A month later...

'We often assume that shy people are extremely observant, somehow making up for the questions they want to ask but don't have the courage to express. I am not observant, at least, not as much as I'd like to. I did not see the signs for Hashley.

Maybe my brain saw them but did not have the tools to interpret them. Maybe Hashley wanted to protect me and tried her best to hide the signs.

We all feel the need to protect the persons we love. It's human. We want to see them suffer as little as possible because their suffering hurts us as well. We want to envelop them in the bubble wrap that is our reassuring words, creating this thick barrier between them and the ugliness of the world.

By doing this, we not only push the people further away from the truth, but we also put ourselves in even more complicated positions. We find ourselves alone with no one to rely on.

Lately, I've been seeing the signs when it comes to Nathan. I already knew something was wrong, but I can tell it has gotten worse over the past couple of weeks: the dark circles around his eyes, the weight loss, his absenteeism... The last time we went out, he left in the middle of our date with no explanation but the fact that it was an emergency. And then for the next three days, I have not heard from him. Whenever I try to talk to him about what is wrong, he brushes it off, changing the subject.

I can't help him, he decided to envelop me with a thick layer of bubble wrap with no way to escape. The signs that he needs support and help are here, flickering over his head. Yet, he won't let me find the switch to turn them off.'

"Well, this is the end of our third session Jade," Dr. Drian says as he closes his notebook and pushes up his glasses up his long nose. "I know you may not see it, but you are making progress here. I will see you next week."

"Thank you, Dr. Drian. Goodbye," I smile politely as I retrieve my bag from the floor and exit his office.

Each time I leave a therapy session, I feel heavy, like I'm drowning yet I still fight to get some air. It's tiring. And after each session, I want to quit and lock myself up in my bedroom. But I can't, I promised my parent I would do this for myself, for my own mental health. And as the doctor told me, it will get easier only if I talk about my problems.I started therapy three weeks ago.

I had another anxiety attack after Hannah's voicemail and my parents freak out so much my mother started crying. I don't remember much of it, it felt like my brain had disconnected from my body. I slept for fifteen hours after that. I remember when I woke up, Nathan was there. He was sitting on my bed next to me, his hand caressing my hair gently. My father had to leave for an emergency at work and my mother was at the grocery store. She didn't want to leave me alone, so when Nathan stopped by the house for the tenth time in order to talk to me, she let him in. He even ate dinner with us.

I did not come back on my words though. We need a break. Although I know this is clearly against the "let's take a break" rules, we went out a couple of times on dates. Nathan didn't have to insist much to convince me to go out with him. But it's more like two close friends hanging out together, we don't touch, don't kiss and don't show our love with gestures. We don't spend as much time together as we used to, we hang out together at school, with Nathan's friend but that's it. No more sleepovers. And although Nathan was completely against the idea at first, he seems to have gotten used to it, almost too much in my opinion. But I know it's not fair of me to think that way, I can't expect him to still have these small attentions toward me when I clearly asked him not to. It's was hard at first, to not kiss him, take his hand, touch his face. But we are having this break in order to preserve the possibility of an "us" in the future.

I haven't had another anxiety attack since I started therapy. Every time I feel one coming, I do the breathing exercise my psychologist taught me to gather myself. Sometimes I regret stopping therapy back when I lived in Miami. Maybe the psychologist could have helped me if I had talked to him, maybe I didn't give the therapy enough time to see any results. But we moved here and it seemed like a good excuse to stop. I was away from everything that could have reminded me of my sister, right? A whole new life offered to me where I was free to live by my rules and pretend to be fine.

I hid my feelings to everyone, including my family and Nathan. Slowly, I started to open up but even today, I still have a hard time doing so because sometimes I feel like my feelings are not valid, that I should no longer feel that way because according to what people are expecting from a person who lost someone important, my grief should have faded after a few months and everything should almost be back to normal. I was, and sometimes still am, scared to talk about my feelings because of people's reactions. And even though I know Nathan, I am scared he will get bored with me for feeling down so often, and I don't want him to picture me as the sad broken girl he is, or should I say was, dating. I just want to be normal. Yet I don't know what my new normal is. It definitely can't be the "normal" I used to be. That's what my therapy session was about today. We tried to find my new "normal", although my psychologist told me there is not one normality for everyone, but a billion different kind to fit each person's feelings. And he explained to me that every emotion is valid, and I should not be ashamed to feel them. I know all of this, but it is so hard to apply it to my own life.

I cross the busy street and get in my mother's car parked on the other side of the road. We grew a lot closer, we finally stopped hiding our pain from each other and we started to talk about it. I think this is the best therapy we could have ever gotten. Of course, it's not perfect, we are a normal family with its fight and disagreements. But the communication we once lost is re-established, with its ups and downs.

"How was it?" she asks as she drives down the main street.

"It was less hard than the last session," I tell her and she nods. "Your appointment is tomorrow, right?"

"Yes, and I'll have to head to my office later today to finish some work so I might be back home late. Is that okay? I don't want to leave you alone if you don't want to and-" She says worriedly.

"It's okay Mom, I'm fine." She looks at me sideways and raises one of her eyebrows at me. "For real! And we both know I would have cooked for the both of us since you can't even cook pancakes without burning half of them. You being at work late means no cooking for me!"

She laughs before adding, "It only happened twice!"

"Yeah, because we didn't leave you in the kitchen alone again," I laugh and she joins me.

"Hey, maybe you could invite Nathan tomorrow night? You know, just to relieve your poor mother from her guilt of leaving you," she says glancing at me.

"You would be relieved to know me in the house alone with a boy you don't know much about? I'm really doubting this parenting technique..." I comment looking out the window as we pass before the high school.

"Jade, you are an adult now, I know you are a mature and responsible young woman who knows how to use protections and-" she starts but I cut her off immediately.

"Okay, we don't need to have 'the talk' right when I can't escape it. We are in a moving car and I can't jump off of it without getting another cast. Let's just say I agreed to invite him and we stopped the conversation there," I say, embarrassed as I wish I could disappear inside the car seat.

My mother laughs and shake his head but doesn't push it. We finish the drive in awkward silence, me too embarrassed to talk and her too amused by my reaction to relieve me from it. She pulls up in front of the hospital entrance and we agree to meet here again in an hour after I finally got that freaking cast off. My appointment is not for another forty-five minutes, so I decide to go find a vending machine when my stomach rumbles for the third time in ten minutes. It only takes me five minutes to find one on the second floor. Sometimes I feel like I have in inside GPS for food. Especially for unhealthy snacks.

I buy two chocolate candy bars and lean on the wall next to the elevator. I'm lost on Instagram, eating my worries away when the elevator doors open with a ding. I mechanically glance up and do a double-take as I see Nathan's mother pushing Liam's wheelchair. I don't know why, but I get the feeling I shouldn't be here, seeing this part of Nathan's life. Without thinking, I open the blue door next to me and quickly get inside the room before closing the door rapidly. Thank God, it's not a patient's room but a storage room. It would have been awkward.

A million questions are resonating in my head as I peek through the small window on the door to see if they are still there. I catch a glimpse of Liam's face when he turns around to look at his mom: he is even skinnier than he was, his face is pale and tired, all his hair is gone. He looks like the shadow of that joyful little boy I first met at Nathan's house.

Once they are out of my sight, I slowly and carefully open the door, my head poking out of the storage room to check if they are still in the corridor. Left is clear, right is - damn. Aaron is walking out of the elevator and he sees me there, half inside a hospital closet with my half-eaten chocolate bar in one hand.

He stops in his track but remains silent. He stares at me for a few seconds before looking ahead of him, probably at Nathan's mother and Liam walking away. He lowers his head, his eyes to the floor as he rubs his neck and lets out a short breath, "Shit." It's the first word I hear from his mouth since he left my house a month ago, right after I asked him what Nathan was hiding from me, right before he stormed out of my room without a word.

I never knew what it was about. I had a panic attack a few minutes after, Nina called my parents and that's pretty much all I remember from that day. I tried calling him and texting him but he never answered. And he avoids me at school, so I never got to know what he was supposed to say. And I didn't want to ask Nathan about it, it never felt like the right time and I didn't want to throw Aaron and his sister under the bus. Plus, everything seemed to be fine with Nathan.

Aaron looks up at me, worry clear in his blues eyes. "Let's go to the cafeteria, I'll buy you a coffee," he says softly as if he was afraid to scare me with the words coming out of his mouth.

The thing is: I know he will. I nod and close the storage room door behind me before following him down the stairs into the hospital cafeteria. Aaron pays for our two coffees and we sit at one of the tables in the corner of the bright room. It's mostly empty, the all-glass walls making it look even bigger.

"I guess I don't have much of a choice but to tell you now..." Aaron's words trail off as he takes a sip of his coffee, his eyes focused on the white table.

I shake my head slowly. "I wish it would have come from him."

"I know," he breathes and drops his head between his shoulders. "The Perkins are like a second family to me. Nathan always considered me like a brother, I went through the difficult times with him: his brother's diseases, his parents splitting up. When we were thirteen, his father left them. He told Nathan that he and his mother weren't getting along anymore and that he would rather leave than involve them in the arguments they had. Nathan believed him, I mean, who would have thought otherwise? Nathan was always raving about the things he taught him. He was a great father. Until he wasn't he was no longer around to be a father at all. Nathan blamed his mother for years. It can still be a bit tense between them sometimes, although Nathan realized a few years ago the only person he should blame was his father. He knows his father was just a coward who left because he couldn't handle my brother's disease. What kind of father does that? He never caught up on Liam, he never sent them a letter, a mail, or even a freaking text in five years. He just cut them out of his miserable life," Aaron sighs, pushing his hair back from his forehead. "My point is, Nathan is always one the reserved side when it comes to things that affect him. And it's not just with you, he does this with everyone including his family. He chooses to only show the nice side of his life and keep the rest for himself."

I nod, trying to process all the information Aaron just gave me. I knew Nathan's father was not in the picture, and to be honest I thought he past away as Nathan mentioned him a few time using past tenses. I don't know what to answer to that. I can't imagine what it feels like to be abandoned by one of your parents. Aaron presses his lips together as he glances at me before returning his gaze to his coffee cup.

"I know it is not my place to tell you all of this, it's not even my place to decide whether you should know or not. But you made it your place when you started dating Nathan. And after what you saw today, you made it my place to tell you what is happening in his life." He takes a sip from the white plastic cup. "As you know, Liam has chronic leukemia. His state was stable for the past year, the doctors were optimistic he would have plenty of time ahead of him as the medicine and treatments seemed to work well on him. That was until two months ago when he passed out in their kitchen. Since that day, his state only worsened."

I'm shaking my head now, my hand covering my gaping mouth as a tear escapes my eyes to fall down on my lap. Aaron his staring at me, his eyes slightly glossy. Neither of us says a word for the next few minutes. All I want to do is find Nathan and wrap my arms around him, never letting him go. I understand his distance now: we have not spent time at his house in a long time and he often left in a hurry when we were hanging out.

"The doctors said it's only a matter of weeks now, maybe one or two months at most. We are all crushed, but we keep it all in for Liam. He is weak so we have to be strong for him," he quickly wipes the tear falling from his left eye and look away at the window.

"Do you -" I start but I have to swallow the lump in my throat to finish this sentence. "Do you think I have to wait until Nathan tells me to go and visit Liam?"

"Jade... It's really complicated. More than you think," he sighs again for the hundredth time, pinching the bridge of his nose. "There is another reason why he did not want you to know. I tried to convince him to talk to you, so he would have someone to rely on, someone to support him throughout this hard stage of his life. But he categorically refused to let you know without telling me why. But honestly, I think it has to do with what you went through this past year."

Of course. It all makes sense now. Nathan has a front-row seat when it comes to all the issues I have been dealing with these past months. He saw me at my worst, he helped me get back on my feet only to watch me fall harder each time. He was there on my first day at school when I had a panic attack and he has been there ever since. He saw how damaged and broken I am. And Nathan being too selfless for this world, he chose to protect me once again from the ugliness of the reality that surrounds us. Nathan is my shelter from the ugly truth as much as I'm his.

"He is going to kill me if he ever finds out I told you," Aaron whispers after a few minutes, rubbing his eyes. I drink the rest of my coffee cup and grab my bag from the floor, setting it on my lap.

"He won't know you told me. But no matter what, promise me you won't tell him you did," I say, looking at him right in the eyes with determination.

"Why?" he asks with furrowed brows, a little surprised by the tone of my voice.

"If he wanted me to know, he would have told me. Now it's my turn to protect him," I respond as I stand up and retrieve my bag and jacket. I don't wait for his answer and head out of the cafeteria to be on time for my appointment. I don't want to be protected, I don't want to be treated like some fragile girl made of glass ready to shatter at any tremor. It's not Nathan's responsibility to make sure I can get up in the morning without feeling crushed on the inside. It's mine. And yet, I understand why he chose to make it his responsibility. Because I'm going to do so myself, even if it ruins the possibility of us.

~

A/N

We made it to 50k views! Thank you so much for your support, even with my chaotic update schedule you keep showing me your love for this story and it means so much to me. You guys are so amazing, I'm going to hurry and finish the next chapter so you can read it soon!

XXX

Mora