"I'M SORRY IT TOOK so long for me to find you."

Jamie looks at me. It's the first thing either of us has said in a while.

He shakes his head quickly. "No, it's okay. I had been planning to head off, but I just... froze." He wipes his eyes and looks at me. "I just sat here thinking. I couldn't move... even if I wanted to, I couldn't." He sighs and tucks my hair behind my ear. "And I'm sorry too." He kisses me lightly, his lips barely touching mine. "I really am. I know you have to see him, and as much as I'm not okay with it... I know you have to."

Even if it is a small victory, that I've got him to understand that this is something I have to do, I can't help but feel deflated that he's breaking down over it.

"I'm going to lose you," he says quietly, and if there was any air left in me before this, there isn't now.

"You're not going to lose me. I'm yours." I kiss him. "I'm all yours."

I don't know what made me say it, but he frowns as if he remembers, but isn't sure how I remember it.

"You trust me right?" I ask, even though he's told me he trusts me before. It's more for him than for me that I'm asking.

"I do trust you. But him... How do I know he's not going to smile at you and then you go all weak at the knees?"

I scoff and push further away from him, trying to give myself space despite being on top of him. "Because you trust me," I tell him simply.

"Does he even know about us?" He asks before I can say anything more.

"He does. Millie told him. He would never do something like that."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I do. He's chivalrous." I put my hands back on his cheeks and smile. "Besides, I would never let that happen because I love you."

I sigh again, worried he's gone off into his own world again to escape.

"Jamie, everyone thinks I need to do this."

"Tessa, please don't tell me you're doing this for them... Tell me you're doing it for yourself. If you're doing this for them, then you're not going."

I shouldn't have said it like that, backing him into a corner. "I didn't mean it like that. Jamie, this is me talking, not them."

"I know I've agreed, but did you even think about me when you decided this?" He takes his hands off my hips, giving me the smart idea to move off his lap. His head follows me but his eyes soften, despite the hardness in his voice. "Are you going over there to tell him to stick it?" I flinch. "Or are you going over there to tell him that this..." he gestures between us, "was bullshit from the beginning."

"What?!" I thought we were getting somewhere, but apparently not. "Jamie, what kind of a question is that?" I pinch the bridge of my nose. "I'm not doing either of those things. I thought you were okay with this?"

"No, I didn't," he retorts. "I said I know you have to."

I turn to face the front, frustrated that he's being deliberately obtuse and not listening to me. But then I have an idea...

"Can I show you something?"

He frowns. "Show me what?"

"Just let me show you. Please?"

I get out of the car before he can answer and walk around to open his door. "Please?" I ask again, holding out my hand.

It takes him a minute, but I'm relieved when he puts his hand in mine, allowing me to pull him out of the car.

I pull him through the front door and up to my room, leaving him standing near my desk as I rummage through my wardrobe to find the box of things that Archie had left behind.

"I'm doing this because I need answer," I tell him, still searching.

"Tessa..." he groans and looks away from me just as I find the thing I'm looking for. "Answers to what?"

"Answers to this!" I hold up the letter Archie had written me all those years ago.

The pages are soft and creased from the number of times I'd read it over the years. The words are tear-stained from the weeks I spent at home before deciding to make another go at life. I could practically recite the letter from heart, the number of times I've read it, but I was hoping... maybe... if Jamie read this, he would see just how much Archie hurt me back then, and would understand that I'm not doing this for Archie. That I'm doing it for me. That I'm doing it for us.

I hand him the sheets, pushing them gently into his chest, and he looks from the letter to me.

"Tess, I can't read this." His voice is already softer.

"Why not?"

He scoffs. "It's personal. To you... to... to him," he stammers. "I don't-"

"Fine," I cut him off. "Then I'll read it to you." I pull the letter from him and sit on the bed. "You need to hear all of it. To understand that I'm doing this for me and you, and to get answers. You need to hear this."

"Tess," he tries to protest, but I kneel up and grab his hand.

"Please?"

He sighs and stops fighting me, putting a knee up on the bed before scooching closer to me, until he's sitting cross-legged in front of me, both sitting in the centre of my bed.

"Jamie. I love you. Please remember that. When you hear this you'll understand why Archie won't try anything... and more importantly why I love you. And why I'm doing this for us."

His eyes soften further as I start to read the letter out to him.

***

"BE HAPPY TESSA. PLEASE. Don't waste your time dwelling on something that can't be anymore... Find a new kind of love with someone who can give you back the happiness I've taken away from you. Find someone who can smile the way only you can, brightening up the world... Find someone who can bring back that chiming laugh of yours, the one everyone loves and deserves to hear again. Find someone who can bring colour back into your world Tessa, because while my world is now be eternally black, yours will be vibrant and beautiful."

I meant what I said that day on the step. I do love you. I love you so much... but that is why I have to let you go."

Because you deserve so much better than me..."

***

JAMIE AND I SIT in silence for a moment, me trying to hold back tears as I exposed the most vulnerable part of myself to him, and Jamie too shocked at what he's just heard to try to say anything until he's had time to think.

The entire letter is personal, hugely personal, but after accusing me of not telling him anything, I hoped this would humanise Archie in Jamie's mind, if not prove that he wouldn't do anything to damage mine and Jamie's future. But what I really want him to see is that Jamie is the happiness that Archie told me I would find, even if I didn't believe him at first. Jamie has been the light to my eternal darkness, the answer to my struggles and the one who has showed me a world I thought I'd closed myself off from. He has helped me live again.

"Don't you get it?" I ask quietly, shuffling forward, putting my hand on Jamie's forearm. "Archie was my best friend." I make sure I emphasise the word was to enunciate the fact Archie is the past, and that Jamie is the future.

He lowers his head, but I gently tip it back up so his brilliant, blue eyes are staring back at me.

"But you... You're so much more."

That gets me a smile. My favourite smile.

"You're the only one who's been able to pierce through the darkness I had forced myself into. You're the one that has been putting my heart back together piece by piece these last three years, and I could not be more grateful. You're my best friend and my partner in life." I kiss his hand. "You're my heart, Jamie. And if you don't believe me... then..." I sniff as tears brim over. "Well then... I don't know what to do."

I want to drop my head into my hands, as he continues to say nothing. I want to curl up into a ball, but I just watch as his face remains stoic and emotionless. I know he's mad at me, or maybe he doesn't believe me, but I feel like my heart is shattering all over again, just like it had four years ago.

When it gets too much to look at him anymore, I turn away and drop my head, not wanting to look into those cool eyes. But then I feel his lips touch my forehead, and my entire body heats with relief.

I sob as I look up at him again, into his eyes, now warm and brimming with so many emotions. I push myself forward into his arms, knocking him backwards, and even with my eyes closed, I can see that tiny slither of light re-emerging. When he kisses me, really kisses me, I let that light all the way in.

He kisses me softly, holding my cheek, stroking it gently. He holds me steady, steering me into safe harbour, and when he pulls away, placing his forehead on mine, I know that we'll get through this. One way or another we will get through this together.

"I'm so sorry, Tessa." He's apologising, but he doesn't need to. It's me that needs to apologise. "Of course you should go." He kisses my nose. "I've known for months that this is what it's been leading up to, and I don't know why I react this way." He smiles sheepishly. "I don't mean to... I just... I just don't want to lose you."

He tucks my hair back behind my ear and I kiss the side of his palm, making him smile. He turns his body slightly and takes my hand in his, stroking his thumb along my knuckles before kissing each and every one, using the rhythm to calm us both.

"You know..." he starts when it's been quiet between us for a little while. "When you told me about him a couple of years ago, the way you were talking about him... I knew you weren't done."

I go to say something but he shakes his head, so I let him continue.

"I pushed it to the back of my mind and when you never really brought it up again, I thought that maybe I had helped, or maybe that you telling me about him and what happened had helped."

"It did help. I didn't want him hanging over us..." I say. "Like a bad smell." I can't help but laugh at my own joke, even if it is a terrible joke.

He chuckles back, humouring me.

"Tess, he isn't a bad smell," he says it so seriously, I'm wondering whether he's coming around, but then he continues. "He's an awful smell." He tries to keep a straight face after that, but then basically bellows a laugh in my face, making me laugh just as much.

When we calm down enough, he looks at me seriously and sighs.

"I do trust you, Tess. But please..." he kisses me softly before finishing his sentence, "please don't let him draw you back in."

"Jamie, I won't," I promise. "The only reason I'm going is because I never got the chance to tell him that I don't blame him for what happened to Matt, and that he shouldn't be blaming himself." I shake my head and push up from the bed. "I want to tell him that he was just a kid when all the stuff with his dad started happening... and that he shouldn't hold himself responsible."

"Wait... His dad?" he frowns. "What actually happened again?"

"So much, Jamie." I sit back up, sitting cross legged. "Too much for anyone to endure, so I understand why Archie reacted the way he did in that sense."

I pinch the bridge my nose between my fingers, sighing as I prepare the story in my mind. Jamie sits quietly, holding my hand, letting me tell him everything.

"His dad hit him - we think it started when he was like twelve or thirteen maybe, and it gradually got worse and worse. He has stripes on his back, permanent bruising on his chest, burn marks..." I swallow as the memories all come flooding back with Archie lying in the hospital, unconscious, his skin a mottled black and blue colour. "When we were in sixth form, he... snapped."

I swallow, trying to push the images out of my mind. It makes me sick to think of it.

"He broke four of Archie's ribs, his leg, his wrist... Fractured his skull even. He beat him to within an inch of his life and he was in hospital for nearly a month afterwards, with a punctured lung, his leg, and internal bleeding, to the point where we nearly lost him..." I cup my mouth as a sob comes out. "And that's not even mentioning his mum."

"Jesus, you told me about some of the stuff but I hadn't realised it was that bad. What happened with his mum? Did she... die or...?"

"No." I shake my head. "Much worse. She..." I take a deep breath as anger suddenly courses through me. "She abandoned them. Right when him and Millie needed her the most, she left them."

He cups his mouth and I nod, still able to taste the sourness on my tongue at what Wendy had done to the two of them, after what they'd already had to endure.

"We should have known it would happen... in hindsight." Jamie frowns so I elaborate. "In the months beforehand she was always away. She was always finding an excuse not to be around, even when their dad wasn't home." I grind my teeth at the thought of how she just left them. "And then she left." I look down at Jamie as I continue. "And in so doing, she inadvertently set the example to her son that it's okay to run away from your problems, rather than facing them head on."

He nods. "And you're basically saying 'enough is enough' by going?"

"Yes," I say adamantly. "He must have some words to say by now."

It frustrates me that I could have said all this sooner, both to Archie and to Jamie, I just had no idea how. Even if he's said sorry in his text, I still want the full explanation. There has to be more of an explanation.

He nods before sitting up and leaning back against my headboard, beckoning to me to join him. I do so, and he pulls me in between his legs, kissing the side of my head as he wraps his arms around me.

"I'm sorry it came out that way." I turn my head to look at him. "It wasn't my plan to just spring it on you like that."

He kisses my cheek, leaving his lips there for a couple of seconds.

"I think that's partly my fault." He sighs and sits back, so I turn to look at him. "I can tell you've been wanting to talk about something, but of course I've been working late, or going out drinking. So I'm going to kerb that." He gives me a sheepish look but then shrugs. "As much as I can anyway."

I smile. It's good he comes to that on his own, because it sounds whiny coming from me, especially when I say it again and again. I get that he wants to make a good impression, and he seems to be doing that already, but at the same time I am still here, and I do still matter. We're supposed to be planning our lives together, and at this point in time we'd done practically zero planning, because he's been working all hours.

"We should start looking at venues you know," I suggest, now that I was thinking about it.

He nods. "I know. And I'm going to book off some time to do that okay. Soon." He taps my nose and then kisses it. "And that Friday to see your mum," he adds. I smile wider at the fact he's remembered.

We're quiet for a few minutes before either of us decides to say anything, and it's Jamie that speaks first this time.

"Are we okay?" He asks, searching my eyes.

I look directly into them, his deep, vast, ocean-like eyes, and I nod. "Yeah, we're okay." I kiss him. "I love you."

He smiles before pressing his lips to mine. "I love you too."