Update, update, update!...I'm sick sick sick so I don't have much to say. Enjoy!

American Thighs

Chapter 3: Chasing Ghosts

Jetlag is the bastard love child of Monday morning and Nickelback, leaving the sufferer the ability to do little more than lounge on the sofa watching stupid Netflix comedies until the sun rises in their home country and sets in their current location. Maybe he should watch porn instead, but one look at his frazzled publicist leads him to believe if he flicked to the other application, he would be torn apart in tomorrow's tabloids, labeled a pervert.

"Are you kidding me?" Maia groans, studying her reflection in the hotel's floor length mirror. Jace can see what she's blathering about, the exact reason why he's avoided all reflective surfaces since arriving in the United States. Her hair has fallen from its usual severe bun, sticking out in several directions like she's been electrocuted. Her eyes are rimmed in dark circles, and not just because her mascara has smudged down her cheeks. She looks horrible.

"Mirrors can't talk, Maia," he calls smugly over Phineas' laughter, making a show over dragging his eyes over her rumpled appearance. "Lucky for you, they can't laugh either." He dodges the Blackberry thrown at his face, watching it bounce to a stop by his feet.

"I will tear you apart. Rock star or not," she threatens, eyes narrowed. Jace merely shrugs, unperturbed by her words. He returns his eyes to the television screen, watching Candace rush around in a frenzy. Her carroty hair stirs something in him, an age-old longing that he's tried and failed to suppress. Dr. Doofenshmirtz's plan is cut off by the blaring of his phone, blasting a familiar song that hasn't filtered through those speakers in a long time. Maia's ears perk up. She knows.

"Don't you dare, Herondale," she warns, shifting her body to block the door. "You can't go out tonight." He gnaws on the inside of his lip, wondering if he can just lift her out of the way and make a quick escape. "I can't be moved," she hisses, reading his very thoughts. "You won't be caught cheating on your girlfriend by the paps. Not tonight."

"Kaelie is hardly my girlfriend. She fucks around all the time!" he whines like a spoiled child that's just been told no for the first time. Maia sets her jaw.

"You promised to behave for a while."

"I've not had a drink since that night." That's the truth. "Just let me have sex with the pretty lady." He juts out his lower lip.

Maia snorts. "Maureen Brown is hardly your type of woman." This is true. With chestnut eyes and natural blonde hair, she's hardly the busty, bleached girl he usually strives for. She's nowhere near the crimson curls he dreams about. But she's a distraction, a way to forget the things he can never have. "You better not get her pregnant," Maia groans, stepping to the side to allow him to pass.

So he finds himself behind the wheel of his rented Audi, gliding it expertly around the turns he used to traverse every day. He doesn't give himself time to think of the woman he used to travel with, of the way her eyes lit up in the passing headlights, of the way her smile shone brighter than the stars. Instead, he pulls to the curb, tossing his keys to the valet before they can get close enough to have a look at him.

He pulls his hood up when he steps into the light of the lobby, drifting like a ghost past the receptionist as the elevator doors open. It hauls him to the fourteenth floor, playing strange music that only makes his heart beat faster.

She's waiting at the opened door before he even steps out, her body swathed in a silken robe, only a loose knot holding it together. She's tall, her lean legs on full display as she beckons for him to follow. He wants nothing more than to tear that cloth from her body, so he walks behind her at a quickening pace.

"Why did you follow me to New York?" he inquires of the London native, trying to keep his voice neutral, hiding the lust he feels for her. He hates himself for the way he treats these women, for using them for personal gain. He doesn't know any other way. His soul belongs to another, his being belongs to another.

"Not everything is about you, Jace Herondale," she counters, turning her hooded gaze on him. He focuses on keeping himself calm, his words steady.

"Possibly, but you have to admit, most things are." She laughs, a breathy noise that does little but ignite a fire of desire in him.

"I don't bite," she says after a while of him hovering at the edge of the bedroom, her hand smoothing the quilt beside her.

"I do." He watches her eyes darken at his words, her lips parting into an O. Her fingers find the tie of her robe, swiftly unknotting it and letting it pool around her.

"I'm not stopping you." He fights back against the disapproving emerald eyes in his mind as he stalks forward, a lion hunting its prey. He can feel himself losing control, giving in to his primal desires. She lets him run her fingers over his clothed chest while he works the snap on his jeans. Pushing her onto her back, he tears into her with savage abandon, caring not for her needs but his own. He can tell she's enjoying it, though, even without him trying.

"Let's…ungh…get back….together," she sputters, her eyes rolling into the back of her head. He pauses in his motions, eyeing her wearily as she props herself onto her elbows. "We were good together, Jace." He withdraws from her, yanking on his pants as fast as he can move. Her eyes flash. "It's not like you and Kaelie are serious," she adds, running her fingernails up his arm. He jerks away from her touch.

"I just…I can't be with anyone. Not in the way you want me to." Hurt spreads across her face. "I'm sorry." He's not.

"No, you're not." Damn, she's good. He drinks her in once more before disappearing out the door. It's his own fault that he's like this.

"I need a drink," he mumbles to himself as they bring his car around, not paying attention to the slash in his back, left tire.

The music in the bar thuds dully in the background, a heavy beat pulsating through the white noise in his ears. Had someone asked him how he'd gotten to the bar, he could vaguely recollect a catastrophic encounter with an ex-girlfriend and a flat tire on the edge of the interstate, but he cannot thread together a coherent story that lands him on the third barstool from the left wall. Yet there he sits, his finger chasing away the condensation on his glass of amber liquid as the bartender's annoyed gray eyes trail him warily. Jace knows what he has to be thinking, another drunkard solving his problems with the bottle, numbing the pain in the only way he knows how. Except Jace isn't a normal alcoholic. He knows that the bottom of the bottle is always dry, leaving the memories with a worst taste than before. Misplaced anger unfurls in his chest as he dodges the man's studying gaze. He isn't mad that the bartender thinks so lowly of him, that he'd become the stereotypical, successful yet unfulfilled man. Rather, he is afraid—afraid that the bartender is right. He is the cliché asshole stumbling into the bar, downing drink after drink even though he's long ago lost control of his hands, picking fights with other patrons just so the pain can remind him that he's alive.

Still he forbids these weaknesses to show.

Instead of cowering under the crippling fear he continues to experience despite his level of inebriation, he allows a lopsided grin to spread across his face, drunkenly lifting his whiskey to his lips with a silent cheer to the man behind the counter. He welcomes the familiar burn as it tears down his throat to the pit of his stomach, knowing that the fire in his alcohol is merely a tangible substitute for the inferno he can't reach within.

It isn't like he'd intended to spend the night drinking, purposefully disobeying his publicist's requests. He hasn't gotten completely shitfaced to spite the people that actually take the time to care about him. He does it to forget who he is, where he's come from, what he's done. Somehow, the fire is never enough to melt the wall of ice around his heart.

A sigh of false satisfaction falls from his lips as he drifts back to reality. The now emptied glass rests between him and the bartender again, those same calculating eyes now refusing to meet Jace's bloodshot ones, blatantly ignoring the blond as he calls for more booze.

Maybe it's your sign to get out of here, the last sober inch of his mind reasons. It's a small echo in the back of his ear, overpowered by the numbing effects of alcohol and the familiar rhythm pumping through the speaker system. He begins to drum his fingertips against the countertop as he continues his pitiful plea for whiskey.

It's his song—one of the old ones that actually meant something to him, back before his agent decided to outsource the song writing as a means to broaden his fame. It had pissed him off at first, since music is his escape, his way of releasing his feelings without really sharing how he felt. The dollar bills and screaming fans soon turned that hate into respect. Since then, he's built up so many walls that the song lyrics stopped flowing from his fingertips. No one is allowed inside his head anymore, barely even himself.

"And my weakness is, that I care too much. And the scars remind us, that the past is real." His head bobs lightly to the beat, his voice smooth and clear, devoid of the slurred speech that usually accompanies drunkenness. "I'm drunk, and I'm feeling down, and I just want to be alone—"

"Omigod," a voice squeals beside him. A tip of his head reveals a dark-haired barmaid sidling up to him, her chestnut eyes running up and down his disheveled appearance. "You're Jace Herondale." She doesn't seem to be put off by his state of disarray, so his eyes meet hers before dropping to his empty glass, confirming her suspicions. He'd thought that tucking his signature curls into his Mets cap would have given him enough cover to spend the night in drunken bliss, but stupidly, he'd forgotten about his eyes, the luminous atrocities resting on either side of his chiseled nose, both a blessing and a curse. "Can I get your autograph?" She stands in front of him now, her chest spilling out of her v-neck shirt and into his face as she pushes clean napkins toward him.

"Sure," he slurs as he takes a pen she's offered and illegibly scrawls his name across the white surface. He can't even bring himself to smile as she leans into his side, her body pressed tightly against his to take a picture with her phone. She winces after catching a look from her stern-face boss and returning to work.

"Hot damn," a thin man with tanned skin drawls beside him with a low whistle. "Jace Herondale, huh?" Jace doesn't give him the satisfaction of a response as he takes out his beat-up wallet and shoves a couple of bills across the bar. He no longer is in the mood for a drink. "Hey, Blackwell! It's Jace Herondale!" Jace's eyes flick up to catch the man twisting the handles of his white mustache. When he smiles, his teeth appear to have been filed to points.

"Ah, another rich kid feelin' down 'about his life?" Jace grimaces internally as a burly man with skin so pale it appears purple under the pulsating lights splits open the crowd. His hair is red, slicked back and collected in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. "What'r we gon' do wi' this un', Pangborn?" He speaks in a broken Scottish accent, like someone who hasn't lived in their home country for a long time.

"I say we show 'em what it's like to have to work forty hours a week and never earn more'n a dime, only to watch scumbags like this drown their 'problems' in top-shelf tequila at the local watering hole."

Jace decides that this is the optimum time to join the conversation. "Actually, I prefer cheaper tequilas because they come without the little grub at the bottom. Not that I'll sneeze at some Tequila Ley—" He reels back as the stockier one's fist connects with his face, his eyes opening to watch Blackwell flex his stubby fingers.

"Don' act like ya can relate," he growls in his face as Jace spits blood into his glase. "'en we'll 'ave real problems."

"You know, I'd tell you to go to hell, but I rent there and don't want to see your ugly mug every day." He slams his head forward into Blackwell, slipping from Pangborn's grabbing hands and landing a punch on his nose, satisfied by the sickening crunch it makes on impact. He steps from the bar and disappears into the alley, leaving the pair disoriented as the nighttime air cools his heated skin.

The fight sobered him up a little, removing the fog from his thoughts as he presses forward into the shadows, gingerly pressing his fingertips against the bruise forming on his cheekbone.

He'd been drinking to forget, and his memories begin flooding back, hitting him like a freight train on steroids.

August 5th—Kelly had reminded him of the date, so helpfully also reminding him of his public relations outing that afternoon, and of his family soaked in blood.

It's a day of loss, of learning. That day so many years ago, he'd learned that love can destroy. He can still see his father's face, twisted in agony as he cradles his mother's dead body, the stench of beer on his breath. He'd left streaks of blood against her pale skin where he'd caressed her cheek, the front of her cotton dress soaked through with the same crimson. "You understand, son. Don't you?" Jace hadn't even been able to move, his attention glued to his mother's eyes. Once ocean blue and fully of love, they were now glazed and unmoving, staring endlessly at the ceiling fan turning in circles.

"Mummy didn't want to get into the car with you," Jace tried to accuse, but his throat was closed with sobs.

"She needed to be set free," he whispered, closing her eyelids and letting his gaze drift to the twisted metal heap that used to be their car. He shifted her from his lap so that her golden curls rested in the puddle of blood on the carpet. "We all do."

He gasps, the cold air ripping through his chest as his stomach heaves, emptying the alcohol he'd been drinking against the wall of an alleyway. He sinks down beside it, the odor overpowered by the memory of his father's foul breath washing over his face as the knife sliced his skin to ribbons, his weak attempts to escape proving to be futile as his father's salty tears stung his wounds. A ragged scream tears up his aching throat, his mind returning to reality as he's hauled to his feet, arms pulled uncomfortably behind his back. He feels the cool metal cuffs clasped around his wrists, a burly voice barking in his ear. "You are under arrest for aggravated assault and public intoxication. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be held against you in the court of law—"

Jace is too weak to do anything but stumble forward as the cop shoves him harshly into the squad car. Cameras flash in his eyes, capturing his weakest moment for the world to see. It isn't their fault, though. They don't know. No one does.

The cop slams the door behind him, rattling the old bars that separate the criminals from justice. His eyes lazily follow the scowling officer as he pushes through the gathering paparazzi, parting them like the Red Sea as the cruiser lurches forward.

Unfortunately, Jace has sobered, his arrogance deciding to return to cover for the flaws he'd allowed to show.

"How long will this take, officer?" he groans, leaning back against the seat. "I have an engagement tomorrow at nine-thirty." The officer rolls his eyes in the rearview mirror.

"I don't care if you're the Queen of England. When you are in my squad car, you are on my schedule."

Jace scoffs. "I am much too masculine to be compared to Her Majesty."

The officer scowls, but Jace is never one to let his ego deflate, even handcuffed in a police car.

"Millions of girls, and guys, too probably, but that's beside the point, scream my name every night as they touch themselves to my music, and you have the audacity—"

The officer's gloved hands come down hard against the wheel. "If you don't shut the hell up right now, I will strap you to a rocket and launch it so high you'll spend the rest of your life blathering to yourself."

"Actually, I'd burn up in the atmosphere so—"

"SHUT UP!" Jace smirks, and the officer takes a hard right turn, grinning broadly as Jace smacks his head against the window.

"My agent will be irate if you've chipped my tooth," he growls, probing his mouth with his tongue.

"You already have a chipped tooth, Princess," the officer replies, pulling to the side of the road and yanking open the car door. Jace squashes the sentimental feelings returning at the thought of his chipped incisor, instead choosing to sit in furious silence as he is none-too-gently hauled to a standing position. "This is your stop," the officer declares, uncuffing him and pushing him toward an unfamiliar walkway. "Welcome to America," he shouts as he drives away.

"What just happened?" Jace grumbles to himself, blinking at the shadowy figure approaching him. Oh, please, Angel, no. "Mum!" he greets with a syrupy smile. "How are you?"

X.O.X.O.X

Ride – Twenty One Pilots, Throne – Bring Me The Horizon

Simon nods at Clary through the window of the pizzeria/Italian bistro/café/any food you can possibly imagine ever as she walks past, nearly salivating at the steaming pepperoni pizza situated before him. "Hey, Si," she greets as she pops a bite into her mouth, slipping into the booth only after devouring half the piece.

"Hey, Clary," he responded, completely immune to the level of disgusting Clary can reach when eating pizza. She's been known to get sauce on her forehead and cheese on her earlobes. "How was work today?" She shrugs. Simon knows the waitressing job is her least favorite, but it doesn't stop him from popping in and leaving her outrageous tips. At least when she works the bar, she's dealing mostly with happy drunks and groping couples. At the restaurant, though, there are entire families changing orders after the food has been brought out, nasty couplies in too much of a hurry for a sit-down meal, and the ever-loathed bad tipper. It leaves her more stressed than the money is worth, but she needs the job.

"How did things go with Wonder Woman?" she inquires quickly about the girl he'd met a few nights ago and equated to the super hero, knowing Simon had gone on a date with her.

"Cat Woman," he corrects her calmly before saying that she never answered his calls afterward, so it's a lost cause.

"You didn't woo her with your knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons?" Clary asks, pulling a laugh from her serious friends. "She honestly didn't tear her panties off when you showed her your collectable Pokémon cards?" Clary hasn't had much experience with relationships, since paying her bills doesn't leave much room for a social life or boyfriends.

"Maybe I should have lead with my featured memes on iFunny," he wonders aloud.

"You'll find your sidekick eventually." Simon snorts as he starts on his third slice of pizza, seemingly unconcerned with his nonexistent love life. Simon rarely gets excited about anything besides new video games and vintage comic books.

The phone in her lap vibrates to call for attention. "Shit," she curses after thumbing open the screen to check a notification from Twitter. Her personal account has a measly thirty followers, while her work persona had over ten thousand. The people in the general vicinity turn to stare at her, more with annoyance than interest, causing blood to rush to her cheeks as she shifts her gaze to Simon. "I'm going to be late for work." She starts tapping out a quick text to her boss, who had actually given her this iPhone solely for the purpose of maintaining her company Twitter account. "I have to go hail a cab—"

"Nonsense, Clary. I can drive you there." Clary shakes her head quickly, her face heating up again at the mere thought of Simon hauling her all the way to Pandemonium. Not only will he be ruining his night if he drives her all the way to the strip club, but if he then decides to stay, it may end up being embarrassing for the both of them. Granted, she never has to get completely naked for the crowds, but the thought of Si sitting there trying to stuff ones into her panties is horrifying.

"It's really okay," she breathes, fishing a couple of bills from her pocket and waving them into the air to catch the driver's attention. She can feel Simon's heavy gaze on her as she slips into the backseats and recites the address, refusing to meet his eyes through the rain-stained window like some romantic movie. She doesn't miss the cabby's once over in the rearview after shed asked him to take her to the strip joint. Definitely not a romantic movie. Maybe a comedy. Her life does seem to be one long-running joke.

Why is everyone so damned concerned about her? Millions of Americans struggle every year. Si and her brothers can go worry about them for shit's sake. She doesn't need it. The silence in the cab is filled by Jason Derulo's voice as he sings about some naked woman falling to the floor, and her thoughts shift radically. Did she faint? Why is she naked? Is Jason on the floor, too? She pays the fair as she steps onto the curb pondering such worldly and cultured questions as she slinks up to the door.

She greets the bouncer, and he gives her a warm smile, flipping back his long, black hair.

"Hey, Indecent Inferno," he returns, the inky tattoo on his left cheek crinkling with his grin. No matter how many times she tells him her real name, he always prefers her alter ego. Maybe that's what she likes about him—that he isn't afraid to tell her exactly how he feels. He slaps her ass cheekily as she passes through the threshold, his green eyes alight with mischief as she turns around to stick her tongue out at him. Ass slaps are something she'd become accustomed to. As soon as she got over the initial shock, she'd come to take them as a form of flattery. At least she knows she looks good walking away.

"And the princess finally arrives," her boss drawls, twirling his cross necklace around his finger. She gnaws her lip, but she doesn't have time for fear as Raphael pushes her down into a chair.

"I'm sorry, Ralph," she breathes as a woman in teetering heels approaches to swipe mascara on her cheeks.

"I can't be lax with you and not with everyone else," he chides, glancing around to see if anyone is listening. "This is your last warning." His eyes are hard as he dashes off to chastise a clumsy waitress.

Raphael Santiago is what most would consider an asshole. He owns Pandemonium and is always chastising the women for the most innocent of mistakes. A misplaced curl here, a dropped dollar there—women have been fired for less. Clary tends to overlook these things, attributing it to the stress of the workplace. The fact that Raphael doesn't want to fire her is just luck.

Clary doesn't spare herself a glance in the mirror as she shimmies into the sparkling, skin-tight dress that had been bought a few weeks ago. It hugs her curves, accentuating what she usually believes she lacks, leaving her to worry the seams might bust with each sway of her hips. They hold strong though, allowing her to let the beat reverberate through her very core as the singer growls lyrics of love and loss into the audience's ears.

Pandemonium is centralized around women who embody the entirety of a song, personifying each genre through clothing, makeup, and attitude. The music is the heartbeat of the dance, the very breath of the girl who swings her hips beneath the blinding lights.

Clary's genre is rock.

Never before had she been a fan of rock, but Angel, if she doesn't love the way she looks with heavy eyeliner, crimson lips, and wild curls. It's so liberating to appear so feral in a world where everyone has to physically look down upon her. Rock rattles her bones, releases the cages everyone puts her in. Rock doesn't define her the way her friends do, doesn't expect her to be anything she's not. It pumps the blood through her veins, giving her the strength to finally be everything she ever wanted to be. Confident…independent…sexy—Clary Fray has never been any of these things, but Indecent Inferno is all this and more.

The girl on the set before her emerges from the velvet curtains, counting dollar bills as she pulls them from her brassier. Her cowboy boots and denim skirt accompany the dying twang of country music as Clary is waved forward into the dimming lights. With a breath to steel her nerves, she plunges through the curtain before any second thoughts can paralyze her.

The music envelops her like a warm embrace, guiding her to the center of the stage as a spotlight lands on her. She swings her leg around the pole, twisting expertly so she's upside down with her chest nearly pressed against her face. Had her breasts been any larger, she might have been suffocating, but instead she is beaming, letting compliments and insults alike wash over her like rocks in a raging river. She loves being in control, commanding her body to follow her orders, propelling it forward, pushing it to the edge, seeking nothing but perfection.

Her mind wages a constant war between loving and hating this job, between quitting it all and taking it on fulltime. It's stressful to strive for nothing but the best, to pass the limits, to overcome the shyness inside. But freedom is a fleeting feeling these days, and here is the only place she truly feels it.

She shakes her hips to the pulsing music, singing herself around and around while maintaining her animalistic expression to draw out the primal instincts of this men, to have them begging for more when the lights go down and she slips into the darkness. She shreds her clothing piece by piece until she's dressed in lingerie and high-heels, preparing for her big finale.

There's a scuffle at the front of the stage, someone falling against it. A stream of blood trickles down his face, obscuring the hostility written across his features. She only has enough time to catch the other boy's smirk before he smashes his fist against the bloodied one once more.

"Jonathon!" she yells as the lights die out, security rushing to the scene. Fuming, she exits the stage, waving the pop girl on without a word. She catches them trying to throw Jonathon out the back, the boy pitifully holding the door jam. She waves the bigger men away, watching in silence as they obey without question. The strippers are basically royalty here.

She seethes for a moment, pleased to watch Jonathon squirm under her intense glare. "What. The actual. Fuck," she growls finally, fisting her brother's shirt and yanking him down to her level. She never lets her size hinder her in a fight—certainly not while she's sparring with her six-foot-two-inch, lean-muscled, older brother.

"I can't believe you fucking stripped to my song," he gags, a look of unmasked disgust on his face. Clary smacks him upside the head, knocking his disguise (a black beanie, how original) askew.

"You don't even sing vocals in that one, Jon," she counters, eyes narrowed, but Jon makes a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat.

"You were taking off your clothes to my guitar riffs." He throws his arms up, his voice cracking under the strain of wanting to yell. "I saw things that I should never have seen."

"Then why are you here?!" she screams, mumbling an apology for startling the people around her.

"Because Seb mentioned you had a new job, and I thought I'd check it out. Maybe leave you a nice tip." Clary makes a face. "Ew, no, I'm not tipping you now. I had no Idea you were working at a fucking strip joint."

"Well, this is my new job." She crosses her arms as Jonathon shakes his head.

"Absolutely not." Clary glowers, ready to kick him in the shins.

"What?"

"I am in a famous band, Clarissa!" She grabs him by the ear, pulling him into an alcove so that nobody can catch a look at his face.

"You can't go around shouting that, Jon! It will—" He doesn't stop speaking.

"No sister of mine is taking off her clothes to earn money when I can so easily offer her a job with an actual dress code."

"We have a dress code. It's called Sexy." It's Jonathon's turn to make a face, his skin appearing a little green in the low lighting.

"First of all, puke, and second of all, what part of stripping down to nearly nothing in front of balding, middle-aged, married men makes you feel sexy?" Clary opens her mouth, but Jonathon quickly presses his hand over it. "On second thought, please don't answer that." She huffs but says nothing as Jonathon removes his hand.

"Why did you punch a stranger anyway?" She should at least give him a chance to tell his story.

"He told me the things he dreamed of doing to a woman like you, and I was all like, 'That's my sister!' and went full hero and gave him a broken nose." Clary snorts.

"A fist to the face of a paying customer is what you call full hero?" Jonathon shrugs her off. "You didn't actually tell him you were watching your sister strip, did you?" Jonathon merely blinks.

"Look, Clary…come dance in the bands' music videos, come sing some backup vocals. It'll be a steady job with good pay. You can even dance in your underwear," he adds reluctantly at her scowl.

"It's not about dancing in my underwear, Jon! It's about making my own way, earning my own income." Jonathon growls in the back of his throat, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Not all of us run to daddy in our time of need."

"Don't you see, though? This is exactly what dad wanted! He wanted you to feel worthless. To feel like you had no choice but to leave your family and turn to a life of…of….Indecency!"

"I'm not a fucking prostitute, you know." Her angry statements are diminished by her refusal to yell and draw unwanted glances. "I have respect for myself—"

Jon snorts. "Not very much apparently." She gnashes her teeth together, eyes narrowed as she pulls her sweatshirt and sweatpants securely over her costume.

"Out." Her finger points in the direction of the door, her eyes never leaving his. She glowers when he doesn't even shift his weight. "You don't get to come here after months of ignoring me. You don't get to act like you own me." She wets her lips, shaking with all the pent up anger. "I wasn't the one that left this family. Leaving is a trait reserved for Morgenstern men." She's pressing her finger into his chest, backing him up until he's shrinking against the wall. "I've said it a million times before, and I'll say it as many times as it takes to get it through you thick skull. I. Don't. Need. You." She makes each word a sentence, hiding the shock she feels at her own words. Jonathon used to always be the first one there for her, the one to care for her during the fights, during the anguish and loss.

She sees it in his dark eyes, the ones that are soulless pits in her father's face, but filled with so much raw emotion in the man before her. She can see straight to his soul, watching it shattering with each word that rolls of her tongue.

But he hardens his emotions quickly, another Morgenstern trait—one that she, too, had acquired.

He shoots her a glare before slamming the door behind him. He is not the same man she once knew.

The song is Scars by Papa Roach, and I definitely do NOT own it!

Review?

All My Love,

BallinBlonde21