As soon as I got back to my dorm room, I slammed the door shut so hard that the handle rattled while I sunk to the floor. The softness of Li's fluffy rug threaded in between my fingers as I palmed them flat and banged the back of my head against the door.

In a horribly cliché position, I hugged my knees into my chest, tucked my chin inward, and cried. Sharp, loud barks of sobs cut through the walls of my restraint, seared my ears, and faintly echoed off our room's walls. The tiny space squeezed tighter on me when I lifted my tear-soaked eyes and saw...

The walls.

Like always, Jake's posters' eyes found mine. Even blurred through hot tears, the flash of confidence in them and slight upcurl in the corners of his lips taunted me.

The old me would have torn them down by now, shredded each one into an infinite number of pieces, then either spread them like cremated ashes into the dumpsters or -

Fuck, I can't even think about trash dumpsters anymore.

My shoulders shook as large sobs escaped and ravaged my body with tremors. I squeezed my eyes closed, rested my forehead on my knees, and choked out dry coughs of breaths. Wet tears rose up and rolled tiny rivers over my cheeks.

Double fuck, I've never felt like such a liar in my entire life.

We're not just fuck-buddies. He's... so amazingly different from but still the same dark-eyed kid who stole my first kiss.

Fuck, I wish I was the same, starry-eyed girl again.

That asshole had teased my feelings out of me and I'd fucked it up again. My gut reaction of self-preservation vomited out misdirected blame that shifted from Jake hadn't done enough to pushed him away for trying to bring us closer.

As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew my excuses were pathetic bullshit.

No, I was pathetic.

So, I cried.

I cried since now... I cared, deeply... too deeply. I wanted what he offered. My heart pinched at the idea he had that strong of feelings for me, even though I didn't deserve them. I wanted the tiny little bubble world Jake and I created the past few months, surrounded by the protection that the warmth of him wrapped around me offered, but it wasn't realistic.

I'm not the girl he thinks he wants anyways.

For entirely different reasons but just like at fourteen, I was a hot mess of a heart broken over Jake Harrison. Hot, huge, ugly tears rolled over my cheeks, dripped over my chin, and dampened my shirt. Again, like too many damn times lately, I sat, crumpled over and weak.

I hate this. I don't even recognize myself lately.

I wasn't beneath admitting that Jake was a better person than me. He absolutely was. At this particular moment in our lives, Jake had battled his demons and conquered them. He knew exactly what he wanted for his future, mapped out how he was getting there, and fuck, he was almost there.

The thought he wanted me with him simultaneously soared my heart and scared me shitless. While I found the fangirling attention annoying, both from the football and personal sides, I wasn't afraid of the publicity side of his life. I wasn't even bothered with the personal sacrifices associated with dating a publicly recognized athlete. And even though I joked that WAGs were a living incarnation of absolutely fake, brainless, conniving snakes, they weren't really.

What I couldn't deal with was the image of Jake with my brother. It wasn't that I didn't want Jake in that part of my life but I myself couldn't be in that picture.

We were, at best, a family broken by emotional detachment and miscommunication. After ten years removed, that branch of my family tree had been axed off by my own mother's abandonment. Understandably, Dad turned his back on that part of the family, so, like any neglected plant, it had withered and died.

Childishly, part of me still regarded Wyatt as my replacement, my mother's second chance for her non-fucked up family. The pain attached to the cold, hard reality that the mother who'd abandoned me returned only because of her love for her other child was unbearable. Every time I even thought about my surrogate's motivations, the raw pain stabbed into my heart worse than any psycho serial killer movie's knife attacks.

Not Wyatt's fault though. Jake's either.

It was too much... too much for me and certainly too much that I put on Jake. Even the thought that his love filled those holes in my heart was wrong. I willingly admitted he'd filled the ones his past mistakes had punched through it but not the ones from my mother.

I'm not that good of a person to forgive that shit. My heart isn't big, fuck it's practically shattered into a thousand pieces right now.

As much as I wanted to reach out to Wyatt, an innocent kid caught up in our family shitstorm of broken miscommunication, I knew that if I did then she'd be there too. And I wasn't about to let Jake's feelings get poisoned by my toxic emotional detachment, the only way I knew how to live without constantly acknowledging the pain that came along with the obvious fact that I was the child my mother didn't want.

So yes, I was painfully aware that, this time, my pain was entirely my fault, my doing. For that, I expected no one to feel sorry for myself. Fuck, half of me was angry at myself while the other half just raised a middle finger of disassociation.

I'd given Jake too much credit, that I unfairly displaced my anger at myself at him again. And in my weakened state, my previously suppressed emotional problems with my mother leached into me like a parasite. He hadn't deserved that but my emotions malfunctioned my brain and my mouth wouldn't shut up and flung one bullshit excuse after another at him.

Because my heart isn't strong enough to speak for itself.

Once my legs stopped shaking, I dragged my sorry ass into the shower, where my body sagged under the weight of the water streamed down on me. Even as I sat until the water ran cold and my skin trembled with goosebumps, I knew I couldn't have washed this mistake away if my life depended on it.

Which I completely deserve.

"H-harper?" Li's soft voice broke through the now ice-cold water that splattered onto my chest and stomach. "You - oh, Harper."

I blinked my drenched eyelashes, clumped together in a sticky mess of mascara, up at her worried face. She reached one hand over the water faucet and turned it off with a flick of her wrist. Before I responded, she covered me with a dry, fuzzy towel, then knelt down outside the shower.

"Are you..." I was never more thankful that she hadn't finished that sentence because I was sure that, soaked in my clothes and bawling snot-nosed, raspy sobs in the shower looked not-okay. "Hang in there."

A larger, stronger pair of hands, not Li's, scooped up under me, wet and soaked under the towel and lifted me up. "Uhh..." Kieran's eyes shifted down to me, like he hadn't thought past this step. "Hey Harper."

"My legs aren't broken," I grumbled quietly.

He swung me around, carried me out of the bathroom, then obliged with a hesitant drop onto my feet. After too many moments where his green eyes, bright with only faint flickers of curiosity like he knew the answer to his own question, I coughed.

"Harrison, shit, did he -" he started in a strained voice.

"Not him," I grunted and took one soggy step after another over to my wardrobe area. "Me. I did it, entirely my fault. Don't ask me why I'm upset, I just am."

"I'm sorry," Li offered behind me as I dropped the towel with a soft plop, then stripped off my shirt, to the sound of shuffled feet.

Without another sound, I undressed, slipped on some pajamas, and crawled up into bed. Before they answered, I tucked the covers over my head, squeezed my eyes shut, and prayed they didn't ask for details.

Thankfully, they didn't.

Over the next two weeks, I wore the same pair of pajamas. They got... smelly. The only way I knew the weekends from the weekdays were because I wandered aimlessly around campus on Saturdays and Sundays instead of straight to the School of Law building.

For once, Jake listened to me. He stayed gone.

And I hated myself for that, almost as much as I hated myself for the fact I hadn't apologized.

Two Fridays later, my greasy hair was tied into a tight bun and my makeup-free face was wrenched into its usual scowl. The other students blurred around me as I weaved and slouched around them.

With my eyes averted and hands tucked in the kangaroo pouch on the front of my pajamas where my phone bounced against my stomach, I barely noticed the tall frame dressed in jeans and a UCLA jacket that blocked my way. My attention shifted only when a shadow darkened across my forehead and eyes.

"You've looked better, Harper," a smug male voice narrowed my eyes before I lifted them. "Almost didn't recognize you."

"Fuck off, Ethan," I spat out and bumped his shoulder with mine as I walked past him. "Unless you want me to slap you again."

"Fuck, you're difficult," he grumbled quietly. "I... came to apologize. And thank you."

If my brain was capable of functional thoughts, Ethan's words would have obliterated them. With a huff, my fingers slipped around in my pocket, found my phone, and tightened into fists. "What?"

"I'm sorry, it wasn't personal," he offered the lamest apology words I'd ever heard but remorse flashed over his brown eyes. A breeze lifted his brown hair off his forehead and highlighted the faint yellowy brown shadow over his left eye socket, where Jake had punched him. "Uhh, I mean, not personal towards you."

Well, that's bullshit.

"Funny, it was entirely fucking personal to me." My eyes narrowed into thin slits and I turned around and shot him the same unconvinced look. "So, what I was? Just a pawn in your stupid -"

"I thought you were going along with it." He stepped closer, clutched my arm in his hand, and guided me back down the sidewalk. "But Sarah said -"

"Going along with what?" I interrupted and stepped a few inches apart as we walked side by side. He was shorter than Jake, just a couple inches taller than me so our steps nearly synchronized. "You're stupid revenge plot do... what? Ruin Jake's football games?"

"More than that," he admitted quietly, his chin tucked downward. "I wanted him stripped down to the pathetic state of existence that only you can turn him into, where he feels the same pain he's inflicted on others."

"By stealing pictures off my phone? Making me look like some scorned, desperate jersey-chasing slut?" My eyebrows lifted and I clenched my teeth tightly shut.

A few steps later, I lowered my voice but murmured loud enough that he heard me, "I know you know about that data surge that registered when I was at Jake's house, which so ironically happened around the same time two girls presented themselves in his bedroom."

"I might've had an insider there." The corners of his lips curled up into a smirk. "I thought that you wanted Harrison crushed as much as me. Didn't know you'd developed just as strong of feelings as he did though."

"See, that's where you're wrong," I admitted quietly and quickened my steps to put some distance between me and this loose-lipped, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breather. "Hazard of being a cold-hearted bitch, you really just don't give a fuck about anyone else, huh? Now get away from me before I do something stupid."

"Nice talk as always," he called after me, which earned him a raised middle finger.

My teeth clenched tightly together as I lowered my hand, slipped it into my pocket, and shut off my phone.

That was almost too easy.

"I can do this..." I muttered the world's worst self pep talk and squeezed one hand into a tight fist. A constriction sensation seized my heart when two metal doors closed in front of me. "No, no I can't. This was a bad idea."

"It was a great idea," Dad's soothing voice hit my ears, out of my phone at least. "You can do it, Harps."

"Promise me, Dad." My lips squeezed together tightly, then I released them. "She won't be here?"

"No, she won't. She promised me," Dad assured me like he spoke to a child. "She's not in the building. Neither is Rhett... I thought that would be best. One of the nurses will escort you from the desk."

"Okay..." I exhaled loudly at the loud, painful beats that rattled my chest. My free hand gripped the railing inside the elevator and Dad's face on my screen shook. "Okay."

My heart thumped painfully hard in my chest, harder the closer I'd gotten to Children's Hospital at Los Angeles-USC. The main pediatric hospital was in a large, glass-front building at the edge of the hospital's campus. The pediatric oncology department was located in a perpendicular building, with a giant white cement awning over the entrance road lined with palm trees.

Inside the elevator, I clutched one hand on my phone and the other into my chest.

"You'll be fine, Harps," Dad's muffled voice brought my attention to the fact I'd squeezed my phone's hand into my chest, not the other one like I'd assumed. "Call me anytime you need."

"Right," I mumbled, shut off the phone with a trembling thumb, and swallowed tightly. My eyes tracked the elevator floor numbers as each lit up, until I got to the fourth floor as directed.

Even with the bell chime and slight creak open of the metal doors, my feet stayed frozen. It wasn't until the doors started to close and a hand stuck in between them that my attention snapped to the fact I'd hadn't budged.

"Coming out?" An older nurse, with short, curly gray hair and a kind understanding look in her eyes held the door open.

"Uhh, yeah," I rasped out and took one tentative step at a time.

My eyes blinked as I took in the beautifully modern, perfectly sterile hospital space. Bleach-based cleaners filled and twitched my nose. The white walls were covered with large circles painted in different rainbow colors but I didn't see a speck of dirt on the floors.

Of all the most trivial things, I wondered if I was dressed properly. Dad had told me I might've needed a hazmat-type suit anyways, depending on Wyatt's condition, so I'd just worn my UCLA pink and white shirt from Li and a pair of light-washed jeans. The loud pounds of my pulse in my ears softened the clicks of my heels on the white tile floors as I approached a circular nurse's desk.

"Visiting?" A nurse with dark hair and brown eyes blinked up at me. When I nodded, she pointed to a clipboard. "Please sign in. Who are you here for?"

"Wyatt, uhh..." My nails scratched at my chin as I tried to remember his last name. "Davies."

"Just need some kind of ID," she stood up, well slipped out of her seat. She was almost as short as Ellie, with her head at my shoulder level.

I handed her my driver's license, which she checked on her computer, then nodded and slid it across the counter back to me. "Wyatt's still in his post-ninety day quarantine, so we'll need you to suit up. Follow me, please."

My mouth dried at the word 'quarantine,' and I questioned whether I should even be there. I wasn't the most self-aware person when it came to germs, so I coughed quietly. "Should I come back -"

"No." Her long, dark braid swished down her back as she walked two steps ahead of me, into an empty supply room. A coat rack of light yellow hospital gown-like clothes hung on the wall and masks on another. "He's allowed visitors but just one to two at a time and while his white blood cell counts are doing great, we're taking every necessary precaution."

"Does he get many visitors?" A twinge of guilt settled in my stomach because I hadn't grown the lady balls to come here myself yet.

Silently, her head shook but a small smile pulled across her lips. "He'll be excited to see you, I'm sure. You're his sister?"

The word paused my movements as I shoved my feet into the leg holes one rustled movement at a time. "Umm... half-sister, yeah."

"Then he'll be really excited," was all she said and pointed at the mask. "Put that on, then gloves and meet me in the hallway."

My hands trembled several times as I started, paused, and finished getting dressed. By the time I grunted my boobs into the hospital gear, the nurse wore her own set except hers was blue. She snapped her mask in place and waved a gloved hand that I followed.

One room at a time, we passed a few open doors and some closed. A few kids watched TV or read books from their beds and others chatted with visitors. I was so distracted by all the quietly intimate exchanges that I bumped into the nurse's back when she stopped halfway down the hall.

"Oof," she grunted, steadied herself, then knocked on the closed door.

It creaked open and revealed an image almost identical to the last picture Vanessa had given me. Bright, round, blue eyes peered up at me from a boy in a red hospital gown, then brightened the longer he studied me.

The sight of my half-brother simultaneously split and swelled my heart. It seared with pain for his condition, our separation, and my own damn ignorance. Yet, at the same time, it filled with a warm, unconditional feeling I wasn't sure I even knew existed anymore.

"Wyatt," the nurse greeted him and stepped inside the room. "You have a visitor."

"Hi." I awkwardly waved a gloved hand and stepped inside.

"Hi..." he offered shyly, with a small, uneasy smile.

Wyatt's room was white walled like all the others I'd passed, covered with artwork that seemed very...

"You like football," I murmured out at the sight of a few recognizable images, like green turf and upright goal posts.

"Let me know if you need anything." The nurse closed the door slowly, not before she tapped a light shove in my lower back.

"Thanks, Nurse Jana," Wyatt called out, then fixed his eyes on me. "Are you... really Harper?"

"Really am." Even though my eyes watered up, I smiled because he now beamed up at me. "Can I sit down?"

"Yeah." He pointed at an empty chair three feet from his table. "Visitors have to sit there, sorry."

The suit crinkled under my butt as I sat down and wondered if Jake had sat here more times than me. I hadn't seen any other pictures of him at the hospital and actually he'd been completely silent, in terms of his social media presence.

In an excruciatingly painful process that involved a lot of tears, several breaks, and almost an entire box of white wine, I had read through all of Vanessa's letters. Each one was a mini-introduction and updated me on Wyatt, accompanied with a picture. The very last one was the most difficult, where she described his diagnosis of leukemia and was admitted here to Children's Hospital five months ago.

I'd always assumed that Vanessa had fled the state, which she had into Nevada, but she and her family moved back to California when Wyatt was four and lived in Simi Valley, a middle-class suburb of LA.

Wyatt's face looked similar to his last picture, except for the half-inch peach fuzz of blonde hair that grew out of his head. He leaned back in his seat and the red in his hospital gown caught my eyes.

"I like your shirt," I offered.

His chin, more square than mine but still slightly heart-shaped, dipped down. "Thanks. My mom sewed it because she said the ones here were too bland."

My mouth dried at the bittersweet mention of our mom, who in fact knew how to sew. She'd sewn all my Halloween and elementary school play costumes.

"Now that though -" I paused and pointed at a white, number seven USC jersey draped over the back of his bed. "We need to talk about because it's giving me questionable taste vibes."

He looked where I pointed, swiveled his head back, and grinned. "No way."

My lips curled up and shoulders relaxed. "Yes way."

"Nope," he shot back with a definite edge of stubbornness that felt painfully familiar.

"Hmm, which number is that?" I asked, although the weight in my stomach already answered my own question.

Wyatt's eyes sparkled. "Jake Harrison's."

"And who is he," I feigned innocence and bit my lip at his rounded eyes.

"USC's quarterback," he shot back with a haughty 'duh' implied in his tone of voice. My eyes caught the IV line in his left arm as he reached for the jersey, draped it over his lap, and outlined the seven with his fingers.

I rested my elbow on the chair's armrest and cupped my chin with a gloved hand. "What do you like about him?"

"He's a good leader, talks respectfully in his interviews, plays well although he should move out of the pocket a little more," he answered right away, his eyes down on the jersey. "I met him in person, he... seems nice. Said when I get out, he's inviting me and Dad to one of his games."

"Did he?" My eyebrows lifted and he nodded.

"Yeah, he first came with the team but he's been back by himself, just like a regular visitor."

"He did?" I swallowed down the lump in my throat. "Guess he's just a regular guy under that helmet, huh?"

While my heart warmed the longer I spoke with Wyatt, it seared with pain while we discussed the finer qualities of Jake's life. I'd turned a blind eye to that side of him, the side that strangers admired from what they saw on the field or on TV.

Wyatt's not wrong, he is all those things.

Wyatt and I settled into a surprisingly comfortable conversation. He asked me a lot of basic, innocent 'what's your favorite'-type questions, like he genuinely wanted to know me. My heart ached at how he was just a normal kid until his energy level dropped one day and, one doctor's appointment after another, he ended up here.

Wyatt's first round of chemo and radiation treatments was unsuccessful but his eyes filled with hope when he told me the doctors told him his progress this round looked much better. As a ten-year-old, he was very pale and thin but an inner light radiated from within him, even as his eyes drooped heavily.

"I think you might need some rest," I murmured as he laid down in his bed and hugged a stuffed football into his chest.

"Will you come back some time?" he asked quietly.

My throat squeezed at the innocence in his voice and I swallowed. "If you have that bell ceremony thing, I'll be there," I promised.

"Good," he mumbled and closed his eyes. "I'm glad I finally met you, Harper."

"Me too," I whispered and stood up from my seat.

One awkward goodbye later, I stepped out into the hallway, where I leaned against the wall. My heart hammered so painfully hard in my chest, I clutched one hand there and steadied my breath.

Just one sigh left me when a voice jumped me out of my skin and I bumped my shoulder into the wall.

"Asleep already? Must have been some conversation," the nurse from earlier joked.

"It was." I smiled but the heavy strain in my eyes lingered when they took in the syringe of medicine in her hand.

A hundred questions burned through my mind about my half-brother's condition but only one shot out of my mouth," Do you have like, an email or mail system here? I mean, can I contact him?"

"There's a magical invention called the telephone," she teased and stepped into his room. "You could start there."

"Right." My smile tightened and I glanced down at my medical coverings. "Where do I -"

"Across the hall, down four doors, just put everything in the trash can," she answered over her shoulder and gently closed the door behind her.

"Thank you," I replied before it clicked shut.

As I turned and headed down the hallway, I realized I didn't want this to be my only conversation with my half-brother.

I should make an effort to connect more with Wyatt.

Look at me, making progress.

Ironically, the link between us was the communication I wanted to avoid, but I wasn't sure if Dad's mediated visits were a good long-term solution. My phone vibrated in my purse while I stripped down, which I ignored but it gave me an idea.

And one I'm pretty sure Vanessa won't like, so even better.

My fingers fished my phone out of my purse, where I pressed on the contact name of who'd just texted me. "Dad? I need a favor."