Jade started marching towards the door, ready to storm through all of Hollywood to hunt down Cat for this little scheme of hers. Part of her was a little proud that her friend managed to pull such a simple trick on her but it was currently being drowned out by the tsunami of other emotions that were racing through her entire being. She walked past Tori, careful to give her space, as she pushed the door only to have her wrist grabbed and stopped before she could leave. "Don't blame Cat, it's not her fault."

"Oh, it isn't? Then did you plan this? Did you want to meet up immediately after you told me you needed time?!" Jade said as she spun around on her heels to face Tori with a hint of venom dripping from her words.

Tori released Jade's wrist and looked down at the floor and shook her head and said, "No…but I didn't tell her we talked. So, if you want to blame someone, just blame me. Cat just wants to help."

Jade looked her up and down and pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed and said, "Fine…but I'm still pissed."

"Me too," Tori said quietly. "I'll talk to her when I see her…so what now?"

"What do you mean? I'm going to leave, you didn't want to meet so I'm gonna have my driver come and pick me up," Jade said as she tried to go through the door again only to be stopped once more.

"Wait!" Tori said as she placed her hand on Jade's shoulder. "Wait…please…"

This scenario felt so familiar to them both as they thought back to the last night they shared in their apartment. Tori remembered pleading for Jade to stay to try and talk about everything, ready to explain her case, while Jade fought to escape to somewhere, anywhere to get some time to think. "I'll stay…but only if we actually talk. I think I deserve some answers."

Tori raised an eyebrow at that comment and released Jade and crossed her arms and said, "Fine. But I am entitled to some answers too. This time, how about you don't run away for seven years."

As she said that, Tori turned and made her way up the stairs to the second story of the small family restaurant and went to the table she and Cat sat at every time. Jade didn't say anything but followed behind her with her hands in her pockets and thought to herself, "Had that one coming…but it's worth it if I can finally get some answers."

The two women sat across from one another at the small table and held off on speaking about anything until after Angie left. The older woman followed out of concern for Tori but after seeing they could be civil with one another she collected their orders and made her way downstairs to the kitchen, giving the former couple complete privacy. Neither one wanted to start the conversation off for fear of messing up this fractal of a relationship they still seemed to have. Jade was the one who broke the silence first after calming the storm inside of herself and went into her writer mindset, preparing questions and anticipating where this conversation could go as the music of a slow tango began in her mind. "So…I heard some things from Beck…no details but he told me some things."

Tori looked at her curiously, trying to pick apart the meaning behind the words for a hidden code or detail she was overlooking as Jade continued, "But he made it kind of like a game. He let me ask three questions and said yes or no then he asked me three questions too. Would it be easier if we try that instead of fumbling through a conversation?"

"What if I don't want to answer a question?" Tori asked

"I'll be pissed," Jade said. She watched as Tori's shoulders fell a little and she became a little sadder, more afraid but her ears perked up as Jade continued and said, "But I'd understand. Vega, look…I fucked up. This was all my fault and I should have told you about everything going on. I was under a lot of stress and I ended up taking it out on you. The whole thing with your family kind of was the tipping point and when I hurt you…I had to leave."

Tori quickly jumped in and said, "No! Jade stop blaming yourself for that! It was fine, I deserved it! I ruined everything we had and drove you away—"
"Never say you deserve that!" Jade said as she slammed her hand down on the wooden table, "No one deserves to be hurt like that! Don't you dare just write off what I did as if it was nothing! You were the best thing I had and I hurt you so don't you dare fucking say that you deserved it."

Jade leaned back in her chair after a moment and crossed her arms as she glanced out over the small balcony to take in the city and clear blue sky but out of the corner of her eye, she watched Tori sit silently with her head hung low. The music in her head was still slow as they were still finding their pace to the rhythm of the song but Tori seemed to be struggling the most. Jade had prepared and imagined how this day would go, if it ever came and she was ready to fight and lay all the cards on the table, ready to spill every secret she had for a chance at redemption. This was her chance, after seven long years, to finally be worthy again, to finally live up to the image she had created of being a badass and fearless performer who fought for those she cared for instead of being the stereotypical drunk and shy author who hides away from the world and watches it from a distance. Tori's voice brought her focus back onto the half-Latina as she said, "I-I have a lot to apologize for. I'm still so afraid to tell you after all these years. I…" she paused as she looked up and hesitated to say, "Can we try that game?"

Her eyes and body language told Jade that she was still ready to flee at the first sign of trouble but she seemed to be willing to give this a try and right now, that's all Jade wanted. She nodded her head and pulled her chair closer to the table and folded her hands on top of the table and said, "Three questions. Honest answers only. Skip if you have to…but we will have to talk about it eventually."

Tori nodded and agreed to the rules set before her and asked, "You go first. I-I'm still not too sure how—what to ask."

"Okay…" Jade said as she tried to give off a calming aura around herself to ease Tori's nerves. Part of her was celebrating this chance to finally ask the major questions she's been dying to know the answers to but after seeing this shell of the woman she once loved, she decided the tempo of the conversation needed to stay slow and chose a different path. One that would provide more insight than direct answers. She hated not being able to ask directly but she knew Tori, or more accurately, she once knew Tori like the back of her hand so she was confident she could fit the pieces together to get the answers she wanted. "Question one: you never seemed like the tattoo kind of girl. What's your tattoo for and do you have others?"

Tori giggled a little bit and said, "Hey, no fair! That's two questions!"

"Fine, you caught me, how about you just answer the first part then?" Jade asked with a soft smile on her face. Tori looked down at her left thigh and ran her hand across it, letting her thumb brush across the petals of the marigolds, and said without looking up, "I don't know why I got it to be honest. It just felt right at the time."

"What do you mean?" Jade asked curiously.

"I-I didn't have an easy time after you left and my family wasn't exactly the most help," Tori said before looking back up at Jade. Their gaze held for a moment before Tori broke it off and slowly grabbed her water glass and held it between her hands and looked into the clear liquid and said, "A few months after you left…we were going to—we were all driving together and there was an accident."

Jade's eyes widened a little as she watched Tori's shoulders visibly start to tremble a little as she continued and said, "Some college kids were out day drinking and decided to drive from bar to bar. They sped through the highway traffic and caused a chain collision and we were in the center of it all."

Tori had to pause for a moment as she fought back tears and clutched the glass tighter in her hands and said in a much softer voice, "Mom was in the passenger seat and was killed on impact. Dad and Trina were both critically injured and we needed to get them to a hospital. I-I'm sorry—" she said as she took a shaky breath and said, "Sorry, I was in the back and got hurt too but couldn't get out. We waited and tried to get out but Trina's legs were too messed up and she died in my arms from blood loss. Dad fought and tried to calm me down but at that point, I was a mess. I didn't even know how badly he had been hurt and by the time they managed to free us from the car and load him into an ambulance, there was nothing much they could do…he died while being transported."

"Oh god, Tori I'm so sorry," Jade said as Tori started to live through the day all over again.

The heat was unbearable that day in California and everyone was flocking to the beach to cool off in the ocean which caused traffic to be even worse than usual as the Vega family navigated the chaotic mess of cars that blared their horns. Tori was sitting in the back seat, trying to hold back tears as her family continued to argue and rant around her. Her parents were fighting and yelling about the best way to get through the traffic to reach the family counselor but the combined stress from their decaying homelife was making it difficult to be civil. Trina was being herself and complaining about the heat and how her makeup would be ruined for whatever party she was trying to go to later that night. "I don't get why we couldn't have booked the later appointment!" Holly said.

"You suggested this time! I'm sorry, was your schedule too booked up to change it? Last I checked you don't do anything!" David screamed back as he switched lanes to get around some large trucks.

"Can someone turn the air up a little higher? My makeup is going to start to run at this point!" Trina said as she examined her face through the camera on her phone.

"Quiet Trina—" Holly said as she looked back over her shoulder only to be cut off by David who said, "Don't you dare speak to my daughters like that! It's bad enough how to treat Tori!"

Tori looked down, trying to avoid eye contact with everyone and hoping that she could turn invisible and escape this claustrophobic atmosphere as her mother yelled back, "I treat her just fine! She's the one who has to learn to be a proper woman!"

"Oh yes, and you're the one who's teaching her that?" David said sarcastically as he continued to speed along the highway, ignoring the honking that persisted outside of their windows. "How's Gary doing? Have any more sleepovers with him?! You have no room to speak Holly!"

"At least Gary was there—" Holly started to say.

"DAD LOOK OUT!" Trina screamed as she saw a swerving truck spin out and crash into several other vehicles causing a chain collision that sent the Vega family car out of control! David tried to fight and gain some control in those few precious seconds as they were sent spinning into the back of a semi-truck that was unable to break in time. Holly was directly lined up with the grill of the truck and was crushed and ended immediately while David was impaled by loose metal that embedded itself into his abdomen and nearly stuck him through the driver's seat. Trina was screaming as her legs became crushed, one far more mangled than the other as Holly's seat and the car door pushed in towards her and shattered some of her bones and possibly severing an artery from the amount of blood she was losing. Tori was spared the worst of it all but was covered in blood from scrapes from the broken glass and had a nasty cut along her head from where it impacted the side of the car. The world around her was spinning as she tried to reorient herself and stop the ringing in her ears but every movement sent a sharp pain through her body and the claustrophobic space in the car became worse as the doors were pushed inwards, forcing them closer together.

From there it was all a blur of blood, screaming, and tears as her father tried to push through the pain to help his daughters as best as he could but the blood loss was making it difficult and the fight to keep his eyes open became more and more difficult with each passing second. None of them were sure how much time had passed as the other drivers on the highway stopped and tried to get out to aid all the people that were injured from the crash, sirens could be heard in the distance so it was only a matter of time until they would get help. Trina was crying and on the verge of hyperventilating as she looked to Tori and held her hands and muttered incoherently about how afraid and how much pain she was in. At some point in those few minutes, she passed out…at least that's what Tori thought. It wasn't until later when she learned that several major arteries in Trina's legs had burst or been severed by bone and died of blood loss.

When the firemen and paramedics finally made it onto the scene, David Vega knew he wouldn't make it and told them to get Tori out first, promising her that he would be right behind her at the hospital. She could see in his eyes that he wanted to say so much more but she nodded and squeezed his hand one final time as she was pulled from the vehicle and carried to an ambulance. Her vision came and went as she fought to keep her eyes open but with the paramedics around, she knew she'd at least be safe and Trina and David would be alright soon. She closed her eyes and opened them again to see the ambulance was speeding away with several people working on her and another individual in the back. They closed and opened again as she was wheeled into the hospital and passed off to several nurses and a doctor but after that, she completely passed out and did not wake up until the early, early morning of the next day. The nurse in charge of her filled her in on the details of the crash and calmly explained she was only being watched for a day or two more to make sure everything was fine but did not tell her anything about her family's condition and promised to get that information for her later. When she returned hours later with another nurse and a doctor and a woman in a business suit, she realized that there was no need to wonder how her family was doing anymore.

"Tori?" Jade asked cautiously as she reached across the table and shook her arm softly to bring her back to the present. She had listened to Tori explain the crash and the condition of the family but that was all she managed to get out of her before she shut down and stared into her glass for ten whole minutes. She shook her arm again with a little more force and squeezed slightly which seemed to do the trick as Tori sat straight up and scooted back in her seat, withdrawing from Jade's touch as if it were poison. Her eyes were wide and her breathing was shallow as she looked around and then back to Jade before composing herself again and said, "Sorry…I-I was, I'm sorry. I was slipping again."

"It's okay," Jade said. Tori lowered her head in shame as Jade tapped the table with her fingers and said, "Hey! It's okay…you don't need to apologize. We can stop if you want."

Tori offered her a somber smile and thought to herself about what to do next. Part of her was screaming for not telling the whole truth to Jade about the disastrous home life that she was living through the last year of their relationship. Her mother's affair with Gary destroyed any semblance of peace within those walls she once called her home so when she escaped to live with Jade, it was like a paradise. The family never fully recovered from Holly's scandalous affair and by the time Tori got up the strength to reveal her relationship with Jade, everything went from bad to worse as Holly revealed her true colors and called Tori every name in the book and shamed her for her sinful ways. Her hypocritical rantings were always stopped by David who never said if he approved of Tori's love life or not and Trina stayed out of all of it, completely focused on her own little world. They were a toxic mess and on the day of the accident, they were trying to mend those relationships by going to get help…but nothing was ever fixed and Tori has had to live with the unanswered questions that tore her apart.

"Let's keep going," Tori said as she silenced the screaming voices inside of herself. There was so much more she wanted to say, so much more she wanted to reveal but she couldn't. Not yet, not now when Jade had so much on the line and had the public's attention on her at all times. Tori had long since abandoned the ideas of fame and the last thing she wanted was to be pulled back into that world that had taken so much from her already.

Author's Notes:

So here we are with our leads finally getting the chance to talk and clear the air, how much they reveal is up to them but at some point all will be revealed. Neither one of them is without demons or skeletons in their closet and hopefully now we can learn what they all are.

Thank you again for the lovely reviews so far! A lot of you are very insightful and have been able to piece together a lot of what has happened to them, especially with Tori and her family. Marigolds are the most common flower used in celebrations for Day of the Dead so I felt it would be the best way to honor Tori's family while the cloth with the Celtic knot pays homage to her half-Irish lineage. I'm very happy to see so many of you enjoying the story so far and sharing your thoughts and theories! I'll see you all in the next chapter!

Songs Used for Inspiration:

1. ?

2. "She Got the Best of Me" by Luke Combs

3. "Miss Missing You" by Fall Out Boy

4.