Authors Note: I own nothing. No ownership rights to Beverly Hills 90210.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I drove straight to his house from the screen test.

Iris I knew was out with the mother's getting her hair done and lunching. They had decided to celebrate us graduating high school before the ceremony leaving the time after for individual family events, and for us graduates to arrive at our sleep out not too late.

He answer's the door looking like he's only been awake for a little while, he's crumpled and his face still carries the creases of sleep. Through the creases his confusion is evident, but so is his pleasure, "hi this is a nice surprise. Come in."

He moves and I walk into a house I hadn't been in in months, it's changed a little. "New furniture?"

"Mum, hated the futon, I don't blame her I wanted it gone as well." He loved that uncomfortable thing, he liked the idea his house was very anti-Jack, he liked that that piece was the type of furniture you could sit on wet from a surf and not care. His new animosity had nothing to do with the thinness of the foam, I know it's because of the earring, Christmas.

"Anyway when the couch arrived she decided to fengshui the house, thinking I needed fresh healing energy. It was easier to let her move the furniture and paint than argue that I don't believe in it." Junior year Dylan would have argued, therapy must be helping him relate to Iris more. "Can I get you something to drink? There is coffee or Iris has her herbal tea's?"

"Yeah thanks, a water would be great." I wasn't thirsty but I wanted to buy time. When he walks back in I'm sitting on the new navy couch, once the water has been passed he sits down with his coffee. I take a sip- more time. "You didn't need to, not after everything with him, you didn't need to."

He needs no clarification, he knows what I'm talking about, "I did. Telling Jim the truth, all of it, that needed to happen. I needed to acknowledge my mistakes, I needed to stop letting you protect me. Yesterday, when I went to his office I didn't discuss you knowing about our other meeting though, I didn't want him to think I was blaming him. Regardless of how much it effected me, how all those weeks affected me, I still own that summer, I own the lies and the hurt."

I could say it wasn't his alone, but like I said to Kelly she wasn't some temptation he couldn't resist, he had shown that before. "Dad came home and told Mum."

"Did they apologise for-"

I laugh, "what do you think? I got a lecture about honesty and a veiled chastising on not including them in my life. Though they said it while hugging me, and saying they understood… but no there was no sorry. You know I didn't need you to tell them."

"You didn't deserve to deal with their guilt trips. I know you gave them to me as supports for Jack and I thank you for that, I needed it, but I'm stronger now. I needed to own my worst deeds to the man who has constantly thought I wasn't good enough, the man I wanted to prove to that I was. But more than that I wanted to prove to you that I won't hide from it, that I'm sorry for it. If we can start again I want it being from a place of honesty with us, with everyone."

My eyes go to Aunt Sheila's ring, I hadn't realised I had begun to play with it, but it's not why I was looking down I was looking down because I didn't want him to see it. He does anyway.

"We aren't starting again are we?" My eyes fill with water I stay focusing on the ring, eventually I nod.

He leans forward placing his head in his hands and runs his fingers through his hair. "You know I'm not asking for right away, I can wait, I can wait for as long as you need. Even if you want to keep seeing Josh, I can wait."

"I can't ask you to do that, I can't do that. Moving forward, dating other people I can't do that if I'm secretly waiting for the time I'm ready to try again. A time I'm not sure I can see coming." His hands tighten, they look like they are ready to almost rip his hair out.

"Dylan I loved you more than I thought I was able to love anyone, more than I think I ever will be able to love anyone, but I think that's the problem."

He turns his head and looks at me, "the intensity?"

"No, that I can handle. I can't though accept what I've become. This year I surrendered my integrity for you, I allowed myself to compete for a guy, I made it okay to give you all my power my choice's. That's not the girl you fell in love with in sophomore year, it wasn't the girl who you loved in junior year. I did that-"

"Because of my mistakes, my dishonesty, my problems. Bren you aren't to blame-"

"I am, because I could have walked away but I didn't. So many times I could have left but I didn't. When you treated me badly I stayed, when you started seeing her I could have let us go, I stayed. When I caught you at Christmas I could have said enough is enough, I didn't do that. I loved you more than what was healthy for me, I love you more than what is healthy, and this, us isn't healthy."

"Baby, I'm getting help, none of that will happen again."

"Dylan, that's the thing though, it has already happened. I've already shown you, showed myself that I'll be your doormat to keep you. That's not okay, it is not right, it's not who I want to be. I want to respect myself more than that. I want to know I'm strong enough to be by myself if I'm being mistreated, to demand more for myself."

His eyes are glassy, his forehead covered in tension wrinkles, he's struggling to hold it together- I am too. "Bren, please. Please, let's figure out how to get through this, figure out-" I reach out and grab his hand. He holds it for dear life.

"Dylan, if it was just about us then I think we could get past it, but it's about me. I lost myself in all this. I left you in sophomore year because I knew I could lose myself in you-"

"And you came back because you know we are always going to be happier together. That we belong together."

I don't know how to answer. I know he makes me happier than any other person, but I also know we can hurt each other better than anyone else. That we have both shown we will beg and plead for the other to the point it's corrosive to ourselves; him in that honeymoon cabin, me with that fucking cookie.

"Dylan it's not about you or us, it is about me. I no longer trust myself with you. I no longer know who I am with you, but I know what I'm starting to become without you. I know she is someone I want to get to know."

"I won't stop that, I can follow you anywhere New York, LA, whatever college. I can be whatever you need, give you whatever space-" he's back in that hallway at summer school, he's back on that bed with broken ribs.

"Stop. You are now the one offering the cookie. Neither of us should have to give this much of ourselves to make this work. This isn't healthy, we love each other to the point that we will completely lose ourselves in it. As much as I hated the college talk back in October, you were right. If we keep making choices just based on the other, if we stunt our lives one day we will grow to resent each other."

He bends over on the couch and looks down, he squeezes the bridge of his nose- I know it's to stop the tears from falling. The air leaving his lungs is the only sound while he composes himself.

When he breaks our silence it's with a numbness in his voice. "Even the greatest of love can be twisted and poisoned. That's what Iris said after the phone call. She kept saying I needed to find myself, therapy- I thought I had. I'm stable now understand my past, making peace with it."

"That's not all you are, your parents, the hardships you have experienced, they have never been all you are. I'm not all you are, our love is not all you are."

His voice breaks as he looks over at me, "it's the best part of me. Loving you has always been the best part of me."

"Until it's not, until it becomes the thing that you need to run away from."

"I won't do that again. I promise."

"I don't want you to promise that, I don't want you to stay in something that isn't healthy that compromises you. Dylan, I think Iris is right we need to find out who we are. We need to know who we are, and maybe before all this we could have done that together, learned how to grow together give each other enough space to do that, to grow into the people we want to be. We are too twisted now, there's too much fear, distrust, there is too much desperation in this love. We both have shown we will hold on so tight that we will suffocate ourselves, choke on it."

He runs his hands through his hair, he's thinking I can see it. "Okay, okay we give it time we give us time to figure ourselves out and then we… did you see the senior wills? I want to give you that."

"A house in Palm Springs, I saw." No one else got the reference, no one knew he was saying a house for our grandchildren the one we spoke of so long ago. My romantic idealised inner self wanted to claim that, take that offer, but she had been bruised by this year too much. She wasn't strong enough to defeat my rational independent side, the side that said it was time to let it go.

"Dylan we can't find ourselves if we are holding on to the other, even the idea of us. I'll make decisions based on that, I won't believe I will be but I will be. Even college, on the beach last week before you saw me I was thinking about turning something down because I wanted a fresh start. I was willing to throw away an opportunity one I want because I didn't want to deal with the drama here. I wanted to run away from our past. That's what we will keep on doing, we will either keep running away or running towards each other, if we don't make a clean break, we will keep trying to make decisions based on us-"

"Because it's what we want. Us is what we want, it's where we belong, it's where we want to be."

"I don't. I don't want to be there, I don't want to keep being tied to you like it's no longer a choice. I love you, but I want to love myself more."