Chapter Six - Come In, Stranger

"Are you sure that you don't want to file charges, Tem?" FP said to me as I stood in front of the mirror messing with my hair. "What about a Personal Protection Order at the very least?"

I tried to push my hair over to one side, but it just flopped back over and was divided down the centre by my widow's peak. I made a disgruntled face in the mirror and gave a heavy sigh. "I – I don't know." I said and turned around to grab my old Fox Racing sweatshirt with my number '11' on the back of it off of a chair. That wasn't something that I really wanted to address. "I do, however, know that I'm hungry, need a haircut, and have to go shopping."

Before I even had a chance to put my sweatshirt on, FP grabbed it from me. He threw it on the bed. "Close your eyes."

"I do not trust you." I chuckled and shook my head.

"Just do it. I'm not gonna do anything bad, I swear."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The room was silent except for the slight rustling sound from beside the bed where I knew FP to be standing. That stopped and I could feel his footsteps through the floor as he walked around me. He touched my right arm gently and guided it through a silky sleeve. He did the same with the left then I felt his footsteps walk back around me.

The sleeves were slightly too long and the fit, in general, was a size too big. The heavy jacket that he put on me smelled familiar: aged leather, whiskey, and him. Before I even opened my eyes, I knew what he had given me, and I wasn't sure how I felt about such a gift.

"Go ahead. Open your eyes," he said.

When I opened my eyes, I saw myself wearing his jacket. The worn, black leather made my olive skin look warmer and brighter. "Jones, I—"

"Keep it," He interrupted. "It's yours now. I have no use for it anymore and you don't have one. You deserve it."

I took the jacket off and held it out to him. "No. No, I can't. It's yours and I most definitely do not deserve it." I couldn't look him in the eye. I was too embarrassed. It wasn't his fault though. He didn't know. How could he? He never would've seen the current state of it.

He didn't take the jacket, so I set it down on the chair next to me. "You wouldn't understand. I'm not a Serpent anymore. I haven't been for years. I had that taken away from me too."

He stepped in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders. I couldn't look up at him. "Artemis," he said softly. "You need to tell me what else is going on. If there's something that happened, something that he did to you, made you do, or whatever, I'm not gonna think any less of you and you know that. You're my best friend and I made a promise to you that I'd always be here and I am. I may not have been when you needed me the most but I'm here now, so you need to talk to me. You can't leave me in the dark. I'm in a position where I can help you. Let me."

The tears burned my eyes. All of this crying was starting to get really annoying, but it was the only response that I could elicit, especially when all of my emotions were running so high. "You don't understand. Drew took everything from me."

"What did he take, Tem? What exactly?"

I pulled away from him and went over to the window where the morning sun was shining through. I could feel the worry radiating off of FP as he just watched me. "I mean everything. My freedom, my job, my friends, the Serpents, hockey, motocross, music. Everything that I ever loved." I didn't want to have to explain everything over and over again. I just wanted it to go away, and go away for good. Reliving it all wasn't just painful, it was angering and embarrassing because I should never have been in a situation like that in the first place. I felt like everything that was happening was my fault and that now, nobody was ever going to love me or want me around because I was so broken. He was telling me the exact opposite though. It was all so confusing!

With angry tears in my eyes, I looked up at him for the first time and spoke through gritted teeth as I tried not to cry harder. "In a way…he even took you from me…"

"Tem—" He had no words. I could see in his eyes that he was angry, sad, disappointed, but not with me, with himself. He was thinking that if he had been there, if he had stayed one more year, he could have made it so none of this would ever have happened.

"You wanna know what else he took from me?!" I snapped starting to get even more mad at him. How dare he look at me like that. How dare he try to love me! It was infuriating. Broken things don't deserve love. "You really wanna know?!" With one hand I pulled up the hem of my t-shirt on my left side and with the other, I pulled down the top of my jeans. There, on my hip, where my tattoo should have been, was a heavily faded, barely recognisable, scarred double-headed serpent in the shape of an 'S'. "This is what he did to me! He even went so far as to take my tattoo!"

The horror in FP's face was unmistakable. The fact that I ever had that on me never sat well with him, but for someone to do this was even worse. It was a display of absolute power and control. He took a step towards me, but I grabbed his jacket off of the chair and threw it at him.

"Get away!" I shouted. "Just get away from me and leave! I don't even know why you're still here!"

"No," he said starkly. "I'm not leaving you, Artemis. Not now, not ever." He tried to approach me again. When he reached for me, I started to walk away but he grabbed my wrist.

"Get off!" I screamed. My mind was overwhelmed with so many thoughts and feelings and he was just adding more fuel to the fire. The way he looked at me, the way he talked to me, the way he protected me, his love, it was all too much for me to handle.

His grip on me wasn't very tight. I was able to break it easily. When I did, I pushed him away. He stumbled backwards a few steps but still didn't leave. Was there anything that I could do to make him leave? Anything at all that would cause him to forget about me and let me run away? No. No, I knew that there wasn't. He was just as stubborn as I was and that's why we were friends. We were the same person deep down.

"I'm not leaving you." He said again.

I turned away from him and screamed. "Why?! Why do you do this to me?! I'm not worth the effort! I'm broken! Broken things like me don't deserve to be fixed. They don't deserve love!"

He wasn't going to dignify my self-loathing statements with any sort of response. He knew that I was having an emotional crisis and that, by doing anything, even just saying one word, it could make things worse.

Turning back around, I looked him dead in the eye, my face flushed with anger and wet from tears. "Why do you love me? I'm broken, Forsythe. I'm broken beyond repair, yet you stand here and love me. How?"

"Because," He took a tentative step towards me, and when I didn't react, took a few more. Almost instantly, it felt, he was right in front of me, taking my hands in his. "You need someone to remind you that you're not alone. You're not fighting this war by yourself. You have people who will stand by you through everything."

My knees buckled and I hit the floor. It was all too much for me to handle. What he was saying made sense but didn't at the same time. I wanted to believe that I wasn't alone but…I felt like I was.

FP knelt down beside me and wrapped his arms around me, holding me close. He just let me cry into his shoulder, and when my tears had all run dry, he spoke softly. "It's going to be okay, Tem. I'm not going to let anything happen to you, not ever again."

I just sat there, his shirt in my fists and my head on his chest. My breath shook as I tried to find the words to say something back but that was impossible when my brain felt like it was on fire. So, I just sat there in his arms shaking violently.

"Artemis look at me. Come on, look at me." He whispered, pulling me off of his chest. He put a gentle hand on the side of my face and lifted my head so that I was looking into his eyes. "You know that I'm going to protect you right? Do you trust me?"

I nodded. "With my life. I always have."

The genuine, gentle smile on his face made me smile back weakly. Ever since my arrival in Riverdale at the age of 10, he was there. He was there when we started high school. He was there for almost every men's hockey game that I played in up through my junior year. He drove me to the hospital after I got slashed with a skate during a championship game. He was my shoulder to cry on and the first to celebrate my successes. Every aspect of my life in Riverdale involved FP Jones.

"Good. There's one other thing that I've been meaning to tell you."

"What is it?" I asked with a sniffle.

He smiled a soft, gentle smile and pushed my hair to one side. This time it stayed in place. "The one and only Artemis Naomi Ivers, I love you."

"Forsythe Pendleton Jones II," I gently touched his face and returned his loving smile. "I love you too."