Author's note - Set just after the scene that Lauren broke off her engagement after hearing Peter was Lucy's dealer...
"I'm sorry. I can't do this."
The tears streaming down her face weren't just for their day old broken engagement. They were for the loss of her best friend, both the girl and now the boy. The loss of her last remaining bit of her childhood innocence. The sadness that he, someone she counted on to be 'good' was tainted by the 'bad' that surrounded her too. They were for the knowledge that things weren't never going to be the same.
"I know what this is." he says, sounding determined to take the heat of his own actions and find something else as an excuse. His dad, her dad. His dead twin. He wants them, wants a forever with her. Sometimes she thinks she wants that too. Only now, after this, she wasn't so sure.
"You still love him," he says, half question, half demand.
"Of course I don't." She replies, without even flinching or questioning the who. She knew, she wasn't going to pretend she didn't know who the 'him' in question was.
"I don't" her words echo in the air. She means her words. He doesn't believe her though. They usually just gloss over his chapter in her life. The chapter where the boy questioning her right now wasn't there with her, and it was another embracing her, loving her, breaking her.
They don't speak of him, never really. And most of the time she doesn't mind. After all she has moved on, moved backwards and forwards in unison. Reunited with her first love, the boy across the Square, the boy who was honest, and true, and always there. Except for the occasion he wasn't those things. But then hey, she wasn't flaw free, she should be happy with what she has surely. She should forgive, say it's okay, be happy again and fall back in to his arms.
But then part of her wonders whose arms she'd run into if she still had the choice.
"You still think of him?," he whispers, when she's turned away from her and standing there trying not to give her thoughts away. He tends to be the one thing that makes her eyes readable, her secrets unsecret.
"Go to work," she says. Just leave me be. Stop with the questions. This isn't even about him.
There are some nights when her eyes are closed and she drifts between consciousness, she swears it's his voice she hears and his fingers tracing the rise and fall of her ribs. She swears she can feel his touch, pushing her hair back when she moves her hair, swears she can see him standing in the shadows of her family.
She swears he left part of him with her. Maybe he did, when he took part of her with him too.
"Do you miss him?" He asks as he turns to leave, seeming to be abandoning the argument finally.
"No." And it's not a lie, not really. She doesn't miss him. She doesn't even think of him any more. She hasn't let herself think of him, of them, in a long time. It's for the best, she thinks, she hopes. And if it's not, it's just another thing added to the list of things she messed up.
This time though, it's not her that ruined things...