AN: Won't be posting again for a week or so so tonight you're getting 3 chapters as an apology. Real lift shit has me down at the moment and I don't have the inspiration to write.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Website where all photos of all outfits mentioned is on my profile.

It's while I'm soaking in the tub that I realise something, today has been the quietest day since my arrival.

The water starts to cool after about 20 minutes and I'm just thinking about getting out when Donna knocks on the door to ask if I want a coffee, cause she's just made one.

I call out an affirmative answer and go to step out of the tub as she opens the door to bring in the cup she was holding. I'm not bothered by her coming in, when we were teenagers we would go skinny dipping together, but I know she's going to have something to say about the additional piercings she didn't get to see when I was clothed.

She puts the cup down on the bench and says, "Didn't those hurt?" she's pointing at the piercings through each of my nipples.

I look down, the jewellery catching the light as I pull a towel around my torso. "Not really, but you've breast fed. I can't imagine that feels good when the little brats, I mean angels, get teeth."

She laughs, "Yes, but that was unavoidable unless I'd bottle fed which I wasn't going to do. That however" she points at my chest, "was completely optional."

I grin over at her, and I know it's appearing evil when she cringes back and tries to head towards the door. "Al is the one who did them. You can always ask her to do one of yours. Then you'll know how much they hurt."

She shakes her head rapidly and heads out of the room. "Chicken." I call out down the hall as I head to get dressed again, taking my fresh coffee with me.

10 minutes later I'm back in the kitchen where Donna is sitting at the table, swirling the coffee in her cup, "Maybe." she says.

I know I look confused, "Maybe what?"

"How long did they take to heal?" she asks, looking at me and gesturing vaguely towards my boobs.

"Around 2 weeks. I got them done at the same time so I wouldn't have to deal with the healing twice." I know she's interested by the tone of her voice, but I'm not going to push her. Donna only wears one set of earrings in each ear and I know when she got those it was a big deal, after all it was my hand she cut off the circulation to when getting them done. I know she's waiting for more information from me, cause I heard the combination of irritation and remembered happiness in my voice.

"I try not to think about the day that the piercings became part of me, it's the same day I met Craig. I do entirely blame Al and Cam for that, after all they decided to punch holes in me and then take me drinking, I was halfway through my second course at the Institute, they wanted to celebrate for me. They decided the perfect place was some upmarket bar they knew in Soho called Death and Company." I smile at Donna, knowing she'll see my humour in the name. "I loved the name but wasn't sure about it when we got there, it looked like it was going to be a dive. Thank fuck it was already dark outside when we got there, cause it wasn't much lighter inside, but Al had assured me it was awesome and the drinks were amazing, which they were...and she was paying for them which made it better."

Donna hops up to get more coffee while she lets me ramble, knowing that she's going to hear something she hasn't heard before, she has only heard the name Craig in e-mails and when I was talking to Opie.

"So, we had about 4 drinks each, which is amazing considering how strong they are there, they're like drinking Patron with Piney on a Sunday morning when you've been up smoking all night. Burns your throat makes you cough but you can't stop."

Donna laughs as she sets my coffee in front of me, "Yep, been there once or twice."

"So after we'd been there about an hour or so Cam decided she wanted to go to this place round the corner that had a pool table, I can't remember the name of it, but it was dark and there was this awful hip hop music, but Cam loves pool so we stayed for about 2 hours. She'd managed to pool shark almost everyone, she learnt from her dad, who has a pool table in his office to 'relax'."

Donna interrupts, "So don't bet with her at the club table?"

"Oh hell no, not unless you want your ass handed to you." I'm shaking my head and I can feel the hair I've tied up starting to loosen.

"So, Craig..." Donna nudges me back to where I was going.

"I went to the bar to get more drinks, by this time I was more drunk then sober. This guy was leaning against the bar right beside me and he just started chatting away. I recognised him as one of the guys that Cam had beaten a few games before and thought he might have wanted to know her secret but he seemed more interested in me. I guess at that stage I still looked innocent, neither of my tattoos were showing, not that he would have been looking at my ankle anyway but my sleeve was completely covered."

"He truly was the polar opposite of Jax, which was perfect for me at the time, dark hair, dark eyes, which I later found out were contacts. His natural eye colour was startlingly close to Jax's."

I absently rub my hand over the scars on my other arm and remember how quickly it went so bad. "We probably talked for about 3 hours, and I don't remember much of it. Al and Cam came and got me around 2am and we went home, but when I got up in the morning his name, phone number and a photo of him I'd obviously taken were all on my phone. I didn't think much of it, till he rang me the following Thursday and asked me to dinner."

"We dated casually for about 2 months, by the end of it my sleeve was finished and Al had started on my back piece. Craig would constantly say how he didn't understand why I was 'ruining' my body with all the ink, or the metal. I think I pretty much ended up with a new piercing every month for 2 years." I can see Donna doing the maths and I'm sure she'll ask about them all, but she's listening to hard to side-track me.

"We stayed together though, and 6 months after we met we, well he, decided that we shouldn't see other people. I hadn't really been anyway; I had 2 guy friends from my courses who I would occasionally go to lunch with, or for coffee after class. He started getting really strange about them, and I should have ended up when I had the first feelings of doubt. That's when things started to go bad. He'd still tell me I was defacing myself with ink. He'd tell me that I was so beautiful before I got the major ink. He'd say that the ankle tattoo was gorgeous, and I should have stopped at that cause I was making myself look 'low-class'. We'd been 'exclusive' for 7 months when he started telling me I couldn't wear short sleeves round him or his friends, I hated it but I figured that it had to do with his image. He was working as a trainee mortgage advisor at the time so had to appear clean cut. He went through my wardrobe and piled all the clothes he deemed 'inappropriate' in rubbish bags and went to throw them out. Thankfully Al managed to save them and put them at her place."

I stop for a few minutes, still thinking and take the time to drink some coffee, both to give myself something to do and give Donna a minute to absorb what I've told her so far.

"I let him get away with that for 8 months, which was 8 months far too long looking back, but I'd already spent almost 2 years of my life with him and I was used to how he acted. He started to pressure me to move in with him, I was still living with Cam, it worked for us and I didn't want to be dependent on anyone. Craig told me that if I moved in with him I wouldn't have to work, he'd support me. He was doing okay at the time, but he lived in a tiny 1 bedroom apartment in a not very nice area and he claimed he loved it. I hated it. I hated going there; I hated the looks his neighbours gave me. I hated that I knew his neighbours on one side were a hooker and her boyfriend/pimp."

"By this time I was almost a year out of my cooking classes, and I was working at a job that I loved in a restaurant that was walking distance from my apartment building. If I'd moved to his place I would have had to either drive and pay for parking or take the Subway which would take me at least an hour each way. When I pointed that out to him he laughed, just flat out laughed and told me that I wouldn't be working anywhere when I moved there and I wouldn't have to worry about driving cause he'd get rid of both my cars."

"That was the first time I broke up with him. It should have been the last, but I was stupid. So stupid."