Disclaimer: don't own anything, never will.

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Marissa comes by the next day to see Ryan. Things have been tense between them since Oliver, before then if she's honest, but the Harbor School social chair has needed to lie to herself lately to keep sane. He is just getting ready when she knocks at the window, but she can tell the exact moment he knows that it is her by the tensing of his shoulders and the way his face is blank when he turns to see her.

"I thought that I could drive you," She falters at the inane excuse, but jingles her keys mid-air as if to prove the point.

"Seth and I were…"

"Summer and he already left. They went out to breakfast." That little piece of information was handy to have. It was nice to have her best friend dating his best friend-brother.

"Sure Marissa," and as an afterthought, "thanks."

"No problem. I figured that it would give us time to talk." Maybe there was a better way to have said that than just plain blurting it out. His shoulders have tensed again and she can see him forming thousands of ways to not-answer her questions already.

They walk to her car and while she slides into the driver's side, he lags behind and slowly climbs onto his seat.  The first few minutes are filled with uneasy silence and a slight backdrop of Sex Pistols music from the SUV stereo. Finally she has enough and asks what she really planned to all along.

"How long are you going to drag this out?"

Ryan looks shocked for a moment and she is happy just to get any kind of reaction from him. "What do you mean?"

"How long until we can be together again? How long until you forgive and forget? How long until we put the past behind us? Take your pick."

"We can't put the past behind us Marissa. I've done that all my life. I've always given people allowances, always forgiven them for what they've done to me; I just can't do it anymore."

"If you can forgive your mother why can't you forgive me?" She demands, but quickly notices she's hit a nerve by the twitch in his cheek. She's never seen it before, not even at Christmas when she was drunk and they were pulled over by the cops.

"I forgive my mother because she's family and she has always been that way. I didn't expect her to be any different," he sounds lost, reeling in past memories that he'll never share with anyone here. They'd never understand the way his family worked- the way they survived. "You- you I expected better from. After everything, I expected you to at least trust me enough to be wary of him for a while. Trust me enough to stop looking at him like he was your freaking salvation for just a minute and see that his perfect little world didn't add up, that something wasn't right!" His teeth are clinched and his eyes are wild while he stares at her and for the first time she is afraid of him.

She never took much stock in the bad boy image, thinking it was just his way to dealing with everything, but now she can see that maybe she's been just as blind about him as she was about Oliver. "What about you Ryan," she asks snidely. She pulls off to the side to really have it out with him. "What about you? Your world doesn't add up. Something is off with you. A lot is off with you! You act like even with your past you're above us all. Don't think I've forgotten about the reason you can here in the first place – stealing cars. What about your little fling with Gabriele? Did you even think how much that hurt me? Breaking into the school, my locker, and beating up Oliver were really smart things to do Ryan. You got suspended…"

"I got suspended trying to protect you from your stalker buddy! The thing with Gabriele was wrong, yeah, but you brought Luke to the party. Do you know how much that hurt me? And don't you even try to talk about my life before you met me. You don't know what it was like!"

"You're right; I don't know. I don't know because you never talk about it. You never talk to me!"

"Do you really want to know Marissa? Do you want to know about all the beatings? Do you want to know that Christmas at my house just meant that mom got drunker and my dad hit harder? Tell me. How about all the times I needed to go to a hospital but had to bleed for hours until Trey showed up or my mom came off her high long enough to notice the blood on the carpet? Do you want to know about that too?" Ryan is screaming and crying at the same time and Marissa has started to cry as well. "Do you want to hear that why I hate you drinking so much is because you act just like my mother did when she was drunk? That it causes me to flash back to waking up only to find her grinning above me with a beer in one hand and strangling me with the other all the while telling me that she loved me? That is the reason I can't say that I love you. Do you want to know more? Do you want to know all the times I was burned with cigarettes or hit with bottles? Do you want to know about the time I was stabbed while hanging out with Trey and about how he left me there in the dirt for an hour to get some good coke?

"Stop it!" Marissa screams above his almost crazed ranking. "Stop it, Ryan! Stop, please, stop!"

"This is why I didn't talk to you Marissa, because you can't handle what I have to say. I fix other people's problems and no one gives a damn about mine. That's how it's always been and it should have just stayed that way." He sounds nearly remorseful about his confession.

"I can fix that Ryan. Just give us one more chance. Just let's put this all behind us and start over. We'll be perfect again."

"No you'll be perfect again Marissa, I never was to begin with. I can't believe after all this that you still don't get it." His voice is so pained and unbelieving. "I can't make it all go away. Nothing ever goes away for me. I'm sorry that you can't see that. I'm even sorrier that before all this I was ready to tell you I loved you everyday for the rest of my life. The saddest thing is that if only you could understand, I probably would still be ready; but you don't and I can't."

With that he steps out and starts to walk toward the school. Marissa is stuck numb inside the SUV unable to focus on anything except that she thinks she now understands why the words 'I love you' hurt so much.