Author's Note: Hello again everyone! I'm back again! I've had some IRL issues to contend with which pretty much killed off my muses for all my stories (both fanfic and non-fanfic) so I had to take a break from writing for a bit. Among other things, I broke up with my boyfriend and made a life changing decision to go to Japan to teach English for a year! So very exciting!

But anyway, I'm back with another chapter for this story. It's not my best, but I enjoyed writing it because I finally found my Chelsea!Muse again. Hope you enjoy! I'll have another chapter up as soon as my Vaughn!Muse wakes up...

Chapter Thirty Four

Claws

After Sabrina's mother had disappeared, I wasn't sure what to do. While the other patients bustled around us and cast curious glances our way, I held my friend cautiously as she sobbed into my shoulder. My shirt became wet with her tears. As she cried, I patted her back lightly, unsure of what to do or say to comfort her. What could I do? I was responsible for Sabrina's outburst and I felt my guilt eat away at me when I caught the disapproving frown that Trent had thrown in my direction when Christina had hurried off.

"Hey," I said finally, trying to extract myself from her vice-grip. "We should go somewhere else."

The state her face was in would have made me laugh if I didn't feel such an overwhelming amount of pity for her. Her eyes were puffy, her nose was red and her cheeks were salty from tears. It was genuine emotion I was seeing and I felt slightly relieved that they weren't simply crocodile's tears; Julia's words had definitely gotten to me and I felt even worse after I realised that I was being suspicious of her in such a situation.

"I have to go home," Sabrina mumbled, wiping her face with the back of her hand. A strand of her hair stuck to her wet cheek and I reached up absent-mindedly to pluck it away. She flinched back automatically, as if I was about to hit her, but she relaxed when she realised what I was trying to do. "Sorry."

"Hey, don't worry about it," I replied, though I was a little concerned at reaction. Why would she think I was going to hit her? What had caused her to be so wary of me? Of people in general? "Look, I'm sure Ellie and Trent won't mind if you come with us back to their apartment. They have a spare bedroom there and you can stay there while I sleep in the living room with Skye."

Upon hearing his name, Sabrina's dark eyes slid from me to Skye and then back again. Her expression went completely blank for a moment, as if she was trying to decide what to do, but eventually she gave me an abbreviated nod. "Okay."

I looked over my shoulder at Ellie and she gave me a silent nod. Like me, she couldn't leave a distraught girl alone, even if she was meant to be my 'rival' for Vaughn.

The five of us left the hospital and headed back to the apartment in silence. None of us seemed to know what to say and even Skye struggled to get a conversation started, instead opting to stare out of the window. There was no way he could continue to put the moves on Sabrina after seeing what had happened at the hospital – even he wasn't that insensitive.

When we arrived at the apartment, Trent let us in and Ellie led Sabrina and I to the guest room with Skye trailing along behind. As she flicked the light to the room on, I was impressed to see that Skye had done a fabulous job of making it look like a bombsite in such a short period of time. Clothes were strewn everywhere and there were packets of crisps and coke cans lying on nearly every surface. It looked like a room at a frat house.

"You're a pig," I said to Skye as he plonked himself down on the bed and flicked a scrap piece of paper away from him.

"No I'm not. Pigs like to roll around in their own filth," Skye retorted, staring up at me with come-hither eyes.

"Yes, I can see that," I said, looking around at the room pointedly. I turned to Ellie and asked, "How long has he been here now?"

"Two nights only," Ellie said, folding her arms. "And it's already looking like his little shithole back at uni."

"Aww, don't worry El, I'll clean it up before I go," Skye said with a pout. "Promise."

Having remained silent since the hospital, Sabrina suddenly said, "I can't stay in here."

Skye took offense. "Why? It's not that bad."

"Your boxers are just... lying there," Sabrina replied, waving her hand at a pair of his underpants that were limply hanging off of the bedside lamp. "I just can't, sorry. I'd rather stay in the living room with Chelsea; at least I'd know it's clean."

Ellie beamed at her. "I'm glad you think so! I spent ages trying to keep the apartment clean for Chelsea's arrival. Anyway, let me go and get you some blankets so you can sleep out there with her. I think it's best we leave Skye in here for now."

Sabrina nodded mutely and we followed Ellie out, leaving Skye in his room as he got a call on his phone. I closed the door shut behind me and turned back to Sabrina who had taken a seat on the black leather coach in front of Trent's widescreen television. In front of us, on the glass coffee table, were dozens of wedding magazines and I fought back to the urge to face-palm as I realised that those magazines probably brought back painful memories for her.

Remaining silent, Sabrina picked up one of the magazines and opened it in her lap, slowly flicking through the pages and gazing at the beautiful wedding dresses. I took a seat next to her as she came to a page where the photoshoot had taken place in a barn and I saw her smile slightly, her hand tracing over the image with feather lightness.

"Vaughn wanted us to hold our wedding like this," she said.

I peered down at the page and the first word that came to mind was 'tacky'. Get married in a barn? I don't think so. Even after becoming a farmer and getting down and dirty with farmyard animals, I still wouldn't even consider holding my wedding in a barn.

"Right," was all I could say in response, trying my best not to sound too snobbish at the idea.

"Yeah, I wasn't sold on the idea either," Sabrina replied. "I wanted a church wedding with a few people and he wanted a big wedding in a barn. We were at odds with each other about almost everything, it's a wonder we didn't break up earlier."

"Opposites attract?" I suggested.

She smiled. "Something like that, yeah." She then turned to me and said, "I regret what I did to him. He's a good man."

"Yeah, he is," I agreed with a smile.

"You're in love with him, aren't you?" she asked me.

My smile fell away and I sucked my back tooth before saying, "No, I'm not."

"Liar," Sabrina said with a smile. "You're in love with him. It's pretty obvious."

"Then why did you bother asking?"

She tilted her head to the side. "I wanted to see what you would say." She closed the magazine and tossed it on the glass coffee table as she said, "I appreciate that you don't want to hurt my feelings by admitting it to me, but you don't have to hide it any more. I know. I've known for a while actually, probably before you even realised it yourself."

Ellie suddenly reappeared with a pile of blankets and chucked them at us with a wicked grin, "There, that should keep the pair of you warm." She took a seat on the other side of me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders before asking, "So what were you talking about?"

"Nothing important," Sabrina said placidly, smiling warmly at her. Although I thought I was just being paranoid and she was simply trying to avoid the subject for Ellie's benefit, I felt like it was a verbal slap aimed at me. My feelings for Vaughn were 'nothing important'.

"Well it's good to see that you're feeling better," Ellie said. "It must have been quite a shock, seeing your mother and all."

Sabrina shrugged her shoulders rigidly. "My father was right about her. She's utterly selfish."

"Everyone is selfish to some degree," I commented.

"Oh, so now you're sticking up for her?" Sabrina asked accusingly. "After encouraging my argument with her, you've decided to switch sides and defend her. Just what do you think you're playing it?"

"I'm not trying to defend her; I'm just saying that we all have some aspect of our personalities that are selfish. We all have our selfish moments where we put our own wellbeing before others - it's human nature," I replied with a frown, annoyed with how aggressive she'd suddenly become. "And the reason I stepped in is because I knew that you were acting. You were putting up that front I was talking about before. You would have regretted it if you hadn't spoken your mind like you did."

"How do you know?" she spat back, her face momentarily becoming that ugly scowl again. I felt Ellie flinch beside me when she saw it. "You don't know anything about me or my family, so don't presume to know what's best for me when you don't know the first thing about me!"

"Hey, hey," Ellie said, realising with some panic that a fight was about to break out. "Chill guys."

I couldn't react. I knew she was right and I knew that I shouldn't have interfered, but I'd done what I thought was best for her. I didn't want to see her acting her way through her relationship with her mom. At the time, I'd had no idea how much resentment she bore towards her mother, but after hearing Sabrina's side of the story I pitied her and was glad that I'd broken through her act. I thought that maybe Sabrina thought that this was for the best too, but she clearly didn't. She would have been quite happy just pretending that everything was okay.

As I thought about this, I began to wonder if the beautiful heiress approached all her relationships in this manner. Her friendship with Denny, her engagement with Vaughn, her enmity with Julia and her relationships with her friends from school; there was always something wrong in all of them. At first I thought that situation and time had caused the rifts between her and the people around her, but I was beginning to slowly realise that the problem didn't lie with external influences; it lay with Sabrina herself. It occurred to me that I didn't really know Sabrina at all – everything I'd learned about her was mainly what I'd discovered. She'd never really given me any real insight into herself as a person and I realised what was holding her back all this time.

"You fake everything," I said, unable to stop myself as this realisation hit me. "Even your friendship with me is fake."

Sabrina glanced at Ellie before saying, "No, it's not."

"What are you talk-" Ellie began to say, but I frowned at her and she went silent.

"Yes, it is," I said turning back to Sabrina. "You were so nice to me in the beginning and I thought I could trust you, but that was naive of me, wasn't it? You never really liked me from the start."

Sabrina's whole body went stiff as she battled with herself. Her pale face was set into a scowl and her mouth twitched as she struggled to hold back what she really wanted to say. Now that I'd called her on it, she was finding it hard to maintain the persona that we were used to seeing and she knew that I saw through her for what she really was. After a long moment, she sighed and she folded her arms across her chest moodily.

"You're just like him," she said. "Like Denny I mean."

"What?" I asked, totally stunned that she'd brought him up.

"Denny saw through me right from the start," she said, glancing at her nails as she leant back into the sofa. "When I met him during that second year of high school, he told me to drop the act I was playing and just be myself around him. I did as he asked and then the moron fell in love with me after that. He's got a very strange taste in women; he seems to like girls that are damaged. I think that's probably one of the reasons he went after you in the first place. You were still recovering from your break-up and it was giving you all that energy to build your own farm. Your emotional pain was like an aphrodisiac to him really."

"So you knew what he was like all along?" I asked. "You encouraged me to get involved with him, even though you knew he was like that. How could you do that to me?"

Sabrina looked up at me from her nails with sharp, cold eyes. "I knew he would mess around with your head; but I didn't expect him to go ahead and try forcing himself on you. He must have been quite desperate."

Ellie grabbed my arm. "What is she talking about? When did Denny force himself on you?"

I yanked my arm away from he. "He tried to rape me."

"What?"

"Denny tried to rape me when I told him that I didn't want to date him anymore. Lanna tried to commit suicide because he broke up with her for me and when I told him about what happened, he didn't seem to care. He was just so... heartless. So I told him that I didn't want to see him anymore and that's when he tried to force himself on me," I said bitingly, glaring at Sabrina who looked amused at my anger. "I should have listened to Natalie when she warned me against him. I should have never listened to you."

"Hey, don't blame me," Sabrina said with a nasty smile. "I wasn't the only one egging you on."

"But you knew what he was like!" I shouted, causing her to jump.

"Okay, yes, I knew that Denny was a bit of a heartbreaker -I thought that maybe he'd distract you from Vaughn if he paid you enough attention- but I didn't know that he was going to try and rape you. He's never done something like that before," she replied scathingly. "And besides. You got away in the end."

"Yeah, because I nutted him and because I literally bumped into Vaughn!" I exclaimed. "I was scared for my life!"

"Yeah, well, you can't blame your bad choices on me," she replied, no longer perturbed by my increase in volume. "You chose to date him, not me."

"You hate me, don't you?" I asked, unable to hide my disgust.

She looked away doubtfully before saying, "I don't hate you. I'm just not sure if I like you very much."

"Well you can get out of my apartment then," Ellie said, rising to her feet. "The only reason I agreed to let you stay here is because of Chelsea, but if you're not her friend then you can take a hike. She doesn't need a bitch like you for a friend anyway."

"Wait a minute El, I'm not done yet," I said, reaching up and grabbing Ellie's hand to calm her down.

"I wasn't lying when I said I don't hate you," Sabrina said. "You see, the thing is, when I was a kid I'd always wanted a friend like you Chelsea. Someone honest and pretty and who seemed to actually care about me. When I first met you at the dance rehearsals for the Harvest Goddess festival I thought you were lovely and I wanted to be your friend so badly. I begged my dad to kit the library out with books on agriculture and gardening and I hoped you would come in even just once to see them."

Ellie sat back down and I asked, "So what happened to change that?"

Sabrina smiled bitterly as she said, "Julia brought Vaughn along as your partner for the dance."

"So that's why you were smiling that day," I said as I remembered it.

"What?"

"That day at the dance, you were smirking at us when we had to do the slow dance."

Sabrina's expression darkened. "Everything changed after that. I knew that Vaughn would end up becoming attached to you. He and I are the same, you see. We're drawn to people like you. That's when I realised that you were a threat."

"A threat?" I repeated in disbelief. "You saw me as a threat?"

"He belongs to me," Sabrina said simply.

"He doesn't belong to anyone," I replied, my nails digging into my palms. "Don't talk about him as if he isn't a person. It's his decision who he ends up with, whether it's you, me or someone completely different. He knows his own mind and he has the right to make it himself without having you dictating it to him."

She sneered and rose to her feet. "You don't know anything about him."

"Well neither do you," I said, also getting up so I could stare her down.

"I guess this is it then," Sabrina said, heading to the door and taking hold of her suitcase. "We're not friends anymore."

"We were never friends," I said. "You made sure of that."

She smiled and opened the door, pulling out her phone as she quickly added, "Oh, and that fire? That was me too."

After that, she walked out of the apartment and closed the door shut behind her, leaving both me and Ellie completely speechless.