A/N: This chapter is the chapter where Sam and Jess are talking with Kayla about Art after everything has come out. In the original story, when Kayla reveals her fear that one day her sister will be hurt the same way that she was, Sam pulls Kayla into his lap and holds her for the night. This is Kayla's POV of that scene, where she remembers other times that sitting in her Daddy's lap made her feel better.

Because this chapter explicitly mentions what happened between Kayla and Art, I am changing the rating of it.

Before the year that she'd just been through, there was one place Kayla could go for healing. Her father's lap gave her comfort when she was scared, broken hearted, sick, sad, or just in need of love and attention. It gave her peace, comfort, and security, something that had been in scarce supply the last few months.

Kayla didn't remember, but just two months before her first birthday, when she'd grown six teeth in two weeks, it was the only place she would fall asleep and stay asleep.

At two, she'd cried there for five nights straight, convinced that there was a monster in her room that would swallow her up and eat her.

At six, she'd sat there to get the answer to a question that scared her-could you shrivel up into a skeleton from crying too much?

At eight, she'd sat there and gotten to know her little sister, who she'd been afraid would take her mommy and daddy away from her.

At nine she'd sat there cried as her father patched her up from wounds from falling down the concrete stairs in front of the house.

At ten she'd sat there silently for many nights after her grandmother died, listening to his deep voice lull her to sleep and keep her safe from the nightmares that were almost sure to follow.

From eleven until thirteen, she'd gone through a phase of believing she was too big for Daddy's lap to fix her problems. She would seek him out for a hug when she needed it, but that was it. Fights with her sister, mother, or even her father were solved by apologizing to them, but still feeling a resentment deep inside her that made her feel like a bad person. Kayla was growing up, and felt like her parents didn't see that as often as she would like.

But now, at fourteen, Kayla was very relieved to find that her father's lap still held the same healing ability it had held when she was a small child. This hurt was too big, too festering, still too fresh to be solved in one night of her father holding her, but finally the sharp edges of the pain were beginning to fade. She could feel her ability to breathe deeply starting to come back, and for a moment she felt something she hadn't felt in months.

Peace.

Her worst fear had been realized, and the worst hadn't happened. Her father had discovered her deepest, darkest secret, and he didn't hate her for it. When she said it to herself in her head, she couldn't help but wonder why he didn't hate her at all, but she was grateful he didn't. The words sounded nasty to her even now.

She had had sex with her father's best friend. No, not by choice, but still.

Still. She'd had sex with her father's best friend.

Despite her mother and father telling her, over and over, that it wasn't her fault, Kayla still wasn't sure she believed them. It was her fault. Her father had told her the day it happened for the first time not to open the door for anyone. Kayla, despite her misgivings about Art, had assumed he was safe. He'd come to the door after her parents and little sister left that day, claiming to have papers that needed her father's signature. Kayla had told him to leave them in the mailbox, and when she thought it was safe, she'd opened the door.

Things got worse from there, and Kayla blamed herself for the whole thing.

But for right now, none of that mattered. What mattered was feeling safe and secure and loved right where she was. She cried out some of the pain she still carried inside her, the physical wounds having healed long ago. Just like when she was one, and two, and six, and nine, and ten, it was Sam's voice that helped her fall asleep, safe and loved and in the complete faith that the bad dreams were gone for the night.