara couldn't find a single thing wrong with that moment, even though she tried to. She felt as if she had been on her own for years rather than weeks and was more than relieved to be with Tate.

"Clara." The sudden voice of her father made Clara stiffen. All of her joints went back to ice as she leapt to her feet and opened the door slipping out quickly and shutting it behind her. "We've had this planned, why aren't you dressed?" Clara's dad seemed stressed as he wiped his forehead. He was in a blue button up shirt with a spit up stain on the left shoulder, that made Clara grimace. "Well?" Matthew snapped.

"I'm not going, I'm really not in the mood to go back…there, right now." Clara made an excuse quickly with a melodramatic frown. Matt eyed her suspiciously for a moment before he nodded.

"Your mother is going to be heartbroken." Matt said before he kissed her forehead in the same place Aiden had the night before. When he went down the stairs Clara went back into her room to see Tate standing over the dresser looking at her jewelry box. It was filled with everything but jewelry, there were pictures, keepsakes, dried flowers, sea shells and other peculiar things.

"What is this?" Tate raised the small box with the silver rose at the corner of it.

"It's something Aiden gave to me." Clara whispered. She stood by the door and watched Tate with a small smile.

"He drew this?" Tate held up the darkly beautiful drawing of Clara, she nodded slowly. "Has he showed up lately?" Tate asked Clara with a knowing glance.

"He's the one that told me about Ben." Clara sighed as she sat on the bed. "I don't care about any of it though, for my sanity I want to start fresh. You're Tate, and I'm Clara, and that's all there is." What Clara had said made Tate smile brightly.

Hours had passed since her parents left and Clara and Tate lay on Clara's bed in the late afternoon, the room was darkened except for the small slants of light that came from the sides of the curtains.

"Tell me about yourself before…you know." Clara spoke softly as she raised her hand to play with the slants of light that thousands of tiny dust particles danced inside of. Tate sighed silently and raised his hand next to hers.

"I had a brother and a sister, Addie and Beau. Beau died a while before me, he's still here, Addie died somewhere else. My mom is Constance, she was for the most part a shitty mom…" He looked at the side of Clara's face and sighed unevenly. "I didn't have the best life." He muttered staring at the patterns of shadows forming from their intertwined fingers. "What about you?" He asked suddenly tuning in with curiosity. Tate had never pressed any further from her most horrific memory of being nearly murdered by Aiden. Clara realized she hadn't really told Tate a lot about herself.

"I was the only child, so I didn't realize how weird I was until I started school, and I fucking hated school. What made it all worse was that I skipped grades until I refused to go anymore, then dad put me in a really uptight private school. That was where I met Aiden, he had a full scholarship because he was a genius, but the only downside to that was that he was insane." Clara found herself smiling about the moment she had first laid eyes on Aiden, and she instantly frowned.

"What about when you were a kid?" Tate asked, hoping to change the subject.

"I used to make these little forts in the woods when I was a kid, and I would sit inside them all day just watching the world around me. I felt safe inside of them…it's stupid." Clara whispered looking at the dying light from the window.

"No it's not, and you're not weird." Tate said with a small smile. Clara grinned and rested her chin on his shoulder. "You're interesting." He added resting his head on hers.

Aiden threw the knife at the wall and sighed deeply when it hit the floor with a quiet thump. Aiden had stayed in the basement when all of the other dead people were elsewhere. When the basement was full he would skulk around Clara's room, and sometimes he'd sit in the bathroom while she showered just to listen to her sing, the way he used to when they were together.

"Waiting on your girlfriend?" The lovesick redhead named Hayden glared at Aiden from the rocking chair by the corner. Aiden hadn't exactly enjoyed her attitude, especially when she was snappy or clever with him. Aiden had told her to find some self-confidence and fuckoff and that had sent the message just fine, but hadn't kept her from annoying the fuck out of him any chance she got.

"Clara would never come down here, she's terrified of it." Aiden muttered. Hayden stopped rocking and rolled her eyes dramatically.

"I was talking about Violet." She scoffed. Aiden narrowed his eyes at the woman before he shook his head and went up the stairs, not even trying to explain what Violet was to him. He also knew he shouldn't because word tended to spread quickly through the house full of dead people.

Aiden sat on the couch and sighed hard once again. He loved that couch, he and Clara had slept on it once and he awoke with a stiff neck and Clara had fallen onto the floor in the night. A smile spread across his soft face for the first time in that whole day. Memories of Clara, good or bad always seemed to make him smile.

"Why are you so happy?" Violet's dull voice broke through the sonic silence of the dark living room. Aiden sprang from the couch and examined her with narrowed scrutinizing eyes.

"Where have you been all day?" He asked quickly.

"With my mom." She muttered turning away from his snakelike gaze to fall into an overstuffed armchair.

"Having happy mother daughter talks and what have you?" Aiden chided. "So, the plan is going to happen tonight, it has to while mommy and daddy are away. Do I have to go over it again?" Aiden asked as he crossed the room to grab a small ceramic picture frame, it framed a photo of a seven year old Clara sitting on a bench in front of the park in their hometown. Her small face lit up with a childish grin. He turned back to Violet to see her negative headshake, then he turned back and looked at the photo in his hands. "Excellent." He muttered before he threw it on the floor with an exceptional force, the white ceramic shattered on the dark wood.

"Did you hear that?" Clara asked Tate as she rose from the floor where they had been sitting. There was something shattering downstairs, and Clara was nearly positive it was Aiden. Tate took her hand and they walked down the stairs together. They stopped at the living room where Aiden was standing by the window the floor around his feet covered in shattered pieces of picture frames and small décor Clara's mother had enjoyed collecting. "What the fuck Aiden?" Clara smoldered with rage at Tate's side, which Aiden found amusing.

"You are so adorable when you're angry." Aiden said with a light chuckle as he stepped forward. His shoes crunching on the broken ceramic with every step. When he was a few feet away he pulled out the knife that Tate had used to kill him. Tate was the first to react, he ran to Aiden aiming to knock him back, but Aiden sunk the blade into Tate's sternum with a quick thrust. Tate fell to the floor writhing for only a moment before he went still. Clara gasped and lingered in the doorway of the living room looking teary eyed and stunned at the blood pooling under Tate's lifeless body. Aiden stepped forward ripping the knife from Tate's flesh, he turned to Clara and shot her a perfect smile. Clara turned on her heel and ran up the stairs. She went into her room and locked the door, she fell to the floor and slid back to her bed where she broke down with sobs.

Tate would recover, she knew that, but while he was out he couldn't save her. Clara was the one person in this house that was at a true risk of losing her life, and that frightened her to her very marrow. After a few minutes passed Clara looked up at the door and then she buried her face in her arms, she only had to hold out for Tate to come and save her.

"He's not coming back anytime soon, so I guess we have some time to talk." Aiden's voice came from only a few feet behind her, when she turned he was sitting idly by in her armchair, Tate's blood still staining his hands and his face perfectly calm. "Remember when we had sex for the first time?" Aiden questioned, and just the suggestion brought flashes of memory through Clara's frightened mind and forced guilt and chagrin to build in her throat. "You told me that you didn't want to wait, you said that you loved me, and you would forever." Aiden slid the knife over his palm and eyed Clara for a while. "Now that was some pretty heavy stuff Gray, not just your average pillow talk." Aiden chuckled and raised a brow never losing his charismatic smile. A few silent minutes passed in the room that was beginning to smell of blood. "Did you mean it, or did you lie?" He asked lowly, suddenly losing his carefree smile and gaining a fearsome glare. Clara felt sick as she slid back from Aiden. "Answer me." Aiden growled raising the knife.

"That was before you slit my throat you psychotic fuck!" Clara yelled from only three feet across the room. Aiden sighed and ran his shaking fingers through his hair, then he jolted from his seat and grabbed Clara by her shirt holding her only inches from his face, his lips only inches from hers.

"Do you love him?" He asked with such a meek tone that Clara lost the crippling fright. She stared him down with fire blazing in her eyes.

"Yes." The one word that came from her lovely mouth made Aiden stumble back as if he'd been filled with a round of buckshot. He dropped the knife onto the floor at Clara's feet. Clara grabbed the knife and stumbled toward Aiden with a fair uneasiness. Aiden watched her all the while without a stitch of fear or worry.

"What are you going to do with that, Clara?" He asked, his voice weak and torn. "Are you going to stab me?" His face turned dark with seriousness. Clara hesitated there in the dimness of the room, Aiden stepped forward and placed his cold fingers over her wrist and placed the point of the blade at his midsection. "Do it." He implored as tears trickled down Clara's face.

"No." Clara cried softly loosening her grip on the knife. She couldn't bring herself to do to him what he had done to her.

"I slit your throat Clara, and you know what? I came up here to do it again. The fear in your eyes, the panic that makes you shake violently in your sleep, I caused that. Kill me Clara, see how it feels to be the villain for a change." Aiden's whispers sounded like earthshattering reverberations to Clara. When she didn't move Aiden grabbed her wrist again, his fingers digging painfully into her skin. "Do it Clara!" He snarled.

The room fell silent as Clara plunged the knife into Aiden's chest.