"This isn't going to work Savannah. I've tried a million times to get her to tell the truth, she refuses to even talk to me."

"Yeah she refuses to talk to you. She might be open to talking to me though. I tend to be pretty popular with teens you know." I joked, offering Brooks a wink.

My mood had improved significantly since forming somewhat of a plan. Maybe it wouldn't work and I was wasting my time, but at least I was doing something. That knowledge alone made me feel infinitely better.

Brooks chewed on his lower lip, one hand on the stick shift and one on the steering wheel. "So let's say she does finally fess up... then what? How are we going to get her to confess to Luke?"

"We're not." I said as I leaned over to pick up my phone. I waved it in front of my face. "If we can get Demi to tell us the truth, all we have to do is record it and show Luke. Then he won't have any reason to keep tormenting me and hopefully the photos will stop."

Brooks shot me a dubious look. "And if they don't?"

I swallowed the lump in my throat. I didn't want to think about what it meant if the photos didn't stop.

"Then I'll deal with that when I get to it."

"We." Brooks corrected.

"What?"

"We'll deal with it when we get to it. I told you, we're in this together."

I smiled, unable to stop myself from reaching over and placing my hand over his on the stick shift. He glanced at me briefly through thick dark eyelashes before turning back to the road.

I shook my head to clear it and busied myself peering out of the window. The greenish black clouds hung low over us, casting a dark shadow over everything and threatening to spill over at any second.

"How far away did you say Demi's boarding school was again?" I asked, scrunching my nose. I don't know who had predicted that we would have another day or two before the storm hit, but I could tell now that they were way off. We would probably be lucky if we had another twenty minutes.

"About an hour and a half."

I chewed on my bottom lip, but didn't protest. Maybe we shouldn't have picked today of all days to go gallivanting on a trip an hour and a half away, when the worst storm in years was going to hit at any moment.

"If the storm gets too bad, we'll just pull over until it eases." Brooks reassured me, seeming to have read my mind. I nodded and leaned my head against the window, watching as the first few raindrops splattered onto the glass.

My eyes started to close involuntarily, my body and mind exhausted from stress and lack of sleep. I drifted off slowly, the motion of the car and the patter of rain lulling me into slumber.

I probably could have slept the whole way, had I not been woken by the car screeching along the road. I sat upright in alarm as Brooks' arm flung out to stop me from flying through the windscreen and we jolted sharply to a stop.

"What-" I started breathlessly, but words evaporated from my mouth as I heard a loud crack and turned to see a huge oak tree falling onto the middle of the road— right where we would have been had Brooks not braked when he did. Shards of blackened wood flew out in all directions, and Brooks reflexively shoved the car into reverse and floored the accelerator. We sailed backwards until we were out of reach of the flying debris.

I sat in wide eyed shock for a moment, taking in what had just happened.

"Holy shit!" I cussed when I had finally regained my voice. "How did— how did you know to stop in time?"

Brooks was searching my face and body calculatingly. "I saw it get struck by lightning." He murmured. "Are you okay?" He reached out and turned my face side to side with his thumb and pointer finger, inspecting me.

"I'm fine. Are you?"

Brooks nodded with a blank expression, tucking my hair behind my ear before placing his hands back in his lap. The storm had picked up now, buckets of rain being tossed down onto us and the wind howling through the trees. Every now and then a fork of silvery lightning would pierce the sky, followed closely by the rumble of thunder.

"Is it much further to the school?" I asked, wondering whether she should just turn around and go home or brave the storm and keep going.

"Only another half hour, except that the tree is blocking the road. We'd have to take an alternative route, so we'd be looking at at least another hour— if not longer in these conditions." Brooks informed me, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel.

I glanced at the clock on the dashboard— 5:30pm. We'd told Sarah and Lewis that we were spending the night at Dallas' house, which both Mia and Dallas were going to back us up on even though we hadn't told them where we were actually going, so it didn't matter how long we stayed out. What did matter though, was not getting killed trying to drive in bad conditions.

"We passed an all-night diner a few blocks back, why don't we go and try wait out the storm there for a bit." Brooks suggested, pointing at the road behind us. I nodded my head with a shrug, and Brooks swung the car around and started to drive back the way we had come. It took about ten minutes of driving to find the diner which, in all honesty, looked like it had seen better days.

We made a run for it from the car, yet the rain was so heavy that we still got completely soaked in those ten seconds of exposure to the elements.

Brooks yanked the glass door open for me and I stumbled inside, almost slipping on the puddle of water that we had brought with us. I rubbed my arms for warmth as I glanced around the dated diner. It was a little on the shabbier side and was in desperate need of some TLC, but we could make it work. There was only one other person inside— a middle aged guy reading a newspaper. There were a couple of empty plates around him, but no one seemed to be around to clear them.

"Here." Brooks said, regaining my attention as he pulled off his navy hoodie and handed it to me. I opened my mouth to protest that he was going to freeze to death, but he was already walking towards a booth at the back of the room, so it fell on deaf ears. With a sigh I pulled the hoodie over my head. It was wet on the outside, but thick enough that the fleece inside was still somewhat dry. I breathed in Brooks' scent as I curled into the warmth, following him over to the booth and sitting down opposite him.

"Damn I could use some coffee about now." Brooks muttered, glancing around to see if he could find a member of the waitstaff. The cashier desk was completely empty though, so he turned back to me with a frown. I stood up and walked over to the desk, leaning over to see if anyone was in the back room or something.

"Hello? Anybody there?" I called out, but the only response I got came from the newspaper guy, who looked up at me briefly and then looked away again.

"Hello?"

There was no reply once again, so my eyes roamed the kitchen area until I found what I was looking for, and then I swung my leg over the counter and slid inside. As quickly and sneakily as possible, I lunged for the pot of brewed black coffee— still warm, bingo!—and stole two mugs from the dryer rack before catapulting myself back over the counter and towards our table.

"Your coffee, sir." I grinned triumphantly and offered Brooks a little bow as I placed the items in front of him.

Brooks was staring at me in amusement, one eyebrow cocked up questioningly as he crossed his arms over his chest.

I shrugged, pouring coffee from the jug into each mug. "What? I'll pay for it. Besides, it's their own fault. They should know that their customers will resort to coffee theft if there's inadequate service."

I slid back into the booth and wrapped my fingers around my mug as a shock of lightning flashed through the sky outside. What were we going to do if the storm didn't blow over quickly? Stay here all night? I glanced around the dinky diner in distaste, holding back a shudder. I'd rather sleep in the car.

"I guess I picked a pretty terrible day for a roadtrip, didn't I?"I asked through pursed lips, fighting back a laugh despite our sitation. 

Brooks flashed me his thousand kilowatt smile, making my heart jump in my chest. "Yeah, you did. But I didn't protest, so I guess that makes me partially at fault too."

"You make a good point. I'll gladly share the blame with you."

"I don't doubt you will."

"Sharing is caring, after all."

Brooks' grin dampened to a weak smile and he took a slow sip of his coffee, his eyes downcast. "I don't think there would ever have been a good time to go see Demi, anyway." He murmured, suddenly intrigued by whatever was in the bottom of his mug. Actually now that I thought about it, I too was intrigued by what was in the bottom of his mug. From the state of this place, probably some dust or a dead bug or something.

I placed my own beverage down on the table and folded my arms in front of me. Brooks had insisted on coming with me on this trip-- he was the one who knew Demi, after all-- but that didn't mean that he was comfortable with it. In fact, he had probably been dreading it. Yet he had come with me anyway to make sure that I was safe and that I got my answers.

"Hey, you never told me the whole story behind you and Demi. I mean," I swallowed, "I know how it ended but, how did it start? How did you guys meet and all that?"

Brooks took a deep breath and looked up at me from under his eyelashes, watching me as if deciding how deep to delve into it all. I gave him a small nod of encouragement, taking another sip of my coffee.

Eventually he sighed, reaching up to tousle his hair. The rain acted as a hair gel, making the shiny locks stick up randomly in a manner that would have taken a professional hairstylist hours to recreate.

"She used to go to Beaufort High-- she came the year you left.  She's very academic so almost all of her classes were AP. She was doing like eleventh grade English as a Freshman." Brooks informed me, shaking his head incredulously. "We sat next to each other in Spanish, got talking and went on a few dates. We'd only been dating for a couple of months when she, well," He cleared his throat uncomfortably, "decided we weren't moving quickly enough. She told me that she just wanted to get it over with-- that she was sick of being a virgin. I guess she assumed that since I was older than her, I'd be the perfect candidate."

He shot me a knowing look. "That didn't really seem like a good enough reason for me though, so I told her that I thought it was too soon and that I wasn't ready. She freaked out, saying that I was a liar and that I thought she wasn't attractive enough or smart enough and that's why I wouldn't sleep with her. Then she took a bunch of polaroids of herself, stole my phone and took photos of them and sent them out to everyone in my contact list. She ran to Luke and made up a bunch of things about how I had cheated on her and sent around the photos and... well you know the rest. I'm lucky the police didn't get involved, in all honesty. I don't know if I would have been able to stand up against her when all the evidence was on her side."

Brooks watched me carefully, and I tried to keep my emotions guarded. "She was smart, Savannah. Smarter than I was. And hurt. We live in this world where so much value is placed on being wanted and desirable. You can't just be who you are and do what you want—you have to conform. It's fucked up. And it was her need for that approval, to be 'normal', to fit in, that made her so desperate, and so hurt when I said no. She took that as my way of telling her that she wasn't good enough, when really it wasn't about her at all. I'm not saying that I forgive her yet, but I know that what she did didn't come from malice—it came from fear. Of not being accepted, of not fitting in."

I sat for a moment with the weight of Brooks' words on my shoulders. I didn't miss how he'd said he hadn't forgiven her 'yet', as if there was a possibility that he would in the future. How could he be so lenient towards someone who had treated him so poorly?

"How do you do that?" I asked quietly. "Just... show compassion to people when you have every right to be angry?"

The corner of Brooks' mouth twitched as he watched me through glassy eyes. He fiddled with his mug, spinning it gently on the table. "People rarely do shitty things purely because they're shitty people. There's always something deeper going on. The sooner you realize that someone's actions don't always accurately reflect them as a person, the easier it is to find a way to forgive. Or at least accept."

I couldn't help but think about my parents, and how horrible I'd felt when, at just fifteen years old, they left me. First they'd split up from each other, then dad moved to Miami with the woman he'd been secretly seeing. Mom lasted a little longer, coming home once every few days to check on me and relieve the nanny. But eventually even she had grown tired of checking on the child left over from her old life, so she moved in with her new boyfriend and hired a live-in nanny to take her place.

Things had never been good between my parents before we had all moved to LA together— they had always been the flaky kind, my mother especially. She was childish and overexcitable and liked to party more than she liked to spend time with me, but at least she was there.

There must have been reasons for what they did, reasons that I didn't know about, but still I couldn't picture myself forgiving them any time soon. Would even Brooks have been able to forgive something like that?

And it was then that I realized he already had. Because what my parents had done to me— leaving without a goodbye or a warning, barely speaking to me since they'd gone— it was exactly what I'd done to Brooks when I left four years ago.

Yet, here we were, sitting and talking as friends. Maybe even as more than friends. Had he understood better than I thought?

"Is that why you decided to forgive me?" I queried quietly, taking another sip of coffee.

Brooks jammed a hand through his hair and let out a puff of air. The storm was still raging outside, rain pounding loudly against the windows, but all I could focus on was Brooks and what his answer was going to be.

Eventually he nodded. "Yeah. That's part of it."

I was about to ask what the other part was, but at that moment Brooks decided to jump out of his seat and grab the coffee jug in the middle of the table.

"Looks like the waiter is finally here." He said, avoiding my gaze as he pointed at the counter. "I'll go get us a refill."

And then he walked away, leaving me to marinate in my unanswered question.