I lost it. Fucking lost it.

Screaming, I pounded my fists at him, attacking him. I clawed, I scraped, I bruised, I hit. I even kicked him over his damn shin.

"Sophie!" He shouted, blocking my furious hits. "Soph!"

"No!" I screamed at him, probably alerting the neighbors. "How fucking dare you! You come here after three fucking months and you just—" My voice pitched into something supersonic, so instead I just kept pounding him, hitting him everywhere he would allow me.

"Soph!" He caught both my forearms and pushed me into my apartment. I fought to get loose, but he didn't let me. He kicked the door shut with his foot and then whirled me around, slamming me up against it. "Sophie!"

"No!" I cried, not realizing that tears were streaming down my face before I tasted salt on my lips. I managed to get one hand free and I started hitting his chest again, slapping it to get free from his capture. "You fucking shit! You p-put me through h-hell!"

"I know, Soph..."

"Three months! I fucking cried for you for three months and you fucking cheated on me, you jackass!" I sobbed, punching him as hard as I could. It probably wasn't that hard. "You broke me, you r-ruined me, and then you just disappeared, you cheating bastar—"

Alex cut me off by pounding me against the door, sealing his lips over mine. I cried uncontrollably when he caught both my wrists and pressed them to my chest, locking me in up against him.

His lips moved softly against mine, but they were so starved. Everything inside me ached, and whatever tiny piece of myself I had managed to heal after he left, shattered into a million new pieces as his lips brushed against mine. He nibbled at my bottom lip, kissed the corners of my mouth, before he pried my lips open with his tongue. He then dived inside my mouth and kissed me even deeper than before, like my taste was his drug and he desperately needed a fix.

I sobbed. I kissed him back. If that really was the case, I was an addict, too. I stopped struggling and instead grasped the collar of his shirt and pulled him closer. Like the pathetic excuse of a girl I was.

He was everywhere. His taste was in my mouth, his scent was in my nose, his warmth surrounded me, his touch was burning me.

Alexander.

His hand cupped my cheek and brushed my tears away with his thumb, while his other hand sought out the small of my back and pulled me closer to him. He let out a small groan when my own hands traveled up to the nape of his neck and combed through his locks that had begun to curl. They always did that when his hair became too long. I used to cut it for him. He probably hadn't cut it since he left.

His five o' clock shadow scratched against my chin, but I had always loved his stubbles. I had always loved everything about him, even the sides of himself that he hated. They all completed him and made him who he was.

"I didn't cheat," He suddenly whispered. His lips broke away from mine, but hovered just above them. "Soph, I didn't cheat on you."

My heart stopped. My eyes that had fluttered closed now opened themselves and looked up at him. "What?"

His eyes. God, there they were. The teal orbs I had dreamt about every fucking night. They were looking at me with that same expression I described earlier. Deep, dark circles roamed beneath them, but as he looked at me, they didn't show any tiredness or fatigue. Just... love.

"I didn't cheat on you, Sophie Reynolds," He said, pressing a lingering, velvet kiss to my cheek. "It was all a lie, you have to believe me."

Now my world fell apart. A lie? How could it be a lie? I fucking walked in on the morning show, I smelled the booze, I saw the scene, I saw the fucking pink thong lying on the floor! How could all that be a lie? Unless... unless it all was...

"You staged it," I breathed, my throat closing. There was no questioning in my voice, I was stating a fact. "You made it seem like... you cheated."

He nodded slowly and brushed my cheek again. "I had to. It was the only way."

I shut my eyes again and tried to make heads and tails of it.

He didn't cheat. He wasn't lying. Or was he? I couldn't tell anymore. I thought I knew him – and I did, but I had been too stubborn to admit that cheating was what he'd always do – but now I wasn't so sure. If he had lied so well back then, then why shouldn't this be a lie as well? After all, he was the master of ly—

"Oh, my God."

A lightbulb went up inside my head. So many thoughts passed through my mind in the matter of mere seconds, it made me dizzy.

I couldn't believe I fucking hadn't realized this sooner. I had of course been quite busy with being a pathetic excuse for a feminist, but still. I should've realized.

"What is it?" Alex murmured, brushing my cheek again. How I had missed his touch. "What are you thinking?"

"I want you to tell me everything that happened from the moment your dad called you on your birthday," I breathed, sucking in a breath. "I want every detail, don't leave anything out."

Pure shock flashed across Alex's face. "How did you—"

"Nuh-uh. You explain first. Then me."

Still looking at me stunned, Alex drew a little away from me, even if it seemed very reluctant. He ran a hand through his tousled hair, messing it up even more. God, why did that look so fucking sexy?

"Soph, if we're going to do this, you can't look at me like that," Alex said, his Adam's apple bobbing slowly. His eyes trailed down my body, clearly appreciating me wearing a dress today. I had to give myself a mental gold star for foreseeing this. Oh God, shit was going to go down later after we talked, wasn't it? The anticipation alone made me squirm and had my core clenching. My nipples hardened.

He noticed. "Soph... I swear to God..."

"We need a drink," I said, trying to shake off the way his eyes just darkened. I swore I even caught a movement his pants. Good God. "A strong drink."

"I'm gonna go take a seat in your living room if you don't mind."

"Be my guest."

"I plan on being more than that." He walked into the open living room and took a seat in my white couch.

I shivered and was completely frozen in my spot. More than that... those were dangerous words.

Wait, wasn't I supposed to be doing something right now? Oh right, drinks.

A few moments later we were seated on my couch, each with our own beer. I chugged down a good mouthful, wanting the alcohol to calm my nerves.

"Don't get drunk now, Soph. I very vividly remember what happened last time you got wasted."

I closed my eyes for a long moment.

The Alexanpherbet.

God help me.

"Sophie." His voice sounded husky. It made me squirm again. Three months. "Fuck, we need to have this conversation fast."

I finally opened my eyes and watched as the bulge in his pants strained against his denim. Fuck indeed. "Then start talking."

He blew out a breath and set his beer down on the sofa table. "Alright, well I guess you already know who called me on my birthday," He bitterly said. "My father called and wanted to recruit me to his business in New York. Naturally I cursed him all the way to hell and back and told him what he could do with his firm, and more specifically, told him in which direction I generally wanted him to fuck."

"Right. So what happened next, what did he say?"

"He told me things. Things that he shouldn't know. How I wasn't really religious, how I used to be an addict, how you and I were... a couple," He said, clenching his fists for some reason. "The dick started blackmailing me. Telling me how he would tell my mom about everything if I didn't come work for him."

"Shit," I mumbled, feeling my heart pound. "So that's why you... did all this? I don't understand."

"There's much more," Alex explained. "He was far from done. I would've been able to handle him telling my mom about everything. It would have been difficult, but in the end we could've made it through. But then he threatened to take my mother's money," He growled, gritting his teeth. "All of them. Empty her accounts. A man with his power and wealth has connections anywhere. He could've made it happen."

God. I now begun to see the whole thing clearly; Either Alex had to come work for his father in New York or let his mother go bankrupt. She worked so hard, day in and night out, to keep a roof over their head. Alexander's father was a cruel man. To take that all away from them, just so he could have his son back...

"Naturally, I didn't want to let that happen," Alex continued, taking a deep breath to calm himself down. "You know me. Nobody messes with any of my girls. Whether it be my mother or my sisters or you, nobody even fucking talks badly to you—oh, that reminds me, that guy that approached you at Miles's party that night before we started dating, I kicked his ass after you left. In the spirit of secrets unfolding, I thought you'd might like to know, but I digress," Alex said, jumping back on track. My mind was swirling, trying to keep up. Did he really beat that dude up because he tried to hit on me? We were going to have to talk about that later too, but that would have to be much later, because—

Focus, you horny twat, I mentally scolded myself. As Alex resumed his storytelling, I did my best to keep my mind out of the gutter.

"So as I was saying, my father blackmailed me, but said he'd give me some time to think. He said he'd be in touch soon enough, but he didn't give a specific time, so I knew I'd have to work fast," Alex told.

"Work fast?" I questioned.

He nodded a single time. "I had already worked out the whole plan by the time he hung up the phone. Right from how I was going to take him down, to keeping all the ones I loved safe," He held a pause and took a deep breath. "It was going to be the goddamn hardest thing I'd ever have to do, but I knew I could do it. I had to. And it all started with you."

My pulse rose to the sky and my heart started beating rapidly. "Me?"

"You were my strongest Achilles heel," He told, his voice lowering in pain. "The only way I could keep everyone safe was to... get rid of you. All of you. You were the most difficult one, so you had to go first. I knew my father would never buy that I'd just magically fallen out of love with you so shortly after our conversation, so instead I had to make him think I'd broken down from the pressure and that I in the process managed to fuck things up with you."

"By cheating," I finished, now beginning to see the shape of his plan. "You knew I'd break up with you."

"You have some pretty solid principles. I remembered your last boyfriend, that dickhead Jason who went around kissing other chicks while you guys were dating. I beat the living shit out of him as well by the way, he wasn't mugged, I just made him tell people that, but again, I digress," Alex continued. My head swirled again. Secret were really coming out now. "I remembered how you said you'd never tolerate cheating. That it was the one thing that would end a relationship with you forever, that there was no coming back from that. So I figured it applied to me as well," He shrugged. "And I was right."

"Alex..."

"You know that anything short of me murdering a person, you would've been willing to work through it with me. So I fake-cheated on you. I set up the whole thing, I even purposely ignited that argument at the club the night before. I wasn't drunk, it was just eyedrops and liquor perfume."

"Smart," I mumbled, feeling slightly irritated for not figuring it out. "Nice acting."

"Thanks." His lips twitched, but it wasn't really a smile. After all, reminiscing about how he broke my heart hardly brought a smile to his face. "So I snapped the ties with you first. Knowing you would probably tell Miles and Jagger, I let that work itself out. I haven't heard anything from them, so I assume you did talk to them about it."

I had mentioned it shortly. I hadn't really wanted to talk about it, but after not giving a sound for nearly a week, the two pranksters had stopped by my home to check if I was okay. The conversation that followed was short and filled with profanities – Italian in Jagger's case. But after that, I'd sorta let go of the contact with them. I told them I needed time and they understood.

"So after that came my ma. I set up a trap for her too and she fell in. We got into a huge argument wherein most of my secrets were divulged. I told her shit that still keeps me up at night," He shook his head and suddenly cupped his face. "God, the look on her face when I told her... told her I blamed her for everything that was wrong with me..."

"Hey," I whispered, scooting closer to him. I wrapped my arms around him. He accepted the comfort gladly. "It's okay. We both know that's not true. So does your mother. I talked to her."

"You... did?" He whispered. He pulled back and looked me, cupping my face. "What did she say? How is she? Is she..."

"She's okay today, still worried, of course. My parents are looking after her and your sisters. They're doing fine."

He exhaled in strong relief before leaning his forehead against my shoulder. "Fuck, Soph. What the hell would I have done without you?"

I combed my fingers through his hair and kissed the side of his head. "You don't ever have to worry about that again."

He sighed content and moved his lips to my neck, kissing me softly. He trailed up the vein in my neck to my ear. The soft groan that rumbled in his throat made my pulse race away.

"Alex..."

"I know, I need to end this fucking story now," He breathed, forcing himself to pull away. "Mind if I speed it up a little?"

I shook my head. "Go ahead."

"Right, so I had broken things off with you, my mom and my friends. Then all I needed was to make my father believe I had fallen off the wagon – so to speak – and fallen into old habits, now that my world was crashing down," He told in a rush, rubbing his arm. He was impatient like me, but we needed to air things out before anything could even remotely happen between us again. "I had made my father powerless by removing my pressure points, but now he had to see I wasn't what he thought I was. So I hit the streets again. Met up with my old friends. Bought some heroin..."

My heart jumped up into my throat and nearly choked me. "Alex."

"I doped up, Soph. I did. I couldn't resist," He breathed out and rubbed his face. I now realized he didn't rub his arm before from anxiousness; He was on edge. "It was supposed to only look like I'd fallen off the wagon, but I just couldn't let go of all the things that had happened. All the shit came down on me and suddenly I held the only remedy I've ever known in my hand..." He shook his head and closed his eyes. "I'm so fucking ashamed, Soph. I started using, I got addicted again. I couldn't stop thinking, but the drugs... the drugs..."

I sat frozen, pressing my lips together to stop myself from crying. God, my heart ached. I loved this boy so much. I loved him, I just couldn't stop. "Alex..."

"But I got out of it. Don't ask me how I fucking did it," He said, blowing out a breath before sucking one in. "Maybe it had something to do with... with knowing that I couldn't be with you as long as I was like that. You wouldn't take me back that way. So that's when I went AWOL. I got sobered up and fuck, I don't even remember most of it. That's saying something when it's coming from me," He said, eying me out. "But I got through it. I had something to do, after all. A plan that I needed to see through.

"After a few weeks of detoxing, I resumed what had been my plan all along. I knew if my father was as powerful as he was and had the power to empty my mother's bank accounts, he had to be involved with some shady people," Alex continued, looking less anxious now that he had passed what had to be the hard part. "And boy was I fucking right."

My heart begun beating fast again. If this was going where I thought it was going... "Alex..."

"I hacked into his company from a fucking library computer, can you believe it?" He scoffed. "The security was a fucking joke. Anyways, the shit I found was goddamn precious. We're talking embezzlement, perjury, money laundering, fraud, bribery, the whole nine," A malicious smirk grew on his lips. "Enough to put him away for years and that was just the shit inside his company. Never mind the fuck that went on on the side. Anyway, naturally I took a copy of everything, transferred it to a thumb-drive and made sure it landed in the right hands. I then called up daddy dearest and I told him that next time he wanted to blackmail someone, he should make sure they weren't me," He smirked, tapping his head. "He said he wanted my brain, well he fucking got it."

I didn't realize I was welling up before Alex suddenly drew me into his arms, pulling me onto his lap. "Alex... my God, I can't believe it."

"You better. I finally took that Mensa test you've been wanting me to take for ages. Guess what? It's poppycock," He snorted. "I fucking aced it in what, 15 minutes? Anyways, I'm a member of Mensa, I nailed my father, and now I'd very much like to nail you."

My eyes widened as he cupped my face and leaned in. My breath stopped. "Alexander..."

"Yes, Sophie," He whispered, brushing his lips against my lips. "I'm here now and I'm not going ever again."

And with that, he pressed his lips against mine and lifted me up, carrying me to my bedroom.

How funny. I had lived here for nearly a month, but not before now did I truly feel home.

• • •

So much explaining to do in just one chapter. Jesus, my balls.