WELCOME! The opener! The preview! The spoiler! The wait!

I'm back. I am juggling New York Evening (almost ready to post a new chapter) when someone came to me with an idea for a new fiction and I ran hard and fast at it. Welcome to this heart-breaking story of Olivia Benson struggling with her teen son, Noah - a lack of communication that has sent them down separate roads, misunderstanding one another's feelings and causing anguish and despair. Noah is anxious and feeling alone, not knowing his place in the world. He is bullied by his team mates, old school friends and is starting to fall in to the wrong crowd when one teacher takes him under his wing and tries to help him channel his feelings in to something more productive.

Olivia Benson is stricken by how unavaliable her son has become, she has tried everything and feels like she has failed him and doesn't know how to fix it. Nothing she can do feels good enough and no matter how hard she tries, her son misinterprets her intentions.

Is this relationship salvagable?

This is a preview and the first chapter will come soon. Let me know what you think :)

The Prologue

"The fuck I will…" he muttered, glaring at the quarterback.

"What did you say, snowflake?," the tall unit of a teen with the body of a man made the motion to launch himself at the much smaller, pity team placement. Coach Langan did this from time-to-time, littered the team with some hopeless little runt in an effort to save their academic grades from circling the drain.

"Nothing. I said nothing," the smaller boy replied quickly remembering his place — if a place even existed for him at all.

He grabbed his bag and threw it over his shoulder and headed for the cubicles to get changed back in to his school clothes to begin his journey home. There was no way in the world he was going to get changed in front of the team, not when Peter Blasko could smell his fear.

He heard a few voices heckling him as he locked the door followed by some laughter from the rest of the team. Noah slumped down on the tiny ledge in the stall where a clean towel would have taken up space if he'd actually done some physical activity that required one.

"Something funny, Blasko? You got jokes you wanna share?" Noah heard the commanding, firm voice of coach Langan. He rolled his eyes, if it weren't for him he wouldn't be in this mess, on this stupid team, pretending he was one of them— bro-ing it out along with the kind of guys who were never going to want to be his friend or accept him.

He was constantly harassed by them, if they weren't calling him Snowflake, it was TBL — thin blue line — just because of who his mother was. Frankly, he'd had enough of being the Manhattan Police Captain's useless son. He knew no other identity and it was soul crushing to have to live in his mother's shadow. Her shadow was all he felt like he had since she was busy dealing with everyone else's kids.

Acting out had seemed like one way to get her attention — even if it wasn't the attention he craved: it was better than nothing.

He took his time getting changed until the loud, obnoxious voices seemed to dissipate. He must have been the last one left, he thought. He finally grabbed his bag and left, leaving the locker room to begin walking home.

"Benson, hey…" Coach Langan greeted him as he emerged, "you took your time in there."

Noah made a face, "you timing me?"

Coach laughed at the boy's quick temper as he picked up the drill cones and bag of practice equipment. "No, Noah, I was worried, I heard some of those guys giving you a hard time. You know you can tell me right?" His green eyes surveyed the smaller boy. He'd seemed to shoot up in height a little over the past year and was starting to fill out very slowly, but still he was no match for the rest of the football team— but he had seen Noah in gym class, he knew this kid had impressive speed.

"Yes," Noah replied, "your team is full of jerks but I'm fine." He looked around awkwardly. "Can I go?"

"Noah, you know you're not here because I'm trying to make your life harder, right? You're here because I'm concerned about you and having a sport to channel some of those negative feelings in to can be an outlet."

Noah almost rolled his eyes but knew Coach Langan was big on respect and didn't play around when it came behaviour.

"I'm not like these guys on your team. They don't want me here. This isn't helping, it's making me a target and I don't need anymore of that."

"Take some of these, will you?" Trevor nodded to a couple of the cones that had slipped out of his grasp.

Reluctantly, Noah leaned over and picked up the ones on the ground and followed Langan to his car. "You're judging all these kids without knowing a thing about them, a lot of them have football and not much else, Noah, let them get to know you."

As they got to Langan's vintage mustang, Noah's interest was piqued. He put down the cones as they got to the trunk. Trevor followed the 15 year old's eyes to his immaculately maintained vehicle. "You like my car?"

"My Mom had a black '72 Mustang when I was little. We never rode in it often, but I remember feeling so cool when she dropped me off at school…" his voice trailed off. He almost smiled when he remembered the heads at turned as he opened the passenger door, grinning at his Mom who he thought was nothing short of a super-hero.

She always yelled out how much she loved him and he always responded with the ASL sign for 'I love you' that made her grin back at him with pride. He was never embarrassed of her. He was still begging for her to walk him to school when he was in middle school when the rest of the kids were begging to be allowed to start doing things for themselves.

The ghost of a smile upon his lips quickly dispersed when he thought about the wedge that was now between he and his mother from all the years of feeling less-than, of not good enough, palmed-off on to others and resentful of her job.

Trevor opened the trunk, carefully putting away the training equipment. "Your Mom must be a very cool woman. This one is a '69 Mustang…this was my first car and I decided to restore it a couple years ago when I needed something to focus my energy on."

Noah made his way around the car slowly as though he was looking for any flaws in the paintwork or interior. "Did you restore it with all of the '69 mustang original parts?," he wondered curiously.

"I did. It took awhile for some bits and pieces and it was expensive, but this car is something I'm very proud of…"

Noah knew he wasn't joking. The car was pristine.

Trevor closed the trunk. "Come on, I'll give you a ride home."

"No, it's okay, I'll walk…" he replied. The truth was, he didn't want his Mom to see him getting dropped off and he didn't want to have to answer all of the questions she would ask. "I have homework to think about not doing," he added half-joking.

"I don't mind, I can drop you off so you have even more time for homework. You need to start putting in some effort or else you're going to fail English, you were already booted out of advanced Math and Mrs Harper knows you can do advanced Math with your eyes closed,".

Noah sighed, "maybe you and Mrs Harper should stop having secret meetings about me, it's low-key weird," he shot back, suddenly irate.

It was Trevor's turn to roll his eyes. "Noah, it's my job to care about whether or not you flunk out."

"If I don't care, you don't have to care. I'm letting you off, you can worry about someone else. My Mom won't even notice, I'll just sign the note off like I do for everything else and no one is any more the wiser." No one was his mother. She had no idea he was flunking history or getting booted from Math, but he had the chance to make it up over summer, he'd shrugged over the result and figured having something to do over summer might have been nice. It'd be better than waiting for his mother to take him on a promised vacation that would never actually happen because of her job.

He didn't Coach Langan say another word, he turned his back and began to walk away.

Sometimes walking home from school with his headphones turned up so loud he couldn't think was the perfect antidote to how he was feeling and there was no one to interrupt or tell him that his feelings were wrong. On that walk, the tiny span between school and home-time, there were no arguments or tension or frustration with his mother — or frustration in the air from her for his lack of engagement. It was pure noise; the bass almost ripping the oxygen from his body, loud enough to make his heart hammer at his chest.

It was his own type of therapy. More effective than the dick that he'd been evading for the past few weeks much to his mother's dismay.

As he passed over the bridge crossing the river in Central Park; he paused, feeling that weird gravitation to the edge. He glanced down in to the water and finally breathing came easy: a little too easy. The idea of jumping in brought him a sense of calm.

The first time these intrusive thoughts came to him, he'd been upset by them, surprised even — even had thought about talking to his mother about them, asking for help.

When he had approached the issue, she had stared at him with her big, curious eyes waiting for him to tell her the thing he struggled to push from his mouth. Suddenly it felt like an interrogation, the fire behind her big brown orbs began to grow a little impatient with his hesitance. Just as he was about to blurt out his feelings, her cell phone rang and before he knew it, she was out the front door like a whirlwind and he realised that she didn't actually care.

Now the thoughts didn't upset him, he somewhat enjoyed the numbness they caused him, the idea of nothingness: of not having to live or exist. He liked the idea of his mother not having to worry about the inconvenience of his existence ever again….

With a deep breath he peeled his eyes away from the intoxicating draw of the water below and continued his way home; one foot in front of the other.