Another head aches, another heart breaks

I am so much older than I can take

"We need to talk."

When Missy had whispered those words to Kaoru before the final bell, his heart started to beat faster in anticipation.

As he approached the model, seated in the school's private rose garden under the shade of an elegant white gazebo, he noticed the way she kept checking her phone, her gaze flickering to the screen every few seconds.

Ever since the party a few weeks prior, things had been different between them. Kaoru wasn't stupid, but this feeling of attachment was still foreign to him. It also perplexed him that he was willing to be separated from Hikaru if it meant he would be with the dark haired girl. The level of comfort he felt in her presence was new to the designer and he didn't quite understand what had happened to change that. Something about her humor and candor made him feel completely at ease around her.

"Missy-chan," he called as he approached the gazebo. She looked up at him, a hesitant smiling gracing her lips. "What's up?"

She patted the seat next to her wordlessly and Kaoru slid onto the smooth wood surface. He could feel her discomfort as he read her body language. There was clearly something she wanted to say that she didn't know how to express.

Her gaze was fixed on her lap entirely when she finally spoke. "I need to tell you something."

Kaoru arched an eyebrow and scooted closer to her, his leg brushing against her leg. "Whatever it is, I'll listen. You can tell me whatever you want to say," he assured gently.

Missy looked up at him with dark blue eyes fill with something akin to hope trust. Quickly, she looked back down at her lap, nodding before she finally spoke.

"Kyoya-senpai told me I needed to trust you guys more. I didn't believe him at first, but after that stupid party, I want to trust you. All of the club, eventually, but right now I'm starting with you," she insisted, her focus shifting to the greenery around her. She couldn't look him in the eye right now as she unraveled her secrets.

"When I was five, my mother hired a new security head for my personal detail. She was arranging a betrothal between Kyoya-senpai and I, and she knew that extra precautions needed to be taken to ensure my safety."

The young designer was at least a little surprised to hear of a potential engagement between two people he cared for, but his face never betrayed his thoughts.

She continued quietly, her voice intentionally devoid of emotion.

"His name was Hirota Hakashi."

A chill went up Missy's spine as she spoke his name for the first time in years. She had buried that name in her past, but she had never thrown away the map of where to find it. Today, she was unearthing the fear and terror of a little girl at the hands of man she should have been able to trust.

Kaoru could sense the shift in Missy when she spoke that name. He knew that whatever she told him, he would be sworn to secrecy in whatever pain she was about to share. When she paused, he urged her to continue and share whatever memory was haunting her. He knew all too well what it was like to feel so alone in your own anguish.

She took a deep breath to calm her nerves. He could see her hands starting to shake as she prepared to speak again. "I-I don't know exactly what happened anymore. A lot of the earlier memories are hazy. But I do know that he was always with me. At first, it was just in public, which is normal. But as I got older, it seemed to escalate. My mother was so busy trying to negotiate with the Ootoris that she wasn't paying attention to me."

Kaoru's entire body tensed, his mind moving ahead of what she had already said. He could anticipate the direction of her reveal and he prayed to whatever God was out there that he was wrong.

"When I was eight or nine, things started to change drastically. For as long as I could remember, he would always tell me that I was such a 'pretty little girl.' I didn't think much of it. Most adults I knew always told me or my mother how charming and pretty I was."

His mind flashed back to the party. He could remember seeing the fear on her face, knowing that this wasn't the first time someone had acted that way towards her. The young Hitachiin wondered how well he was equipped to deal with what she was about to share with him.

"His tone changed. He started staying in my room during the nights, citing that it was for my own safety. He would assure the rest of security that I couldn't sleep if there was anyone in the room besides him."

Kaoru wanted to throw up. He could feel her fear. The fear of a child that didn't know any better. The fear of a child that never knew that lions hunt the weakest of the herd. And as a child, she was powerless and naive, unaware that she was being stalked in the night, that the rustles she heard came from foe and not friend.

"My parents were already divorced, my engagement secure, and my mother was working on a new engagement of her own. Nobody paid any attention to me."

Reaching out with steady hands to match her shaking ones, Kaoru held her hands and the rested, neatly folded, in her lap.

A silent tear slid down her left cheek as she continued on. "When I was ten, he was sitting next to my bed when I slept. For the past year he had moved closer and closer from the door. The distance I expected from the past disappeared." Her breath was coming out faster now between the words she spoke as she relived each memory. "Any time we were alone, he was touching me. My hands, my hair, my arms, my knee. Whatever he could reach. I should have told him to stop, I know that- I just didn't-"

"-Stop," Kaoru interrupted. She looked up at him in bewilderment. "Whatever this man, this Hirota, did to you, was not your fault. You were a child. You were being groomed by a Damn pedophile. That was not, nor will it ever be your fault," he insisted, amber eyes fixed in fierce determination.

Missy looked at her friend with wide eyes. She could see the anger in his expression, but she knew him well enough to now that he wasn't mad at her. He hurt for her.

'He needs the full truth. I need to tell him.'

She looked away. "I've only ever told Josh this story. Not even Marisol knows all of it. Please understand how much I trust you," the model insisted, her voice cracking with emotion.

Kaoru nodded in response, his gaze unflinching.

She continued. "I read of a story about a girl in a novel, and something seemed familiar. When it happened to this girl, I knew it was wrong. I was eleven and my world fell apart around me. Suddenly, it wasn't friendly protection anymore. He would-"

Suddenly, she was gasping for air. She couldn't breathe. There wasn't enough air, no matter how hard she tried.

Kaoru moved quickly and her body tensed as he wrapped his arm around her. He knew what the next sentence would be. Damn, she was brave.

The words were spilling out now, gushing out between gulps of fresh air as she leaned into her friend. "He would touch me. I-I don't know for how long. But I woke up in the middle of the night once and his hands were under my clothes. What could I do, Kaoru? What could I do?" she cried, her body coiling inward. "How could I cry for help when the only person who was supposed to keep me safe was the person hurting me? And he just kept telling me how I was such a pretty little girl," she choked out, the tears now falling down her face as she hid in the shelter of this soft spoken boy. "And pretty little girls were meant for men."

Kaoru had to check his rage as he wrapped himself around her, a sanctuary for her broken childhood. His entire world stilled around him and all that mattered was the girl right next to him, seeking asylum from a nightmare that she had never quite woken up from.

"Every night for a week," she whispered. "I was too scared. How would they all look at me when they knew?"

'This can't be real', Kaoru thought to himself. 'I wish this wasn't real.'

"Such a pretty girl," Missy whispered. She was worlds away from him now, lost in the night six years ago when she finally confessed to the agony and torment she had lived in.

"When I finally told my mother about Hirota, she was furious. But, she was scared. I could see the fear in her eyes." Missy recalled how her mother had lashed out, shoving the desklamp to the floor when her daughter placed her accusation, Hirota just outside the office. She slept in her mother's room that night and caught a flight to England the next morning. Alone and frightened she fled her childhood home.

Kaoru couldn't hear the birds anymore, or even the wind playing in the trees. The other students on campus had long since retreated to their afternoon clubs inside or home for the day. He was grateful that they were alone in the garden so that nobody would have to see her cry like this. Not even the rest of the club could know about this until she was ready to share. If she ever was.

"So she sent me away," Missy mumbled quietly.

He had to listen closely to hear her, but he could feel the defeat in her voice. "So that's how you got to your Father for more than just the school year, and then to the United States," he stated evenly.

She nodded against his chest, her fingers gripping the material of his blazer tightly.

There was a moment of silence before Kaoru could articulate the thoughts circling in his mind. "So what happened to Hirota?"

"I don't know," Missy whispered. "My mother never pressed charges."

"What?!" Kaoru shouted, causing Missy to tense and shake in his hold. "- Sorry," he apologized, noting what his outburst had done. "Why the hell not?"

The model shook her head. "Its . . . Complicated? What with both of our engagements at the time, she couldn't risk any scandal. If people knew what had happened to me, my reputation would be ruined, it would damage the company, and it could have ended both betrothals. And I couldn't stay there. He knew our security inside and out since he helped create it. She couldn't stop him without involving an outside party, and she was too scared of what it would mean for the company. To this day, nobody besides my mother, Josh, and you know."

"She compromised you for her reputation," Kaoru stated evenly, his arms tightening around her.

He hated this. He hated all of it. He hated what she had gone through, and even more that she had gone through it all alone. He hated that someone who was hired to protect her had exploited the innocence of a child and tormented her.

And he hated her mother for placing her reputation above her health and safety.

"For that whole first year in the conservatory, if I could even hear a boy breathe, then he was too close. I was terrified of him finding me again. That's why I sought out Josh," she admitted passively, pulling away from Kaoru. He released his grip, but kept his arm loosely around her back for his own peace of mind. "Living with Josh in Marisol, I started healing. They taught me that I wasn't a pawn or a plaything. I was a person. And nobody could ever own me."

Kaoru could see her changing from a worn down child to a hardened teenager, learning the value that was never taught to her. He could see her understanding, bit by bit, that it was her body, and nobody else's.

"Maybe that's what I like about modeling. Whatever I share of my body, it's my choice. Maybe that's what I wanted to prove to him. That he couldn't stop me, and that he never had any ownership over my body."

He stared at her in wonder. The reality of her nightmare had reduced her to rubble, yet she had found a way to rebuild herself. She had found a way to look at her body in the mirror and see that it had never been Hirota's to begin with; it was always hers.

"Kaoru, I've worked hard to be okay. I really have. But there are still fragments I haven't put back together and fears that linger in the shadows of my life. If I pull away and claim independence, it's because I'm terrified. I want to be normal, but I know that I'm not. I know that I carry a heavy background and I have a long way to go. But you, and the rest of the club? You guys make it seem like it's okay if I need help carrying that weight around. I've been rolling the suitcases of hurt for so long that I don't even know what's in them anymore. I don't know if they've gotten any lighter, or if I've just accumulated more. I don't know, Kaoru. I really don't," she stated fiercely. She wasn't looking at him anymore, her gaze distant and searching for answers in an empty sky. "I don't know."

His heart broke as he saw her resolve fill again. "Whatever you need, we are here. Me, Hikaru, Haruhi, the club. We are here. And we aren't going anywhere, either. You're apart of our family now, and we don't let anyone leave so easily. Just ask Tamaki-senpai about the fair last year. He'll confirm," he said with a chuckle.

Missy hummed in reply as exhaustion settled into her limbs. The adrenaline and the crying had worn her down. Now she just wanted to sleep.

She thought of her apartment, empty except for her beloved puppy. It would be painful to go home and sit in silence tonight as the monsters she had kept at bay for so long closed in until sunlight exposed them. If there was ever anyone she was willing to ask this favor of, it was the boy sitting next to her.

"K-kaoru?" she asked, licking her lips to match the anxiety that twisted in her stomach, should he decline her calculated risk.

"Hmm?" He replied, his cat like eyes radiating with warmth.

It's now or never.

"Will you stay with me tonight?"

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A/N love you people, thank you for your kindness and reviews. If you're new to this story, welcome to my trash pile.-Star