A/N: I'm so sorry for not updating. This was supposed to go up over a week ago, but things got in the way. If you need a refresher, we're at the breakup stage. Pretty self explanatory.🙄

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Thirtieth of October:

A crying mess curled up on the sofa in her flat was not how Leah was expecting to spend the day before Halloween.

It took her almost three days to get back home, because she had to wait for a flight, and those extra days in a lonely hotel room in Boston (which made her have to withdraw an outrageous sum of money) was living hell.

Just being in the same country as Steven, let alone in such a close proximity, made it impossible to think about anything other than him.

Leah considered going back, too many times, replaying his confession over and over again in her head, but she couldn't face living in a lie.

It wasn't fair.

A happy ending after an adventure of romance would have been the perfect knot to their relationship, but like it had been present throughout their time of knowing each other, a lack of truth broke them apart.

It was for the best; Steven had always been a bad influence with his duplicitous, charming nature, but Leah couldn't go five minutes without thinking about him when she had wanted so desperately for them to work.

The only possible increment of a good thing about the worst breakup in her dating history, though she wanted to claim in the entire world, was that Tina was at work. Tina, who was the encouragement of her tale from the start, and had subsequently become the guilty producer of the jinx.

Leah would never blame her; she only blamed herself for believing it, but she was ridiculously grateful to have a few hours alone to stabilise her heart's cries and distant wails.

Unfortunately, she failed the moment she set foot in her bedroom, because the first time was effortlessly displayed in front of her eyes.

Sex with Steven, those precious experiences that had meant something more and more each time, was probably love from the start.

Leah walked in her own footsteps back to the living room, exhausted from tears, stiff from being cooped up on a plane, sick from not eating enough, and curled up on the sofa that once had a man- her man- posing in his underwear.

She had to reposition because her phone was jammed uncomfortably in her pocket, and she was reminded of why she had avoided opening it unless she had to.

It wasn't like her lock screen was a direct photo of Steven's face, but it was the perfect shot of his middle finger being raised whilst he looked down at his own phone.

Not even her grouped notifications could hide him, and she didn't have an answer as to why she hadn't changed it.

It was captured on the rainy Tuesday that had started out innocently, then forced a frustrating distance between them, and resulted in a snippet of an argument. A sign of Steven's habits that Leah dismissed as nothing sitting in his bed, but that morning conversation, full of ridiculous family drama, was the part she was thrown into re-living.

"Steven, your mum wants you."

Leah tapped the door frame with her nails thinking it would be a flying message, but Steven didn't look up at her.

"Hm? Yeah."

The typing continued.

"Steven." There was more of an emphasis on his name. "She needs your help."

"Yeah, yeah I'm coming. Just give me a sec."

Leah gave him a second, but he didn't move. His head remained tilted down, and his thumbs either furiously typed on the touchscreen, or one of them rose to scratch his lip in thought.

Sighing, Leah grabbed her own phone from the bedside, and was surprised she didn't receive a single glance to track her movement around him.

"I'll just take a picture of you and tell her her son has become virtual."

Steven didn't respond. He just pulled an intense frown at his screen.

"Who are you texting?" she asked, standing on her tiptoes. It was pointless because she couldn't see from the angle, but realisation had slapped her in the face. Flat on her feet, she smirked. "Oh wait, it's Joe, isn't it?"

Steven lifted his face innocently.

"Hm?"

"He's clearly busy." Leah nodded at his poised thumbs and took advantage of the first bit of acknowledgement from him.

They'd discussed this already, and by discussed, she had peered over his shoulder to see JOE FUCKIN' PERRY 🎸🔥 as the contact recipient to Steven's frustration.

"Just leave him be."

Steven scowled.

"No, he's ignoring my shit and it's pissing me off. I don't understand why he's not reading my fucking messages."

Leah wasn't even angry. She found it too funny how every message and every call Steven sent or made, was completely ignored.

"Say 'I love Joe'," she instructed happily, raising her phone with the camera open.

She was reasonable on the zoom so the shot picked up his chest and hands too, but a closeup of his cross face would have been just as sufficient.

"Hang on," Steven huffed. "Just give me a second."

Leah purposely dragged out the numbers, "Three...Two...One..."

He raised his middle finger, creating a perfectly timed photo.

More than satisfied with the stupid result, Leah tucked her phone into a pocket, snatched the distracting device to hold out of his way, and muted the protests with a kiss.

Steven relaxed, and brought his defeated hands to rest on her waist.

"Your mum wants you," Leah reminded him, taking away her hand that touched the side of his neck. She had already thrown his phone on the bed.

"But I want you," Steven started threading his fingers through the loops on her jeans, tugging them towards him.

"You didn't a second ago," she said, unaffected by the suggestive attention. "You were more interested in Joe."

"But I..." He looked down, thumbs hooking. "My mind has changed."

"Oh, has it?" Leah tilted her head, noticing he preferred the visual of her mouth instead.

"Yes," Steven rasped, achieving the kiss he had been trying to push to her lips. "Most definitely."

"STEVEN VICTOR TALLARICO!"

The brief kiss broke apart and left a relatively unshaken Leah raising her eyebrows at Steven who had stumbled back in fear.

Weirdly, it just gave her a fabulous idea.

Leah looked down at his backside and then bravely squeezed his butt. It made him yelp and shoot her a disapproving look, and the split second he had to compose himself before his mother appeared with Liv in her arms was almost too good to be true.

"Your father is driving me insane," Susan exclaimed, handing Liv another piece of fruit that she was whining over. "Dealing with one child is enough, so please can you knock some sense into him."

"-I'm telling you, the purchase was entirely justified!"

"Has dad bought another piano?" Steven guessed sheepishly, sensing his mother's patience was about to crack.

"Yes!" Victor confirmed, appearing round the corner. "I don't see what the problem is! I fix them and then sell them for more!"

"Tell that to the THREE digitals collecting dust in our garage and the five hundred dollar deficit in the bank!"

"They have dust sheets over them!" Victor defended. He pushed his glasses up his nose, probably to resettle his tone. "And I plan to sell them. It's just...I want to make sure they're going to be well loved."

Steven sighed.

"Dad, you gotta stop. You're declining buyers when they're offering double what you paid."

He approached his parents to reason, but took the opportunity to hover his hands over Liv's ears who was happily chewing away instead.

"Also, please don't raise your voices in front of my daughter. I do not appreciate the negativity."

"Watch that mouth," Susan warned, carefully batting at his wrist. "You're not too old to be grounded."

Steven feigned hurt once he'd pressed a kiss to Liv's hair.

"Sowwy mummy." He pushed out his bottom lip, and guided his father away with hands on his shoulders.

Thirty two years of age and still a devil child at heart.

"Men," Susan muttered, shaking her head in distaste.

"Yep." Leah nodded slowly in agreement, having bit on her tongue to stop herself laughing at Steven's squeaky yelp.

They walked back to the kitchen together.

"Don't have boys, because they just stay boys, forever," Susan said, cleaning the corner of Liv's mouth. She smiled at her obediently behaved granddaughter. "Girls are so much better."

With the last bit of the memory fading away, Leah already knew she was crying again. She was hugging her knees, and her phone finally slipped out of her hand from tracing Steven's hair in photo form.

Breakups had never had this many tears, had never made her feel so alone, and had certainly never given her such horrific wounds to tend.

Knowing Steven had left her with permanent scars, would prevent her from escaping his touch for the rest of her life, and it was something she didn't quite know how to explain to someone.

Not even herself.

Braving her phone again, Leah smudged her tear streaked face and shakily unlocked it. If she had any sort of hope to start anew, she had to delete the photos, but not before one last scroll through them.

She started at the beginning, Sunday last week, where she, Steven and Liv had gone to the park. Except where she thought she would be smiling when she saw his silly poses again, she was blinking through a blurry wall of tears.

A delayed swipe of her thumb became two, and two became three, but after the ninth most recent photo in her gallery, she stumbled upon a video that she had absolutely zero recollection of taking.

Taking a jumpy breather, Leah dragged the timeline back to the beginning and mashed the up volume.

Steven's face, caught on a frame of him half smirking, half smiling was her explanation, because she hadn't even filmed it. He had stolen her phone, apparently on Monday morning and she probably wouldn't have found out for quite some time.

Despite knowing she shouldn't, Leah let the video play and waited for regret to weigh her down at the end.

"Hey baby, if you were interested in seeing what you looked like sleeping..."

She watched the camera flip to a clear outline of herself sleeping, not very attractively, in his bed. He was kneeling closer, somehow not waking her up with his movement or voice, and held the phone steady in his hand again.

"You are very, very cute." Steven brushed a knuckle down her messy bed hair that was all over the pillow and covered most of her face. It went quiet, like he was just watching her sleep, and then his hand was pulled back out of shot. "I'm so lucky to have you."

The video stopped. Eleven seconds Leah didn't know existed. Something so random to record, yet something with Steven's name written all over it.

Hearing his voice, especially how much he meant the final sentence, and seeing his face in recorded time just hurt even more.

It was her fault entirely for letting the video play, but it was on her phone waiting to be found, maybe not in breakup circumstances, and it was never going to be a secret forever.

Leah abandoned her phone after that, not having the strength to look through the final photos or potential hidden gems, pulled up her hood, and curled up into a shivering ball.

She could smell the air travel on her clothes, but a shower was too far away, and involved too much effort. So, since she was exhausted from crying, she closed her eyes to sleep with a hope that she would wake up miles and miles away in the arms of the man who loved her.

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Leah jolted awake when the front door opened.

A dream was her first bet, but as she rolled over with the panicked momentum, she was very much in her flat in England.

When it closed, she tugged down her hood and saw her best friend throwing her keys into the dish between the gaps of the storage unit that partitioned the living space and the hallway.

Leah was pretty certain she gave Tina the fright of her life when she happened to look over and register her unexpected presence occupying the sofa.

"Leah!?" Tina exclaimed, palm on her chest. She dropped her bag in shock. "What the fuck are you doing here!? How the- what- y-you're supposed to be in America!"

Staring at the face of shock, Leah couldn't speak. She was convinced her voice didn't work anymore.

"Leah?" The concern began to drag through, like the guesses were answering themselves. "Oh no...Oh- what happened?"

Sitting up, Leah found herself squinting and pressing the base of her palm over an eye as she experienced a head rush from the change of position.

Painfully, she waited for the black dots to fizzle away, but her screwed up face that was ready with a fresh round of tears was definitely the reason for the rushed footsteps towards her.

"Hey." Tina crouched by her knees. "Why aren't you with Steven?"

The mention of his name had Leah glancing away, refusing to look down where her comfort was patiently waiting.

"Oh shit no, please don't tell me..."

It was getting harder to breathe with a stinging nose, to see when realisation was making her eyes well up, and the only noise she made was a pathetic whine that had started trembling on her lip.

"No, no, Devvy." Tina sat down and pulled her close. "Why didn't you call me? I would've picked you up from the airport."

Leah was beginning to sob, grasping onto her best friend's arm that stretched across her body. She rolled her head down to the awaiting shoulder, tears leaking uncontrollably.

"W-We broke up," she cried, because not saying it aloud was beating her up inside.

Tina guided a hand under her knees and scooped them across her lap. It made the desperate hug a lot easier with a less awkward twist of her neck.

"Why? What happened?"

Leah sniffed a lot, her face creating a damp mess on clothes, but if she didn't let it out now, she wouldn't for a long time.

She didn't think she could function properly being the only one who knew the reason why.

"He lied to me," she mumbled, with shaky lips. "H-He lied 'bout being clean. He 'pologised, and you know I'm weak when h-he says sorry, but I couldn't do-"

"Shh," Tina hushed, getting the gist. "Alright, that's enough now."

Leah was distraught that she was sobbing again. All the happy memories were there and she couldn't see past them, and nothing would ever make her forget about the love that could have been.

"And you flew home by yourself?" Tina interrupted her spiralling thoughts into misery. "You're so stubborn."

Stubborn reminded Leah of the first time she kissed Steven in the pouring rain. Plenty of lip to hang onto, to push and pull, and the placement of his hands had her wanting a whole lot more.

Then there was the last kiss, with the default nature to kiss him back, and the one she regretted the most for letting happen.

"He said he loves me," Leah managed to say in a thick coated voice, steadily blinking on her reflection in the black television screen.

She had found a break in her cries, but felt no better for sharing what she had kept to herself for almost three days.

"What?"

Using a bit of dizzy strength, Leah sat up. She smoothed her hair back so it wasn't pooling out of her hood under her chin and sticking to her face, and then set her sights on the kitchen.

She stood up with no intervention, masked the wobble, and forced her weakened legs to walk.

"He told me he loves me," Leah rephrased solemnly, plucking out a handful of tissues. She blew her nose twice with no response, and disposed of them in the bin.

When she sat down again, a headache making itself apparent over her eyes, she knew she was going to struggle to maintain the dry patch from tears. But she had to speak up now, before she really did give up on herself.

"Have I made a huge mistake?" Leah asked weakly, hands stuffed in the front pocket of her hoodie.

The hesitation was an answer in itself. Another pitiful blow that disapproved of her decision to leave.

Tina composed herself with a confident frown.

"No, no of course not. Lying is a serious red flag. You did the right thing."

Leah sort of scoffed when the hand landed reassuringly on her knee, and she looked over at the bookcase. She dragged out her right hand, knocking her index finger knuckle to her front teeth, and bit gently on the thin layer of skin.

When she closed her eyes, she felt Steven's hands instead. She saw his smile lying in bed one evening and how she traced the lines on his face with her finger all the way down to his chin. How he turned towards her and splodged his fingertip on her dimple because she was smiling too, and then rolled on top and gave her a crushing hug so he could bury his face into her neck.

She had let all of that go. A single week with him, probably the best week she had ever had, and she had ended it, like Steven said, before they had even started.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah," Leah responded, pinching her thumb and finger towards her nose to dry excess moisture from her eyes. She almost laughed, dipping her head to scratch at the back of her hair. "Do your worst."

Tina was probably studying her lacklustre behaviour judging by the hefty pause that followed. She didn't want to know how awful she looked, but if it was anything like the pain on the inside, it might have resembled a broken heart.

"Do you love him?"

Leah stopped twiddling with an end of her hair, encountering a moment of peace in her mind. It had not been her intention to confess first, but with such undeniable feelings, she had tried her luck at Sunapee.

Love was right there on her tongue, but Steven had overwhelmed her by pausing sex, with a look in his eyes that he knew what she was trying to say. He couldn't say it either, not when the physical act was choking him up too, and when he did, maybe half an hour later, it was through complete fear of losing her.

It hurt to hear, just like it did to feel the same way and not be able to say it, because she had never experienced love like she had with Steven, and she knew deep down, she would never have that with anyone else but him.

"Yes," Leah admitted, having no shame looking at her patiently waiting best friend. "I love him, Tina. I love him in a way I've never loved before, and I don't think I'm ever going to stop."

She didn't usually enjoy being sympathised with, but having an arm slung around her shoulders meant a lot more than it probably should have. They sat in a processing moment of silence, Steven and the idea of love reaching a dreaded low, but such important feelings that had been hinted at from a mysterious encounter over a year ago, were never going to be brushed over and set aside.

"What a wanker for screwing it up," Tina grumbled, clearly about to go off on one of her monologues. "Christ, what a cock. Dick'ead. I don't care if he has a big one, he is not allowed to lie to my best friend. Next time I see him, I'll fuck him up, I'm telling you. We'll see if he wants to sweet talk then."

"Justine," Leah coughed out a laugh, unable to contain her smile. "Stop, you're making me laugh and I don't want to."

Gratefully, she did.

"Too soon?" Tina asked sheepishly, giving an apologetic hug which was really just a squeeze to her shoulders to bring her close.

Leah nodded.

"Yeah, just a bit."

If it wasn't for her headache, she might have been able to fall asleep, and then five minutes later be nudged in the ribs with a kind comment along the lines of 'get the fuck off me, I'm not your pillow'.

"Do you really love him?"

Leah shifted her head with another small nod to the curiosity, because it was just that simple to answer.

"Since the beginning?"

"Probably," she mumbled, yawning as an excuse to keep her eyes closed so she didn't have to see Tina trying to hide her arrogance for being right all along.

Therefore, Leah was pleasantly surprised when the follow up was something serious, and not something that wanted to make her bury herself in a pit of embarrassment.

"I'm going to make you a cheese toastie, because your stomach has not stopped growling," Tina said, shrugging off her zip up hoodie and tossing it onto the armchair.

Breaking into a defeated smile, Leah did have to admit she was quite hungry. She could accept being cooked some food, especially something like a cheese toastie, considering her last meal was a long time ago.

The clattering of a pan being selected managed to keep her thoughts on something else other than Steven, but looking at the black zipped hoodie draped on the armchair gave her a sudden brain wave, and brought her right back to him.

"Shit!" Leah exclaimed, sitting bolt upright which her headache did not appreciate.

Tina poked her face back in view.

"What? What's the matter?"

"I left my favourite pair of jeans!" Leah pursued in exactly the same fraught voice. She scrunched up her fist tightly, remembering the abandoned clothes on the dock along with a very nice pair of shoes. "Steven, you...you bastard!"

Except Steven wasn't just a bastard.

He was the bastard she had fallen in love with.

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