Thanks for the reviews, apologies for this being such a tragic love story. But if you guys didn't love it you wouldn't be reading it, so don't blame me for any heart breaking that may occur. You knew what you were getting yourselves into. :p (Don't worry, this chapter's not so bad.)

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February 14th

"What do you mean?"

Spencer has been silent for the past ten minutes. She keeps opening her mouth like she wants to keep talking, but something stops her. She looks suddenly very tired; McDonald doesn't know what time it is, but it's late, and it's dark. Girls like her should be at home, snuggled up with their partner; they should be at their desk, writing out essays for classes their parents made them take; they should be out partying, having fun with their friends. They shouldn't be sitting in an interrogation room, covered in blood and dirt, recounting the story of how they lost the love of their life.

"I always thought it was too good to be true," Spencer says.

McDonald, who had been busy tying and retying his shoelaces just to give him something to do, sits up straight and his eyes snap to hers. He nods slowly, gesturing for her to go on.

"I'd been in love with her for a year, and she'd never given me a second thought." Spencer sniffles, and he offers her an unused handkerchief. She seems startled by his chivalry, but she accepts it gratefully. She studies the design on it, perhaps wondering why it has flowers on it, but she doesn't comment. "Then I told her I loved her, and she said she felt the same. Only… she never actually said it."

"Said what?"

"'I'm in love with you.'" Spencer tries to wipe away some tears, but they mix with the dried blood on her hand and she ends up smearing some of it on her cheek. "She never said 'I'm in love with you'. Not once. She'd say 'Me too' or 'I feel the same', but she never actually said the words."

"I bet that bugged you, huh?" McDonald thinks he's beginning to understand. When he was in high school – which had only been a few years ago – he'd been dared to ask out this girl in his class. He had, and to his shock she'd said yes. They'd started dating, and he'd actually fallen for her. But she'd been dating him out of curiosity rather than genuine emotion, and when he'd found out he'd holed up in his room playing video games and refused to talk to anyone for days.

"Of course it bugged me. But I kept hoping that maybe, somehow, one day…"

"She'd fall in love with you." He doesn't need Spencer's nod of confirmation to know that's true. He can see it in her eyes, in the way her shoulders slump. And he also knows that 'one day' never came.

"You said something earlier," he says, hoping to draw her back into the story before she closes off again. "Something about the first time you two fought. You said she ran off to the party by herself. Can you tell me about what happened after that?"

"I followed her, of course," Spencer says.

"Did you find her?"

Some dark emotion flashes through Spencer's eyes, and when she replies her voice is sharper. "Yes. I found her."

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