Hey, guys. I'd just like to say that I've made a mistake. An age mistake. You see, I had originally planned for Hayley to be seventeen, Audrick fourteen, and Chelsea eleven/twelve. So...now I've made it that way. You can reference chapter 20 for the changes, which aren't much but are signifigant for the story.

Hope you guys aren't mad at me.

Jezi! I decided I needed to do something before I posted the fluffer you've written for me. It's about Jamick, and what they're going through, what her "secret" is. Hope you don't mind.

Enjoy!

God bless. :)

~Hannie

Jamie's POV:

I didn't want to wake up. If I woke up, then last night would've been real, and if last night was real, then today was real.

I didn't want it to be real.

Real was bad, especially for me. I could've lived my whole life, however long I still had of it, praying that it wasn't real.

But when I blinked my eyes as the sun shown into them, I had to realize that it was, and that the arm wrapped around me protectively was more real than anything that had ever happened to me. We were only fourteen; I mean, he couldn't be in love with me, and I not with him. We were just good friends who spent a night out by the ocean, and had dinner, and talked and smiled and laughed…

"Get your head out of the clouds, Jamie," I sighed to myself, picking at the sand on the outer edge of the blanket. "Think realistically for once in your life."

I shifted slightly, trying not to wake him up, and I had to hold in my laugh when I turned over to look at him.

Audrick had his thumb slipping out of his mouth, where it had been, I guessed, for some time during the night.

"Shoot!" I said, slapping my hand over my mouth for fear I had woken him up. He didn't even move, and I sighed in relief. Steph is going to kill me, I thought. She must be worried sick about me. Dad had put her in charge…

Not to mention I still hadn't told him. That was bugging at me harder than anything else.

I'd have to tell him sometime.

When he wakes up, I reasoned with myself. When he wakes up I'll tell him.

I abandoned that decision rather quickly. Yawning next to me, Audrick stretched and smoothed my hair back. For so long I'd been used to my bun, to not feeling it there, and when I had worn it down last night…

I had this fear that I would never feel my hair again.

It was a healthy fear, that's what my doctor had said. Irrational, but healthy.

This was irrational. All of this was just irrational.

"Good morning," I smiled and flipped over so I was on my opposite side.

"Mornin'," he slurred, yawning again.

"I had a lot of fun last night," I continued, stalling myself. "And the food was –"

"Excellent?" he smirked, hovering over me. "Yeah, you've told me." He leaned in for a kiss, and I almost allowed myself to be subdued into it.

I bit my lip and turned away at the last second, forcing my cheeks to flare.

Play it off as a school girl, play it off as a school girl.

I repeated Stephanie's words in my head without ceasing.

Audrick seemed a little disheartened, but smiled anyway and laid back on the sand. "What's your favorite shark?"

"Great White," I answered without hesitation.

"I like goblin sharks myself."

"Why?" I asked, genuinely confused.

"Because they're small…and they sneak up on you…" my face was still turned to the crystal water and rising sun, so I didn't see him start to slink up and reach for my stomach.

"Audri – bahaha!"

He started tickling me like there was no tomorrow, so hard in fact I snorted. Then we laughed even more. Standing up, he reached underneath my legs and lifted me up, and squealed, wrapping my frail arms around his neck.

I kicked my legs as he started walking towards the end of the pier.

I just couldn't stop laughing and kicking and screaming and pleading for him not to throw me in the water.

"I can't swim!" I shouted at one point, right before he was about to toss me in. He hesitated.

"You can't swim? You can't swim?"

It sounded like more of a statement the second time than a question.

"No," I said, still in his arms. "I can't. My dad was always afraid of the water, I guess because he knew my mom was Athena and she and Poseidon were mortal enemies, even back then. And he was scared for me and Harriet and Johnny's lives."

"And" was my so proclaimed "nervous word". I used it when I was worried or confused or lost.

And right then I was all of the above.

Worried because of what he would think, not only when I told him my secret, but about me not being able to swim. He was Poseidon's grandson after all.

Confused because of all the turmoil I was feeling inside me. Love, if I could call it that because it felt like so much more, was warily confusing for anyone I suppose, and the fear of losing that with him when I told him made me want to scream at the sky.

Lost. Lost in emotions, lost in his eyes. Lost in my mind. Lost like a poor abandoned puppy. Just lost.

He set me down on the pier's edge, and smiled widely at me.

"You wanna learn?" Audrick had a sparkle in his eyes I'm sure no one had seen before. A gleam of hope, a gleam of faith. A yearning to break down my protective walls.

"Sure," I'm not exactly certain of why my mouth formed the word, but such a feeling of ecstasy shuddered through me as I did.

Then he chuckled and pulled at the dress I'd worn. "We might need to get changed first. Well, at least you do." He gestured to our apparel, then wrapped an arm around my shoulders as we walked back to the picnic area and gathered our things.

"Hey," he said, glancing at me with his eyebrows raised in question. "What's this?"

He held up a bundle of thin, frail blonde hair, and I quickly snatched it out of his hand and stuffed it in my cardigan pocket. "It's nothing," I said quickly, averting his gaze.

I was a bad liar, and I knew it. He just shrugged, though, and continued gathering everything up.

"JACKSON!" Stephanie came stomping, about two hundred yards away, and I wasn't surprised when I was sure the whole camp could hear her. "You are SO dead!"

Audrick looked at me and grinned, a silent agreement being made.

"Run!"

Together we took off, flying down the beach at the speed of light.

"No, no, no, no," I shook my head and rubbed my practically bare arms. My swimsuit had a small skirt attached to the bottom of it, and even less on the sleeves.

"Come on," he tried to coax, waving his arms out back and forth.

I bit my lip and shook my head again.

"Jamie," he smiled. "Look at me." When I did, he watched me carefully, searching my face and my whole body. "Do you trust me?"

Audrick's hand extended outward, and I stared at it for a while, contemplating in my mind.

"Do you trust me?" he repeated.

I glanced back and forth, thought about, but my lip to the point of nearly biting through it.

Finally, I nodded, and I grabbed his hand and stepped into the water. It was, surprisingly, warm. "There, not too bad, right?"

"Right," I mumbled, my toes sinking into the sand.

"Ready to move forward?"

He didn't really wait for an answer and lead me a little farther out, where I could just barely reach the bottom of the water if I was on the tips of my toes.

"Here's what you do," Audrick said, moving another inch away from me, and I felt myself instinctively reaching for him. When I did, I tottered on my balancing, and fell faceforward into the water.

It scared me so much I forgot to close my mouth and I screamed, kicking and squirming and flipping out beneath the roaring waves.

A pair of hands grabbed my shoulders, but I was freaking out so much I only inhaled more water. I screamed again and again and again, until I was dragged into the air, coughing up water like there was no tomorrow.

Audrick shook my shoulders, then pulled me behind him and helped me unto the shore. I kept coughing and splurging, until I had nothing left in me and I laid back in the sand and closed my eyes. He laid down next to me, panting just as heavily as I was.

"So," he said, smiling, "ready to try again?"

I didn't answer.

"I don't…I don't really feel good right now, Audrick. I – I need to lay down, just for a bit." I could feel the exhaustion seeping through the pores of my skin, my disease flaring up again.

"Can I just say one thing first?" He asked, hopping up as I tried to walk away, yawning and sighing at the same time.

"Yeah, sure," I mumbled, rubbing my eyes. I need my medicine, I need my medicine, I need my medicine…

He ran a hand through his hair. "I think I'm in love with you. And, I was kind of hoping you would feel that way, too."

It hit me by surprise. But I knew it was coming; I'd suspected it all along.

"Au-Audrick…" I stuttered, "you can't be in love with me."

"I am, though!" He protested. "I swear to the moon and the stars that I am. I'm young, I know, a year younger than you, but Jamie, you're everything I've ever wanted, ever asked for. I can't let you get away from me."

"I can't let you be in love with me."

"Why?"

"I just can't!"

"Why not?" He was almost screaming, his face crestfallen, his expressions begging, tear jerking.

"Audrick, the reason you can't be in love with me is because I've got cancer."

And I'm not sure what was scarier. The expression on his face, or the ugly tears sending me into a fit on mine.