He didn't let fear take over him like most children did when he was younger. He didn't hide under his blanket when he imagined a shadow, for he was the shadow, and he had only just begun to frighten himself.

He remembered looking in the mirror a lot when he turned ten years old. He remembered tracing his fingers across his face and jawline, watching how his features were getting stronger month by month, even if he sometimes was just imagining it.

He wanted to grow up, he wanted to be stronger than anybody else. And he vowed that he would be as he looked at his reflection with a straight posture and clenched fists.

That year he found out the pleasure of getting off by his own hand, and the phase of doing exactly that passed at age thirteen when he began to let other girls do it for him. They would be his age usually, maybe a year or two older.

Jaxson has always been a good looking child. Cute dimples, chocolate brown hair and freckles on his nose, anything would point to him being a perfect child just by the looks of him. However, as he grew the small town he lived in began to wonder about the boy that used to skip around with his friends in the large field with the aging oak tree.

Ever since Jaxson had taken the life of a young girl with one simple push and labeled it as an accident to the public, he begun to sit in the dark and look at his reflection more often than usual.

His mother and father noticed before they left, and knew something was up when he began to want nothing more than black T-shirt's for Christmas instead of an Xbox like most other boys his age wanted.

They didn't stay long after Jaxson began blasting music and throwing things against his bedroom wall.

Like most parents, they would assume this was a phase and it would pass. But his parents, however, packed up and left just months after he began doing so, as if waiting anxiously to have the the perfect reason to bolt.

Little did they know though that it was simply a phase, for now that he was seventeen all he enjoyed was the silence of his own room other than deafening loud music.

His favorite music now, however, was Mattie and the way she spoke and danced. It was the way her lips moved when she says his name, the way she smiled at him when he would give her one of his billions of compliments that he had stored inside of his head, the way she was his and still is.

Mattie thought of Jaxson this way as well, only not as extreme. She loved him, loved the way that he loved her and how he wasn't afraid to
show everyone that he was dating the girl that was invisible to everyone else but his own eyes.

She knew she was nothing special. Nothing even close compared to the other girls around her High School. She sometimes wondered what made Jaxson get drawn to her in the first place.

Mattie knew it couldn't have been her body that caught his attention, simply because of her figure that she personally thought needed some work. However, that thought disappeared each time she imagined Jaxson placing his lips against her stretch marks just like he always did each time they made love, and she knew each time that it happened that she was in love with the boy in black.

He was reeling her in steer by steer, and her oblivious mind let him, for she has never been in love before and knew not of the dangers of it.

"What?" Mattie looked at her mother in disbelief, concentrating on her wide eyes that were lacking their usual light.

"I was thinking a lot Mattison, and you're a seventeen year old girl, a woman." She began to tear up, and Mattie assumed it was because the time of giving up her daughter to the real world was nearing.

However the reason for Mattison's mothers tears were for a completely different reason. They were fearful tears- tears that pricked at her eyes and burned down her cheeks as she began thinking about the boy that threatened Mattie's life.

She swallowed hard and looked at her daughter, her head throbbing and her tongue burning to tell her what occurred just that night.

"Wait, so you're saying I can date Jaxson?" Mattie stepped closer, a smile lifting at the corners of her lips. Her mother wiped at her eyes and nodded, forcing a painful smile upon her face as Mattie wrapped her arms around her and squeezed.

"Why did you change your mind?" Mattie asked after releasing from the hug.

Her mother hesitated, and was beginning to contemplate spilling all of what Jaxson had done until a loud knock sounded at the door.

"Do you think it's Tim?" Mattie raised a brow, not getting a reply out of her mom.

She then quickly crossed the living room and opened the door, revealing none other than Jaxson himself. He was dressed in a black tee and his regular jeans, and to Mattie's surprise his hair was gelled back. She then gasped lightly, visibly surprised.

She looked back to her mother with a grin, "you invited him over didn't you?"

She stayed silent, a knot growing in her stomach at the sight of Jaxson.

He then gave her a cold stare and raised a dark brow, instantly causing her to reply.

"Yes, I did." She said rushingly, holding her hands together to keep them from shaking afterwards.

Jaxson replaced his hard expression with a smiling one just as Mattie turned to face him with parted lips.

"I was just as shocked as you are when she called me." He told Mattie, switching his gaze to look at his old fling with dangerous eyes.

"I just wanted you to be happy." She said with a shaky voice, attempting to cover it with a cough afterwards.

Mattie turned around and went to hug her mother once again, not believing what was happening. It was just that night that Jaxson and herself had said goodbye for what she thought was for the last time, and now her mother was telling her that she could be with him.

It was a confusing situation, and though the story seemed a little off considering that she knew her mother and thought she would never have called Jaxson herself, she accepted it without another word before whispering a small thank you in her ear and turning around to walk out the door and go to school with Jaxson.

He then put a toned arm around her shoulder, "You ready to go?" He asked and kissed her lips, letting in linger for a while before opening his eyes to look at Mattie's mother as he did so.

Her stomach began to knot again, and it made her nauseous at the memories of him doing the same thing to her years earlier. Fearful tears pricked at her eyes again.

"Jaxson," Mattie blushed, uncomfortable at the thought of her mom watching.

"Sorry," he leaned closer to her ear, "we'll have more time later." Jaxson smiled as she began to grow pink, and he couldn't wait to bury himself into her to make her cheeks get red.
All four of them, he thought with a grin.

"Y'all are going to be late, better hurry on." Her mother waved them on, wanting to simply sink to the floor and cry as soon as they left.

"Thank you again Momma, he makes me happy." Mattie smiled and looked up at Jaxson as he put his arm around her.

And with that, they both turned around to walk outside, but not before Jaxson turned his head and winked at Mattie's mother.

"You have a nice day, Miss Noelle." He hollered from the front door with a grin towards her.

She then attempted to try and swallow the lump in her throat that seemed to be growing by the second, and as he closed the front door behind himself and her daughter, she collapsed to her knees and weeped those same fearful tears into her shaking hands.

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