There was always a part of me that wondered if it were easier not knowing my father. For me, he was just a name, on occasion, an image my mother would vividly craft, but refuse to allow me to have a photograph of. As I watched Onyx on his patio, brooding over his father, I couldn't help but wonder if his life would have been better without Adam in the picture. Hell, he was hardly around as it was, and when he did decide to poke his ugly head in, it was only to stir up trouble before he disappeared again.

Mom had been home less than me, and that was with my overflowing schedule of winter formal prep with Angie, work, and trying to catch up in Government. It'd been a long, emotionally wrecking week and I had slept about as much as Onyx, given I was constantly bouncing back and forth between houses to check on him and my mother.

As usual, Mom refused to show any real emotion; she'd offer a sad smile and sometimes when she was busy planning funeral arrangements, I'd catch her eyes growing misty. The second she'd notice me in the room, she'd blink them away and be back to her usual, optimistic self. Onyx hadn't left his house all week. He'd refused to get up and go to school. He refused to answer the door. He refused to acknowledge his own existence. Unfortunately for him, my mother had a key and had been leaving it with me when she left the house to ensure that I was checking on him.

Tomorrow night was winter formal, and though I knew he had no desire to go, I felt the need to try and drag him out of bed. Olivia's funeral was Saturday morning and I knew, without a flicker of doubt, he'd probably pull a disappearing act afterward.

I waited until Adam had climbed his moody ass back into his car and sped off out of the neighborhood to cross the lawn and jog up his driveway before he could slam the door in my face.

"Onyx!"

He froze mid step in the doorway. "Go home, Aurora."

"First of all, you seriously need a shower. I can smell you from over here." I wasn't going to let him do this. This was far from what I'd promised Olivia. "Second, I'm not going anyway. Tonight is your lucky day. My manager gave me the next four days off, and that means your stuck with me."

"Yeah, I'm good." he muttered, starting to shut the door. I rushed him and slipped through before he could, immediately bringing the back of my hand to my nose when I got a good waft of the rancid smell.

I lifted my head up and met his eyes, but he only shrugged when he saw me, "You invited yourself in."

"Go shower."

"I'm going to bed."

Rather than give him the space I knew he wanted, I trailed a safe distance behind him. "When was the last time you changed clothes? Or showered? Have you eaten?"

"I'm fine, Aurora." he didn't even have enough energy to sound irritated. His voice lacked emotion in general. "Go home."

"Look, Onyx. I don't want to scrub my eyes out with soap, but I will." I ignored his previous comment. "I'll force you out of those clothes and into the shower myself if I have to."

As he lowered himself on to the edge of his bed, a faint smile tugged at the inner corners of his chapped lips. "Are you even tall enough to get this shirt off me?"

I smiled, "No, but with you sitting—"

I trailed off as I edged closer, but he immediately flew to the other side of his bed and shot me a warning look. "Don't you dare."

"Then be the big boy you are and go shower." I answered, crossing my arms. "I miss her too, Nyx, but this isn't what she'd want. This house is filthy, you look even worse than you smell, and I'm really trying not to fall apart right now. So please, go shower and I'll start cleaning."

I thought for sure he'd deflect again, but his shoulders slowly slumped forward and he pointed at his dresser over my shoulder. "Can you toss me a pair of boxers?"

Disgusted, I turned and pinched a pair between my thumb and index finger and tossed them to him across the room. "Ew."

"Oh, come on." There was a hint of my Onyx in his response. "They're clean. You're about to touch far worse."

"Maybe, but they've still been," a made a gesture toward his groin. "there."

For the first time in a little over a week, a genuine laugh escaped him. "You're such a child."

"Says the guy who's refusing to shower." I waved him off with my hand. "Now go. Shoo."

He shook his head as he exited the room. I started to gather up all his dirty clothes in one arm, breathing through my mouth. Once I'd gotten all his clothes into a basket, I headed for the laundry room next to the garage and started loading the washer. I'd just set the empty basket at my feet when I heard a loud slam from the bathroom.

My internal confliction of never seeing a boy naked before had me hesitating, but knowing something could have happened to Onyx had my feet moving before I could comprehend what I was doing.

"Onyx?" I knocked gently. "You okay?"

There was only silence on the other side of the door. Shit.

"Nyx?" I tried again, reaching for the knob. "I'm coming in."

Please cover up, I mentally pleaded.

To my immediate relief he'd wrapped the towel around his lower abdomen, but to my horror he was holding his wrist, blood trickling from his knuckles down his forearm.

"What happened?" I asked, closing the distance and grabbing a rag from under the sink. "Onyx?"

"I slipped." he eventually whispered. "The top of my hand caught the railing to keep me from falling. It's been loose for ages, Mom. . . she begged him to fix it. He didn't. Came off with my weight on it and the back of my hand caught the casing."

My eyes flickered from his bloody hand to the rail on the floor at our feet. "Okay. Um, do you have a first aid kit somewhere?"

"I'm fine."

"Onyx, you're not fine. You're bleeding everywhere. I need to clean it up so it doesn't get infected."

"Sky, please stop." It wasn't the words that had my entire body tensing, but the vulnerability and plea in them. Tilting my head back a fraction of an inch so I could get a good look at him, my heart started to sink.

His lack of maintaining his hygiene and grooming habits had five o'clock shadow aging him a few years along his jaw, his blue eyes hooded with exhaustion and bloodshot from excessive crying, were misty with fresh tears as he stared down at me. I'd seen Onyx Hayes a lot of things, but this. . . I couldn't handle. I fell back a step and crouched, starting to dig through old shampoo bottles and other toiletries until I'd found a box of band aids in the far back corner.

"I need you to stop being so stubborn." I pretended as though their wasn't a hairline crack in my heart as I tended to the wound, ready to shatter entirely the moment he lost control of his emotions again. "I'm trying here, okay? I know you don't want me here. I know you don't want to get out of bed and be with the living, but you have too. Because I promised her, Nyx. I promised her I'd take care of you."

"I don't need you to take care of me." his voice was barely audible.

I stretched one of my arms, my hand speckled with dry blood, and touched my palm to the roughness of scuff on his right cheek. "You do, Onyx. The sooner you accept that, the easier this will be. I'm not going anywhere."

He leaned into my touch and for a second, I thought he may break away and push me out of the bathroom, but he only touched his injured hand on top of my own and slowly opened his eyes so they were burning into my own.

"Okay."

**

"Winter formal is tomorrow." I knew it probably wasn't the best small talk given our circumstances, but it'd surely distract him from the huge, cold, hallow elephant in the room. I shifted the paper plate with three slices on to my forearm as I grabbed the sodas from the counter. "You going?"

He watched in awe as I hit the light with the bottom of the plate in my right hand and headed for him on the couch. This was easy for me, not that he knew that. Carrying tubs of popcorn and sodas for years had done good for something, I suppose.

"What?" he mumbled once I'd sat down and handed over his pizza and Coke. "What'd you ask?"

"Winter Formal." I repeated, grabbing the remote from the coffee table. "You going?"

I should have been uncomfortable, blushing profusely given that Onyx was only in his boxers as we waited for his clothes to dry, but the relief that he'd actually done what I'd asked and helped me clean the kitchen had outweighed the thought up until this point. If I kept my eyes on the screen I could pretend he was fully clothed.

"Why?" he eventually said after a few bites of pizza. "I have nobody to go with and I don't have the time or patience to deal with Wells and his shit. Plus, Mom's funeral is Monday."

"You could go with me." I suggested, than realizing how that sounded, I added, "And Mikey, Levi, and Angie. I think Angie might have a date too, not sure though. She said she'd let me go tonight."

Onyx remained quiet for a few minutes before he asked, "So you're fifth wheeling?"

"Yes sir."

"Why even go?"

"Because I know in ten years I'll look back and be happy I did." I replied, turning to face him. "I don't want to have any regrets, you know?"

He nodded but didn't answer verbally, and I turned up the TV once I'd landed on one of the Fast and the Furious movies, figuring he'd probably like it.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"You just did, Onyx."

He rolled his eyes, "Seriously."

"Go ahead."

"Did you come over here because you promised my mother you'd take care of me or because your mom made you?" he paused, setting his plate on his lap. "Or did you come here because you genuinely cared?"

I opened my mouth, thinking I had the response already, but shut it the more I thought and processed the question.

Initially I had come because I'd promised Olivia, but the less I saw Onyx at school, the more worried I got, the more I thought about him.

"As hard as it may be for both of us to believe, I think I'm here out of free will and choice right now." I shuddered. "What has happened to me?"

"You fell victim to my charm." he joked, taking another bite. "I told you I'd change your perception of me."

I fought the childish urge to stick my tongue out and set my empty plate and soda on the table, flopping back against the cushion with a groan. He discarded his own trash on top of mine before he leaned back and stared at me from where he was resting his head against a throw pillow.

"What?" I asked.

He just shook his head, "Nothing."

"No, tell me." I sat up. "We've got all night."

"My mom, before she got sick last Saturday, asked what happened. Why you had a black eye and my stupidly perfect face was beaten and bruised beyond recognition. She used different words though."

I cracked a smile.

"I told her what happened and she looked at me and said, "I know you didn't like the idea of her with that boy from the get-go, but was that because you knew he'd hurt her or because you were mad that he asked her out in the first place.""

I felt my smile grow just a little. That sounded so very Olivia that it made my heart hurt.

"My mom always had this. . . this fantasy that you and me would ride off into the sunset." he dropped his gaze to my legs inches from his own. "She thought it was only a matter of time before you came to your senses and realized he were hopelessly in love with me."

I gasped, chucking a pillow at him. "She did not say that."

"She didn't." he said through a laugh. "But she had that fantasy. She told me a couple weeks before she died that I better not let you disappear to the other side of the country for college and lose contact."

"Onyx—"

"Look, Sky, I thought it was silly too, this look storybook idea our mother's had hoped for all these years. Hell, I bet they planned our wedding before we were even born." I laughed at that, because knowing my mom, it probably wasn't far off. "But the more I get to know you, the more I want to know. The more I feel like I need to know."

I started to shift, unsure of where this was going.

"I'll go to the dance with you tomorrow," he hesitated, and not comfortable with the silence, I prompted a completion of the proposition

"But?"

"But I need you to let me take you as a date." he moved closer. "You said you don't want to look back and have any regrets. I don't either. You deserve one night where you get to live in your very own little fairytale, Sky."