Sophia's head spun, and her vision blurred.

Her breaths came in and out in short bursts. Her face was wet, but she didn't notice the tears. All she could focus on was how no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get enough oxygen.

"Sophia? Sophia? God, Soph, Sophia!"

Sophia's hand twisted into the bedsheet as her mind focused in on the sound of Dean's voice. He was right next to her, but his voice echoed as if he was at the other end of a long tunnel.

Finally, her eyes focused and her surroundings came back with full clarity. Dean sat at the edge of the bed, leaning forward onto his arms, already half-dressed in sweatpants, every muscle in his body tense.

When Sophia finally met his eyes, she was met with a gaze filled with fear.

"Sophia?" Dean whispered.

She looked down at herself. She hugged her knees in front of her chest.

"Here."

Again, back to looking at Dean. This time, he held out a t-shirt.

She took it from him, feeling safer as she covered herself.

"Sophia, tell me what you need," Dean said, his words pleading. "If you need me to go, if you want me to stay..."

"Stay." Her word came out hoarse, her throat nothing but a scrap of sandpaper. "Stay."

The tiniest bit of relief relaxed Dean's shoulders.

But the tidal wave of emotions currently somehow held at bay within Sophia's body threatened to crash over her once again. She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to keep control, but knowing it was futile.

"Whatever you need, just ask, Sophia." Dean's voice sliced through her foggy brain like a guillotine. "Anything."

"You," she managed to choke out. "Just, you to hold me."

A split second later, Dean had her in his lap, his arms encircling her and pulling her tight to his chest. "I'm here, baby, for as long as you need," he murmured, his hand tracing circles across her back.

Sophia collapsed into his chest, snaking her arms around his neck and holding onto him as if her life depended on it, letting out the next round of sobs.

The anxiety and panic of her first tears gave way to a wave of white-hot anger that bubbled like a geyser in her chest. She was supposed to have gotten over this. She was supposed to be better. He wasn't supposed to have this effect on her anymore. He especially wasn't supposed to have this effect on her when she was in the arms of a man who made her feel more cared for than anyone she had ever met.

The slow circles that Dean's hand made on her back, steady and consistent, helped anchor her to reality, keep her from descending back into panic. But the tears wouldn't stop, the hyperventilating wouldn't stop.

Sophia squeezed him harder.

It could have been ten minutes, it could have been an hour, but eventually, Sophia was able to take fuller breaths, her body not shaking as hard. But as she calmed down, a tidal wave of embarrassment washed over her, so much so that she never wanted to lift her head and look Dean in the eye again.

"Fucking hell." The words just spilled out of her mouth, a hoarse whisper that she wasn't even sure if Dean could hear. He didn't move.

"I'm sor—" Sophia stopped herself.

Dean's hand stilled on her back.

Cursing herself for the apology that almost slipped out, Sophia swallowed hard and picked her head up.

Dean's eyes were wide and scared, his jaw tight. Every part of Sophia was bursting to tell him everything, but her insides seized up with the thought that telling him everything might be the end of them.

"Soph," Dean finally spoke, his voice strained, "are you, I need to know that you're going to be okay."

Of course, that's what he would say. He wouldn't pressure her to tell him what had happened, he wouldn't ask for details even though he probably desperately wanted them. He would just think about her and her well-being. Because he was literally fucking perfect.

Sophia took a shaky deep breath and then unfolded herself from Dean's embrace. She shifted off of his lap and onto the bed, sitting to face him, her arms hugging her knees to her chest.

"Yeah," she said. "I'm going to be okay." She stared down at the t-shirt Dean had given her. It was one of his L.A.F.D. ones.

They sat in silence for a moment, and Sophia knew that Dean didn't completely believe her. Finally, she looked back up to meet his eyes.

"Ask me."

"Ask you what?" Dean's eyes searched her face.

Another shaky breath. He wanted to know, but would never ask. Sophia wanted to tell him, but couldn't unless he asked for it. She had spent too much time with someone who never wanted to hear about her problems to be able to tell him this unprompted.

"Ask me what you want to know."

Dean studied her for a moment, and Sophia desperately wanted to know what he was thinking. "What happened, Sophia?" he finally asked, his voice breaking at the end. "What did I—"

"Nothing." Her words came out sharper than she intended. If there was one thing she would make him understand, it was this. "This has nothing to do with you," she said. "Okay? I need you to believe me."

Slowly, Dean nodded.

Sophia closed her eyes, still taking in oxygen in gulps. With shaky hands, she leaned down to where her shorts lay on the floor and dug around in the pockets for her phone. It took a few moments to find what she was looking for, she didn't have a copy so she had to go on a few people's Facebook profiles to find the picture, but when she did, she zoomed in on the couple and handed the phone to Dean.

His face remained impassive as he looked at the photograph of college-age Sophia, Graham's arm around her shoulders.

"That was at the end of my sophomore year," Sophia began. "His name was Graham."

Dean handed the phone back to her, his eyes sliding up from the screen to her face. He didn't speak.

Sophia stared down at her face, the frozen, fake smile plastered wide, Graham's hand just a little too tight on her bare shoulder, the gold pendant glittering in the sunlight around her neck. If she closed her eyes, she could feel his hand there, the way his body was tense under hers. She shuddered.

"We were celebrating being halfway done with college," Sophia continued. "It was hot, all of our air conditioning sucked, so we went to the beach. Like normal people." Sophia locked her phone and squeezed her hand around it. "I drove with my best friend, Raina," she said. "Graham was meeting us there with some of our other friends. And I was happy and excited and twenty and had a brand-new bikini that I felt confident and sexy in and I thought he was going to love, and then..." Sophia pressed her lips together and shook her head. "And then he took one look at me when he arrived and," she shrugged, "he looked more murderous than anything."

Dean's hand had been resting on the bed between them, and Sophia saw his finger twitch. But other than that, he kept himself carefully neutral.

"There wasn't much either of us could do. We were in public and with all of our friends, the last thing either of us wanted was an argument with an audience. But I could tell. He was moody the whole time, he never was farther than ten feet from me, he kept throwing me these looks like he was disgusted with me or something.

"We had already planned for me to go with him back to his apartment, and once we got to his car...well, I'll give you the SparkNotes version. I shouldn't go out in public dressed like that and I was an open invitation to everyone on the beach and I should show him more respect and I was such a slut—" Sophia cut herself off before she allowed herself to get more agitated. Graham wasn't worth her anger.

A slice of anger cracked through Dean's collected façade, but he still remained quiet.

"When we got home, I don't know, I guess he wanted to feel like he was still in charge or whatever. And I was fine with it; I had learned early on that sex was something for him, not for the both of us. But he was a bit rougher than he usually was and when he ripped off my bikini bottom, it just, well, for a moment—" She couldn't bring herself to say the words. It felt too much like comparing what happened between her and Dean to what happened then. And there was no comparison, whatsoever.

"And when I took off your bikini bottom now," Dean said slowly, his voice calm despite an obvious edge to it, "that feeling reminded you of then?"

Sophia pressed her eyelids closed and gave a short nod. "It just threw me back there, the possessiveness in how it always was with him, how I just felt like an object, not a human being. It's not that I feel that way with you, it's just..." Her voice trailed off, frustration over not being able to fully express what she meant clipping the end of her words.

But one look at Dean told her that he was anything but offended.

"You know, there are so many things that just became so deeply ingrained in me when we were together." Now that she had started, Sophia couldn't stop herself from spilling her soul to Dean. She would just have to wait and see what he did with it once he held it in his hands. "And I can still sometimes hear him telling me those things, when I'm doing something that he wouldn't have liked or if I'm feeling confident in myself. I heard a lot of that voice today, at the beach. I tried to push it down."

"You hear these things all the time?"

"Not always. There was a lot of it after the breakup. But, I mean, it's not like the relationship ended and then this is the first time I'm thinking about all of this crap. I spent years in therapy, Dean, sorting out my shit. And for the most part, I stopped hearing all of that. Despite what it may seem, I'm actually in a pretty good place."

"So, if you stopped hearing those things, what made it start again?"

Sophia's silence answered his question for him.

"Jesus Christ." Another crack in Dean's calm mask, pain slicing across his face. "Me?"

"No." Sophia looked sharply up at him. "No. Yes, okay, I started having these thoughts more after we met, after Starbucks, actually. But it's not because of you, okay? My therapist said that this might happen when I started having feelings for someone or dating again. It's a change in my life, and these particular changes can bring up some past stuff. Usually, I have a handle on it."

Dean didn't look very happy, but he nodded, accepting her explanation.

"If it helps, I went into this fully prepared to deal with what might happen," Sophia told him. "I considered cutting things off with you because of it, but then I figured that would probably be the stupidest decision I've made in a long time. It's my choice, Dean."

Eventually, he nodded again.

"It was scary for me, Dean." He hadn't moved, so Sophia took it as an invitation to keep talking. "Falling for you, the way that I did."

His eyes rounded.

"Hard and fast. But it wasn't scary because of you or anything you did; it was because I didn't know if I could trust myself. My judgment."

Sophia bit the inside of her cheek. "I haven't been in a relationship since Graham. And we first got together when we were in high school. Fifteen. After all of that, I wasn't even sure if I would be able to spot a healthy relationship if it was right in front of me."

"You were together for a long time."

"We shouldn't have been." Sophia shook her head. "He changed in college. In high school, he was nice, sweet, even. My dad liked him, he was popular, none of the red flags that later came up were there. We ended up at UCLA together, and that's when things started to change. It was slow at first, but he started getting weird ideas about women and gender roles and all that bullshit. He had a group of friends I didn't like, and I have no idea what they got up to. I shrugged it off at first, but when he started seriously suggesting I drop out of school, I knew something was up. I was going to break up with him; I didn't want to put up with that bullshit."

"What happened?"

"My dad died." Sophia squeezed her eyes shut but then felt Dean's hand gently squeeze her calf. "And it's stupid, so stupid, but there was a part of me that knew Graham was my only chance of ending up with someone who had met my dad. Who my dad liked. And there was so much change and instability in my life at that point, I couldn't bring myself to have anymore."

Sophia forced herself to meet Dean's eyes, but there was no judgment in them when she did.

"But then things just got worse. Controlling, derogatory, manipulative—you name it. And I made excuses, to my friends and myself, and once you hear all of that enough," she gave a small shrug, "you start to believe it."

"What made you leave?" Sophia could see in Dean's eyes that he knew what was coming.

But the corner of her mouth lifted in half a smile. "My best friend, Raina, she knew it was bad. But she also knew that I was only going to leave when I was ready. And she stuck by me, didn't try to talk me into leaving, just made sure I was okay. She made excuses for me to live with her instead of moving in with him. She made sure she was in my life, no matter how hard he tried to keep me away from her. She kept whatever bit of fight in me that was still there alive."

Sophia swallowed hard, and almost instinctively, her hand went out, reaching for Dean. He grasped it in his.

"I was at Graham's, and we got into some argument. I don't even remember what it was about, but one moment we're standing in the kitchen, and then the next minute I'm on the ground, blood trickling down my face. He had shoved me and my head hit the counter on the way down.

"But it wasn't even that in itself that made me go. It was the fact that my first thought after it happened wasn't shock. Or surprise. It was so easy to believe that he could do something like that, and it scared the crap out of me. I got myself out of the apartment, drove to Raina, and a week later I had a temporary restraining order against him. Two weeks after that, he disappeared, left school. I got a permanent restraining order, but I haven't needed it. I haven't heard from him since."

What Sophia left out was in the week leading up to getting the order, Graham had stalked and harassed her day and night, begging for her to take him back. She and Raina didn't dare leave the apartment for days. But that was a story for another day.

Dean was silent.

"God, Dean, please say something," Sophia said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "You're not wearing a shirt, okay, I can see literally every single muscle in your body is tense."

It was another couple of moments before he spoke. "I'm trying really, really hard not to get angry right now," he said, his voice low. "Because I'm guessing that's not what you need. But I don't know what to say. That I'm sorry? That I hate you had to go through that? That doesn't even begin—" he cut himself off as his voice began to rise. "Can I ask you something?" he finally said, his tone back in control.

Sophia nodded.

"The other day, when you didn't feel like you could tell me about your shitty day. That was because of him?"

Again, a nod.

"And." Dean stopped. He seemed to be having a battle with himself. "The day of the blackout, when we were—" He paused again. "Sophia, you went down on me first. But did you actually want to? Or did you just think that it was something I would expect you to do?"

Sophia gaped at him. "Dean. Listen to me. Right now. Look, I'll be the first to admit that I have a complicated mindset when it comes to sex. But it's also something I spent a lot of time on in therapy. So yes, I wanted to. Everything I've done with you, I've wanted to do. I didn't think you were going to go down on me in return, but that had nothing to do with the fact that I wanted you. I told you then. I wanted to touch you."

Dean dragged a hand down his face. Sophia knew that her comment about how she hadn't expected anything in return bothered him, but there was nothing she could do about that. It was the truth.

"This is just a lot."

His words settled in the air between them. Sophia swallowed hard. "So, then, what does all of this means for us?"

Confusion temporarily wiped the anger away from his face. "What do you mean?"

"I'm not ashamed of what happened to me, Dean," Sophia said. "It's hard to talk about it, yes, but I'm not embarrassed because of it. A lot of people in my life know what happened, at least to some degree. I never told you about any of this not because I thought you would judge me or because it was too difficult, it was because it's a lot to put on a relationship. And you're not required to have to deal with all of this."

Dean was already shaking his head.

"I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to deal with this in your relationship. I was terrified that you decide that it was too much, and," Sophia bit her lip, holding back her tears, "I didn't want to lose you."

"Soph." Dean's gaze bore into her. "No. Never. Look." He let out a frustrated sigh. "Yeah, it's a lot. But you're so much more than everything you just told me, okay? I see someone who made it through school despite all the crap she had to deal with. Someone who cares immensely for other people. Someone who was willing to fucking jump off of a pier to save someone else's kid." He took both of her hands into his, leaning forward. "I see someone who got out. And we both know the statistics on that, Sophia. It's not easy, even with all the support and strength in the world."

A pause as a surge of gratitude and relief went through Sophia's body at lightning speed. "Okay," she said, her voice slightly breathless.

"Okay."

"So what happens now?"

Dean regarded her with soft eyes. "Whatever you want to happen now can happen now," he said. "But if you're looking for suggestions, I say we order takeout, curl up on the couch together, watch shitty reality TV, and take one day at a time."

Warmth spread through Sophia's chest at Dean's words. "Sounds perfect."

"Come here."

Dean pulled her back into his arms and then carried her to the living room, sitting down with her still wrapped up in him. "I'm here, baby," he whispered into her hair. "I'm not going anywhere."