Oh my god, guys I'm so sorry. I just completely forgot about this story over the weekend. It completely slipped my mind. In my defense, school started last Thursday, and I also have this ninja-mutant-cold that I've had for about five weeks and it sucks, so I've been tired and stressed and distracted... But still, here's your chapter. Three days late.

Chapter 15

The weeks flew by quickly, and pretty soon it was early April with spring in the air. Blaine, Kurt, and Rose spending as much time together as possible, and it even got to the point when Kurt was sleeping at Blaine's house more than his own. One particular night, Carrie had taken Rose out for the evening (kidnapped, as she called it) to do 'girl stuff.'

Blaine knew Rose was having the time of her life with Carrie. She called him around six o'clock to tell him all about her day. "First Miss Carrie and I went and got our nails painted, and it was so much fun, but it tickled a little bit. And then we went shopping at the mall and had pizza for lunch! And then we went to a movie, but I fell asleep half way through. So after that Miss Carrie and I went out for ice cream, and she asked me if I wanted to stay at her house tonight."

Just then, Blaine heard Carrie take the phone from Rose. "Come on, Blaine. You've been dating for four months, and you two are young! Live a little!"

Needless to say, Blaine accepted Carrie's offer to take Rose for the night. "I have my teddy bear and everything, Daddy. Miss Carrie and I will be fine."

Blaine laughed. "Alright, sweetie. You have fun."

"Okay Daddy. Good night!"

"Good night, Princess." Blaine said before hanging up the phone. He walked out of his bedroom to where Kurt was waiting in the living room.

"What's going on?" Kurt asked.

Blaine smiled. "Rose is staying at Carrie's tonight, so we have the whole town and the whole night to just the two of us. What do you say we do?"

"Well," Kurt began, a smile forming on his face, "it's barely six and we haven't eaten dinner yet. Breadstix?" he asked.

Blaine smiled. "Only if we can dress up all fancy and act seventeen."

Kurt laughed. "Of course. I'll be back here by six thirty."

And by six thirty, Kurt and Blaine were in Kurt's car on their way to Breadstix. When they got there they stopped, got a table, and ordered their food. They sat across from each other, holding hands. "You know what?" Kurt said.

"What?" Blaine asked.

"This is the same table we were at when I asked you to Junior Prom." Kurt laughed, looking around. "Wow, this place hasn't changed a bit."

Blaine looked around. "You know, you're right. That's crazy. I haven't been here since high school, either."

"Really!" Kurt exclaimed, "But you live here! What do you do in Lima"

Blaine laughed. "Rose and I mostly stay at home. I mean, between work and raising a four year old, I don't have much time. When we go out to eat, it's to those fun fast food places with a playground to get some of her energy out. And when we're home we play games, watch movies, and do puzzles or whatever."

"That's so boring!" Kurt laughed.

"Tis the life of a single-dad-school-teacher." Blaine rolled his eyes. "It's no New York, but it's not that bad."

Kurt shrugged and smiled. "Yeah New York is pretty amazing. I love it there."

The spent the rest of their dinner in relative silence, just enjoying the other's company before heading back to Blaine's house. "I'm just curious, so don't get offended, but why do we never spend hang out at your apartment?" Blaine asked.

Kurt shrugged. "I just don't see it as my house. It's just the place I sleep at night. I mean, your house is your house, and you obviously feel comfortable here because it's yours. If my New York apartment was here, I wouldn't mind spending time there. I guess it doesn't feel like home."

Blaine smiled to himself as he took Kurt's hand and walked up to his front door. "Tell me about New York."

"Haven't you already been there?" Kurt teased.

Blaine nodded. "Yeah, a couple times, but always as a tourist. How is it for an actual New Yorker?" Kurt gave him a quizzical look, as if he didn't know how to answer Blaine's question. "Tell me about your friends, tell me about NYADA, tell me about how you decided to get into designing, tell me about past boyfriends." He paused. "Tell me about your ex fiancé."

Kurt stared at the patterns on Blaine's couch. "Do you really want to hear about that?"

Blaine nodded eagerly. "Yeah. Of course I do."

"Alright, but you have to tell me something in turn." Kurt said.

"You already know almost everything about me, Kurt. I told you about Jayden, your dad told you about my family, and you obviously know about you. What else is there?" Blaine asked.

"Carrie did tell me something about you, but she said I'd have to ask you." Kurt explained.

Blaine's face darkened. "What did she tell you?"

Kurt frowned. "That's the thing. She didn't tell me much, except that it was right after you moved here and Rose was about two and something happened. She said I'd have to ask you exactly what."

Blaine nodded slowly. "Okay. I'll tell you about that if you tell me about your fiancé." He said, before adding, "And Zack."

Kurt nodded and thought about where to begin. "Okay, well I was in my first year of NYADA when I met Zack. We went out for coffee a few times, did our homework together, had classes together. And we became friends. The first time he kissed me, I literally ran out of the room. I had told him about you and how we'd been dating since my junior year of high school, and he obviously didn't care.

"I mean, he did back off for about a month after the first time he kissed me. But then I couldn't get my mind off of him. And I told myself that it was just a crush, just the thrill of having someone besides you actually find me attractive and boyfriend material, I guess. I tried to convince myself it was just a crush, and that I was just interested in him because he kissed me. So from that, I decided that if I kissed him one more time, I'd be able to get over it, move on, and come back to you at Christmas with no guilt.

"But," Kurt frowned, "it obviously didn't work out that way. I just got more attached to him and started being extremely unfair to you. So you know what happened at Christmas, and then I went back to NYADA and told him. Zack was happy at first, but two weeks later I found him making out with another guy in Rachel's and my apartment. So I made him give me his key back and I broke up with him."

Blaine smiled smugly. "I knew this 'Zack' was an asshole."

Kurt giggled. "Yeah, he was." He paused, trying to figure out how to begin his next story. "I tried to date around. I told you about Bryan, and there were a couple other guys here and there, but no one that really mattered. Hell, Zack and Bryan didn't even really matter." He paused.

"NYADA was amazing, and I always loved it, but something always felt wrong. I guess somewhere along the line, I'd lost my love for performing. I was still determined to get my name in lights in more places than my imagination," Kurt laughed, "but NYADA just wasn't cutting it for me. I still love singing, don't get me wrong, but it just didn't seem like performing was for me anymore. So I decided I wanted to go into designing.

"The problem was that I had no idea how to get into design. So I talked to one of my friends who just happened to be a designer. His name was Jordan. Jordan and I became best friends. He helped me with my designs, helped me apply for internships, helped me decide who I should make friends with, what classes I should take, what stepping stone jobs I should apply for.

"And in the few months we were friends, we fell in love. I asked him out the night I got my first internship. We were both so happy to be in New York, to be together, to have our respective jobs, to just be alive. We were best friends and we were head over heels completely in love. This lasted nine months.

"One night he took me to our favorite restaurant and had this huge mega date planned. It was beautiful and romantic and perfect, and he proposed at the end of the night. I was so ecstatic, and of course I said yes. So we called our families and started planning the wedding. About a month into the engagement, he started getting irritable with me. I had no idea what was going on, and just put it down to him being excited and nervous about getting married.

"Another month later he confronted me about what had been bothering him. One day I walked into Rachel's, Finn's, and my apartment to see him taking down pictures and he had two or three boxes of my stuff. I asked him what he was doing and he told me he was getting rid of it. He said that he was sick of seeing influences of this guy repeated in my life.

"I looked through all the pictures and boxes and could only find one common factor. My high school sweetheart, Blaine Anderson. You were in all the pictures, the scrapbook he was trying to throw away was of my months at Dalton, the sweatshirts and bowties he was throwing out either used to be yours or you gave them to me, everything. I was furious and wanted to know what his problem was with a guy I had known over five years ago and hadn't spoken to in even longer.

"He said it was weird that I kept all this. Weird that I still had love letters, pictures, jewelry, clothes, everything. But I held on to things from all my high school friends, but you for some reason bothered him. So he said that it was either all my stuff or him." Blaine had been so immersed in Kurt's story that he barely noticed they both were crying.

"I told Jordan that I loved him, and I didn't want to let him go but I wasn't going to throw away my high school memories for him. He walked out and I haven't seen him since." Kurt shrugged and wiped his tears away.

Blaine rubbed Kurt's back soothingly and kissed his cheek. "For the record, I'm glad you two broke up."

Kurt laughed. "You know, so am I. Now, tell me about this mystery Carrie told me about."

"Oh yeah. That." Blaine sighed. "It's not a good story. I'm really ashamed of it, actually."

Kurt sighed and leaned his head on to Blaine's shoulder. "I have a lot to be ashamed about, Blaine. I have no right to judge you."

Blaine sighed. "Alright, but I warned you. It is not a happy story. It was 2018 and I had been living back in Lima for a couple months. Rose was being a typical two year old, and had a new best friend every second—usually the one person who would give her what she wanted. Carrie was in her last year of college, but she was already Rose's babysitter and Rose loved her.

"It was early June, and was graduation weekend for my school. June had always been a sore time for me, since it was the anniversary of my family members' deaths, but being at a graduation, the event I found out they had died in the town I found out they had died, intensified the emotions I was having. That morning I hadn't bought Rose something she wanted, some toy or something, and so she had been going on and on about how Miss Carrie would've gotten it for her, and how she wished Miss Carrie was her mommy and I wasn't her daddy."

Blaine looked up at Kurt. "I know she didn't mean it. I know that little kids just say things, and that she was just sad about not getting what she wanted, but I was so upset already. So I packed up a suitcase with a bunch of Rose's things, wrote Carrie a note, and dropped her off in Carrie's apartment. Then I packed up all of my stuff, turned off my cell phone, got in my car, and I drove. I didn't know where I was going, but I only stopped for food and gas.

"A couple days later, I found myself in Salt Lake City, Utah and I finally turned on my phone. Almost immediately my text inbox and my voicemail inbox were full of things from Carrie. At first she thought I was joking, but as the texts and calls became more recent and she realized I wasn't coming back, she became panicked. She said that she had no idea what to do with a two year old, and that I was lucky it was summer, and that if I didn't call her back within a day or two she was going to call CPS and I'd end up in prison.

"But at that point," Blaine said, looking out the window at the dark sky, "I didn't care. I didn't want to go back to Lima. I didn't want to be a father. I didn't want to be a teacher. I didn't want to be a friend. I didn't want to be Blaine. So I turned my phone back off and drove to the Grand Canyon."

Blaine took a few deep breaths, trying to slow his heart. He remembered the wind blowing, the exact temperature of the air, exactly what he was wearing, everything. "I went to a pay phone and called Carrie, but as soon as she answered the phone, I hung up. The rest of the day I paced outside of a gas station and finally decided what I was going to do.

"Carrie and her brilliant mind figured out that I had been the one calling her, and saw that the area code was for the Grand Canyon area. And then it hit her. She knew what I was going to do before I even consciously knew. She bought plane tickets to Arizona for her and Rose, and drove around until they found my car. She was sure she was too late, but then she saw me, standing next to it, looking over the edge.

"Right then, I had made up my mind. I was counting to ten, and on ten I was going to run, break through all security, and jump. I was at nine when Carrie called out my name, bring attention to me. I saw her standing there, crying, and Rose holding her hand looking extremely worried. It broke my heart to see Rose, at only two years old, looking so sad. And Carrie, my closest friend looking so broken. So I walked towards them and started sobbing.

"Right then and there, I gave Carrie an overview everything I could think of. I didn't really give details, but I told her about Cooper and my parents and Abby and running away and Jayden. I only left out the bullying in high school, and you. Then, being so exhausted since I'd only slept in my car for a couple hours at a time the past week, I almost passed out.

"She put me and Rose in the back of my car and started driving back to Lima. I woke up almost two full days later, and she told me that if I ever pulled shit like that on her again, she was going to report me. I was so thankful that she was going to let me go on this one that I promised her I would never do it again." Blaine leaned back onto his couch and closed his eyes. "Rose doesn't remember anything from it, thank god, and Carrie's only said anything about it once or twice, but I'll never forget how I let both of them down." Blaine tried to slow his tears, and ended up sobbing on to Kurt's shoulder.

"Shhh, it's okay honey, it's okay. Look at you, Blaine. You're twenty six years old. You're a teacher at a school where all of your students love you. You have a daughter who idolizes you and a boyfriend who wants to make you his forever. Yes, because of your past you made a stupid mistake, but that was two years ago. You're doing so much better, and you know it." Kurt whispered reassurances into Blaine's ear as he calmed him down.

After the two of them had stopped crying, they sat on Blaine's couch for what seemed like ages, just holding each other and whispering the other reassurances and encouragements. Then Blaine stood silently and took Kurt's hand in his own. As they walked towards Blaine's bedroom, it dawned on Kurt what Blaine was doing.

"Blaine?" he asked softly and hesitantly.

Blaine turned. "Yes?"

Kurt smiled through his watery eyes. "I just," he paused. "I love you so much."

Blaine smiled back and kissed Kurt. "I love you, too."