It's really been 12 days since I updated? :c Ahh! I'm sorry everyone, but thank you for all the lovely reviews. I don't own the songs they sing, nor Rose and Jack. Enjoy :]

"I love you, I love you," Jack whispered, his blue eyes drinking in Rose's sleeping beauty and his fingers tracing circles on the small of her back. A smile broke across his face as the sun's rays streamed in through his window and illuminated Rose, making her fiery hair seem to glow and dusting her eyelashes with light.

She was just too beautiful.

It was a month now since he had first met her, but he knew that God had made him so that he could spend his life loving this woman. Waking up next to her was a blessing in and of itself, but being able to spend almost every minute of the day with her—excluding the few hours they spent at high school—was simply amazing, and he couldn't wait to grow old with her.

Rose began to stir and blinked open her eyes, meeting Jack's grinning face.

"Good morning, my love."

She gave him a small smile and buried her face in his neck, inhaling his musky scent. "Morning."

"I love you!" he laughed, kissing the top of her messy curls. "You know that, Mrs. Dawson?"

"I'm not Mrs. Dawson yet, sir," she mumbled into his skin, her voice heavy with sleep.

"You will be, babe. The first thing I do after I graduate college is make you my wife."

"I'd love that, Jack."

Jack blinked at the ceiling from he lay on the stiff couch, his injured leg propped up high and his arms folded under his head. Had it really been so long ago since that memory occurred? Only six months, but it felt like a hundred years.

Everything seemed to have changed.

He knew the day he met Rose in the auditorium after startling her that she was something extraordinary, something special—a diamond in the rough. The way her green eyes sparkled fiercely and how her tongue spit out ferocious words like poison captivated him; he loved her strong spirit the minute she yelled at him.

But now, look at her. She was withering away into dust, and soon the wind would just blow her away and she'd be completely gone. Nothing left of her but smelly t-shirts and empty Dr. Pepper cans that littered the bedroom floor and her Suave lavender-scented shampoo in the shower.

She'd just be gone. And he'd be alone.

Tears welled up in his eyes; he didn't bother to blink them away.

He missed her. His Rose, the woman he thought he'd spend his life with, was almost a stranger now.

A loud sob erupted from his throat and one hand flew out from under his head to cover his face as he wept.

He missed her.

oooo

In the bedroom, Rose sat on the mattress with her back pressed against the wall, her eyes staring at their artwork tacked on the wall across the room: her photographs of the Santa Monica waves crashing, Jack's drawing of her sleeping, her painting of her and Jack laughing.

Had things really changed so much?

Rose's voice bellowed out of her mouth, her fingers reaching out to turn up the radio as loud as it could go and her hips swaying side to side.

"I'm leavin', never looking back again, I found somebody who does it better than he can," she sang loudly over the music, throwing her hands up in the air. Jack stared at her from the kitchen, his lips stretched in his goofy, lop-sided grin; he hated pop music, but it was so cute when Rose sang to it.

"Rose, I thought you hated this song?"

She stopped dancing and smiled widely at him. "I do! But you can't dance to Slayer or Bullet for my Valentine, can you?"

Laughing, he strutted out from the kitchen and into the living room to turn off the radio and play the CD in the stereo instead. A guitar riff all too familiar to Rose and Jack cut through the sudden silence, and they looked at each other with big grins. They both opened their mouths and screamed the words, never breaking eye contact.

"Well, if you wanted honesty, that's all you had to say! I'd never want to let you down or have you go, it's better off this way! For all the dirty looks, the photographs your boyfriend took; remember when you broke your foot from jumping out the second story?"

They broke into exaggerated, wild dancing, their arms swinging every way and their hair flying around and getting tangled, all the while singing horribly.

"I'm not okay! I'm not okay! I'm not okay, you wear me out!"

Rose found herself smiling at the fairly recent memory; something she hadn't done in a long time. Her mouth fell back into a thin line, her heavy eyes closing slightly.

She missed Jack.

But she knew that it was her fault that things had changed; how could she fix it though? She couldn't bring Cal back to life; she couldn't repair Jack's leg; she couldn't force herself to climb up out of the black hole she had fallen into.

Would she be like this forever? Staring at walls, living her life in flashes of memories? Watching weight melt off of her bones with each passing week, feeling her energy drain more and more until it was tiring just getting out of bed?

She couldn't do this. She knew she couldn't do this. She'd die.

Jack's crutches scratching against the wood-paneled floor of the hallway drifted into the bedroom, and his face popped inside, but she didn't turn to look at him.

"Fabrizio is in Santa Monica for a few days, and he wanted to see me, so I'll be out tonight. I'll be home before morning."

Rose offered no reply. He disappeared, and she heard the front door close and lock.

She was alone, but did it really make any difference? She ignored Jack all the time anyway.

Jack. Her baby, the light of her life, the man she thought she was going to spend her life with. How could she keep doing this to him, making him miserable and listening to him cry himself to sleep on the couch every night?

She was despicable; the worst kind of person. And she knew that. It resounded in her ears, her heart, her bones, her blood every single day. Her body screamed that she was horrible; her head pounded with anger and sorrow and guilt constantly.

Glancing around the room, she discovered for the first time that it was filthy: Dr. Pepper cans covered the carpet, Jack's clothes were strewn across the floor and the hamper, dust was making itself at home on the dresser. Rose sighed and shifted her body closer to the edge of the bed, her feet dangling above the floor.

She could clean up, right? She had enough energy do to that, didn't she? And wouldn't it be just a small accomplishment, but an accomplishment nevertheless?

Her feet hit the carpet and she slowly bent over to begin picking up the half-dozen soda cans living on the floor. Her spine screeched in pain from the sudden, unusual movement, but Rose pushed it into the back of her mind. Placing the cans on top of the nightstand, she then set out to retrieving Jack's clothes to dump them in the laundry basket.

She threw a blue hoodie onto the unmade bed and then her fingers grabbed a pair of his trousers—but they were weighed down slightly. Her body froze for a minute before curiosity took over her, and one hand dove into a front pocket…

…And pulled out a small, velvet box.