Surprise! I was going to try to have this out yesterday and have two chapters in a day, but things happened and it ended up being pushed back to today! This is just a bonus chapter, and I'll still have my normal chapter out tomorrow. Hopefully you lovelies enjoy~

Laurens Interlude

"That's not how you spell my name."

Those were the first words Lorin Haywood had ever said to me. I had seen her around Laf's house occasionally, her sandy hair flying behind her as she dashed upstairs whenever Herc or I showed up. Laf had said that his new sister was shy, and tended to get nervous around people she didn't know. Whenever either of us stayed for dinner, she either stayed in her room or sat at the table awkwardly, looking away from us and staring at the wall.

I hadn't even had a chance to talk to her alone until we were partnered together for an assignment in geography. It was fairly simple-just match the state with its capital. It was elementary school work, really, but we had a substitute for the next few months while our teacher was on maternity leave and there hadn't been any work left for us to do. I didn't see the need for partners at all, and the sub's explanation was that she wanted us to "make more friends". She was a pretty strange lady, now that I look back on it.

Lorin refused to make eye contact, leaving me to work on the assignment silently by myself. In fact, she looked everywhere but my face- the desk, the wall, the floor. Anything that wasn't me, she looked at. I couldn't stop staring at her as I worked. Now that I was able to see her up close, I noticed that she was… kind of cute. Her sandy hair was pushed back from her face for once, showing off the freckles that were dotted across the bridge of her nose and over her cheeks. I looked away from her as she looked towards me. Or rather, at the worksheet, where I was writing both our names.

"Excuse me?" I asked, surprised first of all by the fact that she was talking, and secondly by the fact that she was talking to me.

"You spelled my name wrong." Her voice was quiet and slightly hesitant as her gray eyes looked down at the paper. And damn, it was cute, just like her. "It's not L-A-U-R-E-N, like your last name. It's L-O-R-I-N."

That was the beginning of our friendship. It had taken a couple more days for her to be comfortable around Herc (not that I blamed her, the dude looked intimidating if you didn't know him), and she fit into our group of friends perfectly. She had been the one to introduce us to the Schuylers, who were infamous for not talking to anyone. Hell, she even managed to become friends with James Madison, the sickly guy who missed school half the time.

Everything had been going perfectly… until she met James Reynolds, the richest asshole in town, at one of Jefferson's infamous parties. I didn't know what she had been doing there-she hated parties with a passion, even her own birthday parties-because they made her nervous. All I knew was that she had called me way after midnight, asking for a ride home from Jefferson's house. She had been drunk, and rambled on about how amazing the party was (and drunkenly going off on a tangent about my "face stars" and how they almost matched hers). The last thing she said before she passed out was that she had met a boy, but there had been a tinge of fear behind the words.

She started dating Reynolds the next day. I tried to be happy for her since she clearly liked the guy, but something about him rubbed me the wrong way. He seemed a bit too clingy, always having a hand on her body one way or another. He only referred to her as "babe", and he was constantly whispering things in her ear, a stupid smug grin on his face. And there was the marks that slowly started showing up on her body. At first it was only hickeys (as to be expected from a typical teenage relationship), but then there were bruises, black eyes, and cuts.

Lorin started talking less, until it became a rare occurrence to hear her voice. She was jumpy, flinching if anyone spoke too loudly. She barely ate anymore, often giving more than half her lunch to Herc. She constantly denied there being anything being wrong and refused to answer my questions about where the scars came from. I eventually gave up on asking, but kept a close eye on her.

"I love him and he loves me," she had said, her voice hollow and lifeless. "Everything's fine, John. You don't have to worry."

How could I not worry? My best friend was turning into a shell of her former self-in more ways than one. She had started losing weight. It wasn't much, and I was pretty sure nobody else really noticed. She rarely smiled anymore, and if she did, it was clearly forced. I tried to convince her to break up with him, but she was stupidly stubborn. She was convinced that he loved her, but the look in his eyes as he looked at her was anything but love. It was pure, unsaturated lust. God, the fucker lusted after her and she was completely oblivious.

I should have done more to protect her from him. I knew that there had been something more going on in their relationship than she was willing to let on, but I let her stay with him because she was happy. I should have valued her safety over her happiness. I should have made her break up with him the second I noticed the first bruise.

And now, over a year after Lorin had met Reynolds, we were only just finding out everything that he had done to her. A year. A fucking year. She had been getting abused by Reynolds for a year. She had been getting used by him for a year. She had been raped by him for over a year. How could she have stayed with him? How could she not tell any of us what was going on? Didn't she trust us?

She was dating a new kind of asshole now, the cocky, arrogant, wouldn't-stop-flirting kind. She hadn't even known him for a week before she had started dating him. Granted, he was more bearable than Reynolds, and he actually cared about her. He didn't parade Lori around like some shiny new toy. He knew that she hated being outside much and didn't force her to do stuff she didn't want to do. But there was one major flaw with him, a giant glaring mistake.

Alexander knew. He had known since we went to the aquarium a month ago. The prick couldn't shut up about stuff that didn't matter, but when it came to something that was actually important, he suddenly clammed up. He said that he wanted to "protect her privacy", but privacy meant nothing when it came to something this serious. He had the nerve to say that he kept it a secret because he loved her. He barely knew her, how the hell could he love her? He couldn't love her. Not like I did.