Leah's patience had broken. Gone.

She'd been up for too long, grown restless tossing and turning, and pacing wall to wall, holding her lower back that was sore from not sleeping on a bed, was what she had resorted to.

When the time finally came, Leah was ready to make some noise, and she pushed past Joey, who barely had the chance to get out of the way.

"Woah, hey! What's wrong?"

After making it a fair distance into the hallway, turning back to see such a confused face of a man she had been considering a friend, was yet another act of betrayal.

"I don't know Joey, how about that you have been lying to me."

"What?"

"No, don't try to act innocent with me because I know. I remember everything."

Despite her clear warning, Joey bunched up his shoulders, displaying his hands in front of him.

"I'm sorry, but I-I really don't know what you mean!"

"Riiighhht of course you don't." Leah gave an accusing nod, and continued purposely into the living room.

"Leah! Wait, please!"

Ignoring him, Leah began rifling through cushions, discarding them onto the floor, though was well aware she had been followed.

She tucked her hair behind her ear when it fell in front of her face, an annoying obstruction, but it was the least of her problems. She didn't know what she was trying to find, but taking out her pent up energy on furniture was somewhat satisfying.

"We've told you everything we know," Joey tried to reason from somewhere behind her. "I made you a promise..."

Leah couldn't believe what she was hearing. The audacity he thought he had.

"What's the date, Joey?" She moved from the two sofas, and began opening drawers of the tv unit so hard, they crashed onto the floor. "Today, what's the date?"

"Uh-I..." The stumble amused her. "March thirteenth?"

"Yep," Leah confirmed, tv screen wobbling dangerously. "So that means I've been with you guys for a week. Which makes the night you took me the fifth, which means-"

"Please, stop." Joey touched her arm, contact that slipped like the confidence of his plea. "We can figure this out, yeah? Just help me understand."

Leah's rampage had been interrupted, but she didn't lash out. She had been given a breath of air, a focus point, except none of it calmed her down.

"Understand? Yeah okay, I'll get you to understand." The explanation burned to be free, an intensity mirroring how her memories had come rushing back. "So you forgot to tell me you crashed my grandma's birthday party, opened fire on my family, and then because I was the loose end, you hit me on the back of the head to make sure I didn't remember anything? Oh, and then proceed to kidnap me."

Leah's laugh was baleful, like a puff of constrained air from her mouth. It sounded just as inconceivable to say aloud as it did in her head.

"Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your little plan didn't work."

"What? What're you-"

"And the whole playing nice? It was a decent attempt, I'll give you that. You almost had me fooled."

Confusion consumed Joey, and he rested a hand on the back of his head before it delved through his curly hair like he too couldn't quite believe what he was hearing.

"That's not- where's this coming from?"

"Oh, come off it, Joey! I can't deal with the bullshit anymore!"

Flow interrupted, Leah was left to breathe in a ragged silence. It was her against Joey, and from the way he proceeded to place his hands either side of his hips, over the loose fitting fabric of his black sports vest that spilled to the waistband of matching joggers, she got her point across perfectly.

"Okay," he conceded calmly, tightening his chin. But he wagged a finger at her, when he lifted his head up. "But you're wrong on a few points. The guns? That wasn't us."

"And I'm supposed to believe you?"

Joey shifted again, clutching a straw at thin air in disapproval. His eyes though, when they landed back on hers, shone with undeniable seriousness.

"Leah, we did not hurt your family- that was completely out of our hands. We didn't expect anything like that to happen."

"But you admit you were there?"

He gave a nod. "Yes, for a short period of time."

A smile, dark and unpleasant, tugged at the corner of Leah's mouth like she had just been proven right.

"Your alibi isn't looking too strong, Joey."

Fast footsteps tumbled down the carpeted stairs, and they were soon joined by Tom and Brad. Seeing the scattered cushions and the drawers that had been tipped over, they both shared the same expression.

"What the hell's goin' on down here?" Brad asked.

"Oh nice of you to join us," Leah remarked sarcastically, taking the courtesy to tip her chin at the new arrivals.

"Joey?" Tom looked at him.

"She remembers."

"Yes. She does remember, and you're all sick liars." Leah reinstated her anger, and deliberately went the longer route to the dining room.

She settled in front of the decorative cabinet and pulled the first drawer open to sift through the contents.

There was nothing useful so she moved down to the second drawer, except it was snapped shut by a firm hand. It belonged to Joey, and his arm remained to block her rash intentions.

"Listen to me. We had no part in the guns. You can flip this place upside down, check everywhere, but you won't find any because we don't own any." Joey said, an unfamiliar sternness in his voice. "And under no circumstances did we know that your family would be in danger. We're not kidnappers and we're not-"

"Then what are you?" Leah pressed, because really, she was desperate for that answer. "Can you not see that you are deliberately missing out the facts? Like why the fuck you were there and why you're still unable to give me a straight answer!?"

"Because we don't know what happened either!" Tom grabbed their attention and after looking over his shoulder, Joey moved away.

Leah waited for the continuation, her space returned to her.

"It went to plan and then it didn't. Our paths were never meant to cross in the way they did but St-" Tom stopped himself, like he had just made a mistake. "But they did, and I'm so sorry."

A quiet finish, and a slip of tongue that Leah couldn't account towards anything.

"Right well..." She took a step forward. Her opinion hadn't changed. "Thank you all."

She brushed past the three of them and back into the mess she had made. She got about halfway on her anger path to nowhere, before she had the urge to turn around and get one more thing off her chest.

"And don't try to apologise for what you did. I still don't believe you. I don't trust any of you and I-"

"HOLY FUCK!"

Mid sentence, mid rage at Joey, Tom and Brad, Leah followed the new intrusion with her eyes.

She recognised the voice instantly because it was his voice. It wasn't the one she had been blessed with last night; that person was nowhere to be seen. It was the one that could scare her, and had scared her. But, as she waited for the slow purposeful steps to descend the stairs, she felt nothing that equated to fear, just like last night.

"What the actual fuck is going on!?"

In broad daylight, Leah finally set eyes on him, and his on her, because they were the first thing that they both saw, and there was no way around it.

He wore a pair of comfy black trousers that hung low on his hips, a fitted t-shirt, and she was fairly certain she saw a tattoo on his left bicep that peeked underneath the short sleeve. There wasn't anything special about his clothes, but then she wasn't paying enough attention to pick up on details like logos and brands.

Drawn up to his face, she couldn't not take a good look.

His features were striking, and every millisecond she spent taking him in, the more striking they became. Hair a dark brown, verging black in the current light, and it had an unruly thickness with curls and waves that fell around his ears to his shoulders.

From the distance between them, Leah could tell his eyes were just as dark, and defined cheekbones made them more deeply set and powerful. It was natural to linger on his lips, a pair so full in an expressive pout, with just as captivating curved protrusions to both corners of his mouth.

It felt like an eternity, looking at him and learning the details of this stranger, and she knew he was doing the exact same.

"And what the fuck do you think you're doing?"

Leah scoffed, not feeling the need to answer. Except when that didn't seem to sit with him, and acted as if he expected an answer from her, she gave it.

"Oh, I'm sorry for causing such a hassle for you. Maybe you shouldn't disturb people's sleep and then they might not be so...argumentative in the morning."

To see a blip in his menacing composure, was a moment to be proud of.

"Am I missing something here?" Joey asked, a reminder that they weren't alone.

"No, you're not," Tyler snapped, but his attention didn't waver from her. "What are you doing-"

"Apparently, pissing you off," Leah finished presumptuously.

"In...here," he finished, deliberately slowly.

"Leah can do what she wants," Brad provided. He must've been trying to get on her side but with all of this chaos, she couldn't accept his support.

Tyler turned towards his friends. "And who decided that?"

"The three of us," Brad answered. "Whilst you two were out all day."

"What did you want us to do?" Tom added. "Nothing? I thought we'd been through this."

A stressful hand being pushed through his hair, briefly exposing his heavy frown was Tyler's distaste.

"You could have told me."

"Told you? You didn't care. You didn't give a shit!"

Leah rolled her eyes. She couldn't stand to be in the same room as any of them anymore. Whatever these guys had going between them, was beyond her current state of mind, and caring to find out was disappearing.

So, whilst the attention was not on her directly, she started to move towards the door, her initial destination if she hadn't been rudely interrupted.

Of course, she took two steps forward and he, the man she had waited so long to see, completely blocked her path, and she'd have to physically push past him to continue on her way.

"Where are you going?"

"Away from you," Leah replied monotonously.

She would have moved; she should have moved, but even with his cold glare burning the heat in her, it was hard not to look at him again when she was so close.

He stood a few inches taller than her, and she could see the faint rings under his eyes which had been masked by his frown, and his eye colour was not as dark as they seemed. A shade of brown for sure, but there was something else too. Something hidden that she couldn't quite understand, and she had to ignore the urge to dip her eyes to inspect the little red marks in between the stubble around his mouth because the natural pout of his lips was something else entirely.

Leah held her breath as she finally sidestepped past him, bumping his shoulder as she did so. She knew he was watching her and there was something strangely familiar about the faint concoction of smoke and leather that hit her nostrils.

"You can't leave."

Leah walked backwards to acknowledge his warning, not that he deserved it, and scrunched up her eyes in disgust.

"Fuck you."

In the safety of her isolation, she slammed the door behind her to make her point, because she would not admit he was right.

Home. Leah wanted home. And the sad part was, she didn't think she was going back to it any time soon.

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