Hey everyone! Obviously it's been a long LONG time since I last updated but I wanted to have a few chapters ready before I tried to continue with this story! I've got another twenty chapters already written so even if I don't end up finishing this story (very much still the goal!) then there will be a few more instalments for people to hopefully enjoy! :)

Jade didn't really have much of a plan for the future. She knew she wanted to go to college, that she would desperately try to make that work, even with Toby's existence, and that she wanted to try to break into the entertainment industry. But that was it as far as a 'plan' went; she had dreams, rather than a 10-step rags to riches pipeline. Despite this, however, she knew one thing for certain: she did not want Toby to turn out like her.

Here was the thing: Jade should never have been born. And she knew it.

Katherine West was 25 years-old with two kids and two months into divorce proceedings with said children's father when happy hour at her favourite bar plus a very expired condom led to her unexpected pregnancy with Jade. Jade's father, John, had been less than thrilled upon finding this out, and even less so when he discovered that Katherine was planning on keeping the child, particularly when he'd offered her such a generous amount to, ahem, 'terminate'. Katherine, equally, wasn't exactly thrilled at the situation either; not only did it kill all hope of reconciling the 'irreconcilable differences' she had with her ex-husband, but it also gave him an abundance of ammo to hit her with in court. Needless to say, she had not done particularly well in the settlement.

Jade knew all this, partly due to her mother's affinity for late-night wine binges, partly due to her brother's lack of qualms in voicing his father's opinions on the matter, and partly due to her stepfather's view that she should "know where she came from", or, in other words, feel ashamed about it. Regardless, anyway, of the source of all of this, Jade was all too aware that she was an accident, and not the stupid 'happy miracle' type that she always saw plastered over the most insufferable celebrities' twitters. No, she was an accident that smashed through the windscreens of everyone's lives and made them wish they'd been watching where they were going. And she may have been a strong woman who didn't need people to like her, but even she had to admit that occupying that kind of existence took its toll.

That was her biggest regret in this whole teen pregnancy thing. Not losing her virginity at 14, or being careless with her contraception, like her mother desperately tried to shame her for. Instead, the issue that weighed most heavily on her heart was the fact that she hadn't broken the cycle. She'd been an accident for both parents - truly neither of them had wanted her - and, despite knowing firsthand the pain that this caused, she had done it to her son. Toby would realise once he was older that neither she or Beck had planned him, and then what kind of life would he have? Constantly marred by that fact, she could only assume.

So, despite her desire to keep her pride intact, here she was, lingering in the driveway of her ex-boyfriend's house, ready to ask him to take her back. Because over her dead body would Toby grow up feeling like his parents resented his existence.

With Toby in her arms, she knocked on Beck's door. He was expecting her; the agreement they'd civilly made after the quite uncivil incident in the Asphalt Café had been that Beck would take Toby three nights per week, so long as the two of them slept in the main house and not the 'metal death trap' that Beck (and she) usually occupied.

"Hey." Beck said, once he'd opened the door. He smiled with his mouth a straight line, his eyes flickering away from hers towards his son. "Hey little man." He said, prying the baby from her grip. A pang pulled at her heart as Toby's little hands reached for her as he was taken away, but forgot her just as quickly once he was in his father's arms.

"Hey."

"Have you got his milk and everything?"

Straight down to business.

"Yeah, it's all in the bag." Jade replied, swinging the bag off her shoulder. "Hey, can we talk?"

"About?" Beck asked, in an uncooperative tone.

Jade sighed. "Can I come in?"

Beck opened his mouth to answer, but she was inside before he even had time to protest. Throwing the baby bag by Beck's bed, she turned around to face him, arms crossed.

Beck, conversely, took his time in closing the door, placing Toby in the travel cot he'd already set up and sorting the bag into a more convenient place. He was avoiding the conversation, Jade could tell, but he knew her far too well to believe that those kind of tactics would work on her.

"I was thinking that it would probably be best if we got back together." She said, biting the bullet instead of waiting for him to finally face her.

"Oh. That's interesting." Beck slowly turned away from the crib, no element of surprise present in his expression.

Jade cocked an eyebrow. "That's interesting?"

"Yeah. It's an interesting idea."

"Okay." Jade replied, elongating the word in confusion. "So is that a yes?"

"A yes to what? You haven't asked me anything."

"Oh cut the crap Beck." Jade snapped, irritably. "Do you want to get back together or not?"

"No." Beck almost smirked.

Jade's eyes snapped to his in shock. "What?"

"You heard me."

"What do you mean, 'no'? Did you forget we have a child together?" She hissed, beginning to raise her voice.

"Did you? When you broke up with me?"

"It's not the same!"

Beck gritted his teeth in annoyance as he glanced over at Toby who was happily chirping in his crib, none the wiser to the rising tension between his parents. Quickly, he grabbed Jade's wrist and dragged her outside the RV, closing the door softly behind them before turning back to his thoroughly unimpressed ex.

"It's exactly the same, Jade! You broke up with me despite him and I'm staying broken up with you despite him. If anything, your decision is worse!" Beck shouted. Maybe losing his cool would convince her to actually consider his perspective for once.

"I had a reason for my decision!"

"So do I!"

"No you don't. What have I done, Beck? What have I done that's as bad as you lying to me about spending your afternoons in your underwear with Alyssa fucking Vaughan."

His mind was focused on the argument but, again, Beck had to ask why everyone but him seemed to know who Alyssa Vaughan was?

"I was working. I've already told you I didn't cheat on you. I even told her I had a girlfriend."

Jade scoffed. "And that makes it alright does it? You think it's okay for my boyfriend to 'work' half naked around those type of girls and then come to me and lie about it. You'd be okay, would you, if I was on the front page of a magazine with Ryder Daniels' hands all over my body and knowing that he'd touched me like only you're supposed to be able to?"

The image of that made Beck want to be physically sick, not that he could ever admit that to Jade. Instead, he sighed and ignored the comment. "I already told you I didn't know that it was going to be an underwear shoot, and I would've told you after if I didn't know you'd find some way to blame me for it."

"And there it is again - blaming me." Jade laughed caustically. "I don't get why you don't realise why I'm upset. Why do you never tell me the truth? Do you not see how I have to fear the worst when you constantly lie to me?"

"No, Jade! Because that's your head doing that! You don't have to fear the worst from me because we're supposed to be in a loving, trusting relationship. You're not supposed to believe that I could do those things to you."

"Then maybe you should stop giving me reasons to."

Beck looked away, his jaw pulsing in anger. The room felt thick and foggy, and not in the usual way. "Whatever this was, Jade," Beck began, with eerie calmness. "maybe it shows that we're not supposed to be together right now. How can we have a stable relationship and be good parents if I'm always one conversation with a girl away from you breaking up with me? How can I be with someone who I can't trust to work with me to keep our son's life as normal as possible?"

"Normal? God, do you know how stupid that sounds? We're sixteen, Beck, and that child is our flesh and blood! How could we ever be normal? How can I ever be normal?" She choked.

"Jade, please." Beck sighed, reaching for her hands. She pulled them away, almost flinching at his touch in a way that made him swear he could taste bile at the back of his throat. "I don't want you to feel like that."

"Well too bad, Beck, cause you may think you're perfect, but I'm not. And maybe the only way that I can cope with everything that goes on in my head and my life is by accepting that I'm not normal and my son's life will never be normal, but I am trying my best. I can't be what he deserves; I know that and I don't need you to tell me that to know that you know it too-"

At this, Beck tried to interrupt but she waved away his protests.

"-no, I know it's true, Beck. That's what this conversation is all about, is it not? I can't be the mother that he deserves, but do you not think that that kills me inside? I know that already, and I don't need you to remind me of it. You knew what kind of person I was when you asked me to be your girlfriend, you knew what kind of person I was when you slept with me and you sure as hell knew who I was when you agreed to keep this baby, so you can't just turn around now and say that you can't deal with my behaviour because you need your son to have a stable home life because when was that ever going to happen with me?" She yelled, tears streaming down her face at this point. Not that she cared. If the mascara could obscure her vision, she thought she'd probably welcome it.

"That's not what I said." Beck replied defiantly. It killed him to see her crying in front of him, because of him, but he couldn't back down now.

"Yeah, well you didn't have to." She sniffed, raising her hands to her streaking eyes. Without another word, she suddenly turned away from Beck and began to head back to her car.

A "Jade, wait!" hung in the realm between the said and the unsaid, but ultimately it was never spoken, and she blearily forced her car door open and out of reach of his voice anyway. Beck was so used to calling after her and backing down just so she would come back that he almost surprised himself with the silence. All that was able to break it was the sound of the exhaust as she drove away, though from what exactly he wasn't yet sure.

He felt like his bones were being dragged down as he turned back to the RV, like he'd been swimming in all of his clothes. But drowning seemed the better verb. A light caught his eye as he opened the door, and he noticed both of his parents staring at him from the kitchen. They averted his gaze when he caught them, pretending to wash up, but he'd already seen them, had already computed their unspoken thoughts.

Jade was right, he mused. Maybe, sometimes, the harshest words are those left unsaid.