Author's Note- Well, thanks for sticking it out this long. I know, I'm awful. But, if you guys waited two years to reach this point, maybe you can wait a little longer until we reach the end. Even if it takes another year to get there. ;)

I need to thank Zoe Isabel for making me a new cover for the story. She did an awesome job! So thanks my dear! Check it out, and then go tell her how awesome it is. She deserves it.

Now, without further ado, enjoy!

Forbidden

Guidance

"Are you sure everything's alright, Chloe? You've hardly touched your lunch." Aunt Lauren asked, chewing her own sandwich slowly as she assessed me. Again.

She's asked me the same question, though worded variously, several times over the last five days of my visit. Clearly my audition's not going to get me into Juilliard if my acting is this bad and my aunt can see plainly through my false smiles.

Still, I forced one anyways and met her concerned gaze.

"Everything's fine. I'm just not very hungry is all."

Still, Aunt Lauren eyed me speculatively, and I was glad- not for the first time that morning- that Dad was meeting us in a few minutes and that I'd be going home with him for the remainder of spring break. I loved Aunt Lauren. Very dearly, I did. When Mom passed, she played surrogate mother, and I'll forever be grateful to her for that. We weren't as close as we had been while I was growing up, but that was only because of our distance the past couple of years. She and I were still closer than me and Dad will ever be. The down side of that was that she just knew me too well and she always seemed able to read me like an open book.

"Is it a boy?" She asked.

Feigning nonchalance, I snorted. An action I'd picked up from- damn him- Derek.

"I turned twenty-one yesterday, Aunt Lauren, remember? I don't have 'boy issues'."

"Oh, well excuse me. How could I possibly forget?" Aunt Lauren sighed dramatically, then eyed me sidelong. "So it's a man, then?"

I sputtered a laugh at her tone, though my chest seized and my stomach squirmed uncomfortably.

"Joking aside," She continued. "You know you can talk to me about anything, Chloe."

"I know," I said, trying to keep my solemn mood out of my tone. I felt bad. All Aunt Lauren ever wanted was to be there for me and to help me with my hardships. However, all this business with Derek, it wasn't exactly something I could go to her about, no matter how badly I wanted to. She could see that I was struggling with something, and it must hurt her to see that I wasn't going to consult her about it.

"And, if you ever get yourself into any trouble," Aunt Lauren added hesitantly. "I'll always be here for you. I know a lot of specialists in Albany, and I'm sure I could get some names closer to you-"

"I don't think college has broken me down enough that I need therapy," I interrupted, narrowing my eyes at her slightly. Geez, did I really look that depressed?

Though, with everything that had happened and all that I had learned the week before break, maybe it would do well to consult with a therapist…

"I don't my psychological specialists, Chloe. I meant-" She paused, as if trying to think of the best way to approach what she was about to say. I waited, suspicious. "-well, obstetrician-gynecologists."

A what? Obstetrician-gynecologists? I vaguely remembered Liz talking about possibly studying to be one a couple years ago because she thought pregnancy was beautiful and would love to help women through their birthing journey-

"Oh!" I gasped, holding my hands out and shaking my head. "God, no! No, I'm not pregnant, Aunt Lauren! Why would you think- No. No, I'm definitely not pregnant."

Aunt Lauren opened her mouth to reply, surprised by my outburst- though there was clear relief in her eyes- but she was interrupted by an awkward cough.

We were sitting in a small café just outside Buffalo while we waited to meet Dad. If it wasn't bad enough that all the other occupants of the building were glancing in my direction after hearing my denials, Dad stood beside our small table, clearly uncomfortable by what he had just heard.

"Um, I'm going to come back in and pretend I didn't hear any of that." He said, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly.

"Dad," I blurted out, taken aback by his sudden appearance. Taking him in, I saw that he hadn't changed much since I last saw him nearly a year ago. Seeing his greying brown hair combed back, heavy brown eyes and his ever present suit, I was suddenly stricken by some undefined emotion. Looking into his eyes, everything I'd avoided discussing with my aunt over the last few days jumped to my lips and I wanted to spill my guts onto the floor in front of him. But not only that, I wanted to pour out every negative emotion I've felt and bottled up over the years.

Until this moment, I've never felt this way about my dad.

"Daddy," I whispered, like I used to when I was little and he'd let me curl up with him in bed after Mom died. I sprang up to my feet and threw my arms around him, burying my face into his shoulder and drinking him in.

Startled by my sudden affection, he slowly wrapped his arms around me and hugged me back. He laughed nervously, unsure, and said, "H-hey kiddo. I missed you too."

When I finally pulled back, he added, "Oh, and happy birthday."

"Thanks," I murmured, beaming from ear to ear. I was struggling to fight tears from welling. I had no idea what emotion had come over me upon seeing my dad, but for the first time in over a week, I felt content and elated.

"I have a present for you," Dad said quietly, leaning in conspiratorially. "It's in the car. You can open it while we're heading home."

I laughed. "Okay."

He let me go and wearily turned to Aunt Lauren.

"Hello Lauren."

"Steve," Lauren greeted as civilly as she could. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. She and my dad had never gotten along. However, she did put up with him, before for my mother's sake and now for mine.

"I hope you two had some quality girl time." Dad went on, ignoring her tone, as he always did. "I'll take her off your hands."

"She's not a package or a blueprint that we're passing back and forth like you and one of your work partners, Steven-"

"Okay!" I cut her off. "We should get going."

There was no way these two would stay in each other's company more than strictly necessary.

Once the goodbyes were said and I thanked Aunt Lauren again for my birthday present- a coffee machine for my new apartment- Dad grabbed my duffle from beside the table and lead me out of the café towards his Fusion. Sitting in the passenger seat was Dad's aforementioned birthday present for me. He directed me to open it while he put my duffle in the trunk.

Getting myself comfortable in the seat, I picked up the gift and ripped away the silver wrapping paper. Upon laying my eyes on the present, I gasped and my jaw dropped to my lap.

"What do you think?" Dad asked as he got into the car, grinning upon seeing my dumbfounded expression.

"Dad," I breathed, at a loss for words.

"I think it's the right one. The real deal, I mean. There were a bunch of cheaper ones but-"

"It's- it's incredible. I-I can't believe you-"

It was a Mark V-B Director's Viewfinder. The professional scope that directors use to help them define their choices in lenses and angles for a scene. Very high end. And very expensive.

"You d-didn't have to do this, Dad."

He shrugged sheepishly. "I wanted to, Chloe. You know how I feel about your career choice. But I also know how you feel about it. I want you to strive to do your best and, if producing and screen-writing is where you're going to do that, then I'm going to stand behind you a hundred percent. I really do hope you make it into Juilliard. More than I hope that you'll change your mind and stay at NYU," He added at the end.

A blazing grin stretched across my face and I scrambled across the middle patrician separating my seat from his to throw my arms around his shoulders. More awkward laughter came from him in response.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

"You're welcome, kiddo. Now, let's get home, shall we?"

No offense to Aunt Lauren, but I was in much higher spirits spending the next couple of days with Dad. But that was mostly because catching up with the man was a great distraction of stories almost a year old. We didn't spend every minute together. That was normal. Dad and I had never been close. But when we did, he would regale me with his trips to Europe and back. He's sold fourteen houses in the last year, which was doing well for him.

In turn he asked me how school was going. I did my best to inform him of my educational happenings while skirting around particular topics I didn't want to discuss. However, it seemed almost impossible as he asked about Nate, my job and whether there was any news on the missing girls, and why I had decided to take another math class considering my distaste for the subject.

My answers were evasive and something along the lines of, "Nate's been pretty busy", "Work is fine, and no, unfortunately, nothing yet", and "I honestly have no idea anymore, Dad."

There seemed to be something that he was avoiding in asking me, though, throughout our time together. But, he must have mustered up his courage, for two evenings before school was supposed to resume he asked, "Why did Lauren ask you- er, well- why did she think you were… you know…"

We were sitting at the island in the kitchen, forks in hand, picking at a fruit salad thrown together in a bowl shared between us. I glanced at him questioningly.

"Huh?" I murmured dumbly, not sure what he was trying to get at.

Dad sighed.

"You're not going to make me say it are you?"

"Oh, you mean how she thought I was pregnant?" I laughed. He groaned, as if the word were taboo, and he uncomfortably rubbed the back of his neck.

"Er, right…"

"Well," I shrugged. "Aunt Lauren likes to make her own assumptions about things. She thought something was bothering me this week and asked me if it was because of a guy, then suggested that if I wanted to, she knew a gynecologist I could see." I finished my explanation with a show of rolling my eyes, hoping he would just think Aunt Lauren was being, well, Aunt Lauren, and would drop the subject.

"So, there isn't a guy then? One that you're, erm, active with?" He mumbled, cheeks reddening as he spoke.

"Oh my God, Dad!" I exclaimed, choking on a piece of cantaloupe. "You're just as bad as she is!"

"Well-" He started, then sighed again. He mumbled something quietly to himself then finally met my eyes again and started over.

"Listen. I know I'm not very present in your life, Chloe. I haven't been for a long time."

"Dad," I tried to interrupt, to tell him that it was okay, that I understood. But he raised his hand and said, "Let me finish, okay?"

I nodded and he stabbed a chunk of watermelon with his fork before continuing.

"I'm not going to tell you how to run your life or manage who you're seeing- whether you're seeing someone or not. However, if you're serious enough about someone, then I at least want to meet him. And, if he's serious enough about you, then I expect him to ask my permission. You know… for marriage."

I couldn't help it. A small smile tugged at my lips and my cheeks burned red. No longer from embarrassment, but from the unexpected bout of affection from my father. It was really a sweet gesture. Sweeter than his out of the blue birthday present.

"Well, we haven't discussed anything about that, but, I'll keep that in mind in case the time comes."

Dad's lips quirked and he raised a brow.

"So there is a guy."

This time, it was my turn to sigh.

"It's complicated."

Dad suddenly chuckled, though there was a hint of sadness in his eyes.

"What?"

"You really looked like your mother there, for a second. I mean, you've always looked like her, but, Jen made that same face when she said those exact words to Lauren and their mother."

"She said that? When?" I asked, jumping on the opportunity to talk about Mom with him. Dad rarely ever talked about Mom. This week has been full of a lot of unexpected occurrences, I suppose.

"When she first told them that we were dating."

I sat there for a moment, eagerly and expectantly waiting for him to delve deeper into the story. It was at this moment that I realized how much my parents were truly a mystery to me. I didn't really know how they grew up, how they met and how they fell in love. I was too young when Mom died to retain those stories if she ever told me about them. And like Dad said, he wasn't ever very present after she passed. And Aunt Lauren sure as hell wasn't going to tell me, seeing as it wasn't a story she was particularly fond of.

Reading my curiosity, Dad said, "So, one day, your mother brought me home, after a long time of skirting around the fact that we were seeing each other as she knew how they felt about me, and she broke the news to them. Lauren seemed far more against the idea than their mother did, but Jen didn't want to listen to them."

"Why didn't they like you?" I asked, sort of inferring another question in there. Why does Aunt Lauren still not like you? Dad made a displeased face.

"I lived down the street from Jen all throughout high school. One evening I was arrested, and they all witnessed the entire thing."

"I didn't know that you were arrested." I said, confused. Dad was such a stickler for rules and organization. He just doesn't come across as the criminal type. Of course, you can't ever assume you really know a person. I was currently learning that the hard way.

Dad nodded, though he didn't look ashamed of the fact.

"I was."

I looked at him quizzically, unsure of his tone.

"You didn't actually do anything, did you? You were arrested for something you didn't do." Again, Dad nodded, acting annoyingly cryptic.

"The truth is, I didn't do anything. But I didn't tell the police that."

"Why not?" I exclaimed. "If you didn't even do anything, why would you take the blame for it?"

"Jen wondered the same thing." Dad said with a reminiscent smile. "She cornered me at school three days later- after I was released from holding- and demanded to know what was going on. Her brother Ben and I were really close-"

Holy shit. This, right here, was a phenomenon indeed. Nobody talked about Ben. I knew of him, vaguely, as he had been Mom's twin brother. Or so I was told. But whenever I asked, nobody could seem to summon up the will to talk about him. Even Aunt Lauren, who told me a lot about Mom as I grew up, said it was just too hard to even think about her brother. They say that you may know people, but you're only seeing ten percent of the iceberg. Sitting here, getting a side of my family's story I've never heard before, it was as if I had dived beneath the surface of the ocean. And in the depths I was barely making out the massive, hazy silhouette of the other ninety percent. As if I were swimming towards it to realize the true enormity of it all, I continued to listen to Dad with rapt attention.

"-so she knew me pretty well and knew that I wasn't capable of what I was convicted of. However, no matter how much she pestered me for answers, I never told her the truth."

"Why not? What really happened?"

"Well, I had made a promise. Jen knew the truth. How the hell she figured it out, I never knew, but she did. And I still didn't tell her. I couldn't tell her. Part of it was because of the promise I made, and part of it was because I wanted to protect her from the truth. I wanted her as uninvolved as possible."

I froze at his words and what Derek had said before I left him hit me. Hard. Like a car driving into a brick wall at sixty miles per hour.

"I didn't tell you because I wanted to keep you as uninvolved as possible."

"A-and mom, she just…. a-accepted that?"

Dad shrugged.

"I didn't ask her to, but she did. I guess that's kind of where we started. And then Ben died and we were there for each other."

Because my would-have-been-uncle didn't just die. He jumped. He threw his life away. The way he said that, the way he spoke of Ben, I was convinced that the secret Dad had kept all these years had something to do with him.

"We'd both lost our best friend. And I guess we went on by finding a best friend in each other. She finally told her family, and they hated the idea of us being together. But, despite having no proof or even my word of the truth, she told them that it was complicated and that she would deal with the complications as they came."

"But, you lied to her…"

Again, Dad shrugged.

"She gave me the benefit of the doubt."

"Give him the benefit of the doubt." Simon had said. "He's really a good guy, Chloe."

Mom knew that Dad was innocent. She knew. Just like I knew that Derek was innocent. And despite the fact that Dad refused to reveal the truth to Mom- it just had to be something about Ben- she trusted him. Just like Derek had asked me to trust him.

But how was she able to handle that? How could she live all those years trusting a man that told her he was the bad guy, that he was the one who had committed the crime, and be so sure that he truly wasn't the criminal? Could the answer really be as simple as the fact that she loved him?

…

I need to talk to Derek.

I stood abruptly and my fork clattered noisily against the countertop as I dropped it in my haste. Dad glanced up at me and raised his eyebrows.

"I need to go make a phone call." I said, rushing around the kitchen island and catching my side painfully against the corner of it.

"Okay," was all Dad said, as if I just told him I was going to take a shower or go to the grocery store. Seemingly only partially uninterested. But then he called out to me as I reached the stairs to head up to my room.

"Chloe?"

"Yeah?" I asked breathlessly, turning back to him. He smiled, warm and knowing.

"Glad I could help."

"You've reached Derek Souza. Leave a message."

I'd missed his voice so much that hearing even just a recorded voicemail greeting of it made my heart ache.

"H-hey. Um, i-it's me."

Just breathe, Chloe. His voice said soothingly in the back of my mind. It's alright. It's only me. Slow down. Breathe. It's okay.

I exhaled slowly and tried again.

"Listen, I did what I came here for. I promised you that we'd talk when I got back. And I want to talk. I want to hear your side. Call me back, okay?"

I hung up and stared at his name on my phone until the screen turned gray, willing him to call back right away. What if he didn't want to call me back? What if he didn't want to talk anymore? What if he-

I jumped, startled as my phone started vibrating in my lap. Heart hammering, I glanced at the screen, but found a text message instead of his caller I.D.

Strange. Derek hates texting.

But it was him. It was definitely him.

Can't talk now. With Dad and Simon. May have found something about, well, you know. You're coming back tomorrow right?

I contemplated his words momentarily. Found something? About the girls? Rae and Miranda? Or perhaps something about the case; something about Austin or the previous girls. Either way, it was important, or else Derek would have taken the time to call back. It was something that couldn't wait.

Yes. I texted back. I'll be back in New York around 3.

He texted back quickly.

Come straight here. To my place. Please, Chloe. It's not safe. I'll tell you everything. Be here at 3.

Whatever they found, it wasn't good, and Derek was just as paranoid as the moment I left, if not more.

"She gave me the benefit of the doubt."

"He's really a good guy, Chloe. Give him the benefit of the doubt."

Okay,was my reply.

I pulled up into the parking lot of Derek's apartment complex right at 2:59. I didn't need to give the man a heart attack if I was a minute late. Soon enough I'd have all the answers. Well, all his answers. I'd hear him out, and I already knew that I was going to understand all his motives, all his actions and the reasons behind him. I already knew that I was going to trust his word.

Because I loved him.

I pulled my keys from the ignition and quickly clambered out of my car. I was in such a rush of anticipation- mostly just to run up the stairs, though his door and into his arms- that my keys slipped through my fingers and fell to the pavement. I bent swiftly and picked them up, stood and-

An arm went around my waist. For the briefest second, I thought it was Derek, and I wanted to melt into his touch. But the touch was wrong. All so wrong. I tensed, fear just barely registering, jerking away from the grasp. But the arm held fast around my torso, yanking me back. A hand clapped over my mouth as I opened it to cry out. But I didn't feel skin on my lips. It was cloth. A glove. No, a towel of some sort.

Through panic, my breathing became ragged. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. There's a pungent, weirdly sweet smell. Exhale. I'm struggling, but I can no longer feel my limbs. Inhale- stupid!

What a silly thing to think in a moment like that.

You're so stupid, Chloe! You've written this scene before. Hold your breath. Stop inhaling. Its chlorof-

Darkness took me before I could finish that thought.

Who knew she was going to be there at exactly three, guys?

Sorry, it's rushed. Also, I might write a chapter later about Steve's secret, but I doubt it. I kind of like the mystery.

Anyways, review, and anxiously await the next chapter. Everything's about to be revealed. :D