I keep my promise. I don't tell a soul about what I saw at Baker's house. About his truth. His secret. My parents come home, and with Baker's permission, Ian stays the night. At first I tell myself that I'll tell my parents all about the abuse when Ian goes to sleep. Then I decide to tell them in the morning before he wakes up. And then I say that I'll tell them when he leaves. But even when he does leave, I don't say anything. I just keep going back to what Baker asked me. If I trust him. And I do. Which means I have to follow his lead here, even if it kills me to do so.

When Baker and I see each other the next day, we don't talk about any of it. We don't discuss his father. We don't say another word about our temporary breakup. And we don't breathe a word about almost having sex. But even though I don't say anything about the last part, I think about it nonstop. A person's first time is supposed to be a big deal. It's supposed to mean something. And, after thinking about it most of the night, I know now that's why he stopped. Because he does want it to mean something. Something more than what it would've had we gone through with it.

Baker and I ring in the New Year a week later with him sneaking into my room after the festivities to stay the night. We don't do anything. But I see the fresh bruises on his body, and I contemplate once again on whether or not I'm doing the right thing by keeping his secret. I don't know if it can. But I will do anything to help him. We make resolutions together as we lie in bed together looking up at my ceiling. His: to keep the top spot in the class (of course). Mine: to take it from him. That's what I tell him, anyway. And it does pull a smile out of him, something I'm discovering quickly that only Ian and I can do. But really, my resolution is to find a way to help him without breaking his trust.

School begins again a few days after New Years. And everyone carries on like their lives were not inexplicably changed over the two week time span we were all apart. Perhaps theirs weren't, but mine.... I'll never be the same person I was before Christmas Day. Just like the night of the party when Ollie tried to rape me and Baker came to my rescue, I'm different. A new person, rising from the ashes of the old. I just hope I'm better now than I was before. And that I'm making a good choice in keeping his secret.

Finding things to do with Ian during the winter is difficult, seeing as we can't go out to the park and play ball anymore. There's a foot of snow on the ground outside, and the temperature has dropped below freezing. But there's really no need to go to the park anymore. It seems Ian is having enough fun with my little brother, who's favorite time of the day is tummy time. Auggie stares up at his mobile as he discovers new things about himself. Fingers. Hands. Toes. Feet. And as I watch him, I wonder what that must be like. To be so blissfully unaware of everything around you. To be so innocent.

And when I watch Ian play with Auggie, my heart breaks for him. Because he should still have some of that innocence left in him. But I know his secret, and I know all shreds of innocence he had were stripped away from him a long time ago. He hides it well. But now that I know, I see it there sometimes. The same darkness his brother carries reflecting in his eyes. I see it in the way he worries about Baker when he sees him with a fresh bruise. I see it in the way he checks his phone for texts from his older brother when he's not around. And I see it whenever my parents dare to bring up their father, hoping to invite him to a family dinner that they don't know will never happen.

When the second term begins, Baker and I both start work on our Senior Projects. Baker finds a local restaurant owner who is willing to take him on for a while so he can work on his job shadow hours. Meanwhile, I start my job shadowing at a local law firm, working under a family law attorney named Heather Murphy. Mostly I work on filing and updating things they call pleading indexes. It's only a couple hours after school a few days a week, but it's kind of fun work. Although, to be honest, I'd much rather be in court with the attorney, seeing her in action.

It's not until my third week there that I learn Heather Murphy is also a guardianship attorney. When I discover this, my heart leaps. That's what Baker wants to do for Ian. So I begin asking questions. Just a few here and there, so I can better understand how the process works. But when I start taking notes on the subject, Heather believes that's my focus and begins having me work on some guardianship cases with her. She doesn't know the real reason I'm interested in this particular subject. And I can't tell her, because if I do, she'll have to report the situation to CPS. So I keep my mouth closed and take all the notes I can for Baker to use later.

Now that we're both working on our job shadowing hours, our time together is a bit more limited than it was before. The free period we used to spend in his car making out is now spent working on our Senior Projects in the library. Even Beth joins us now, her nose buried in her computer as she spends hours putting together her project on The Role of Physical Therapists in Sports-Related Injuries. She's job shadowing at a rehab facility in Post Falls, which means I hardly ever get to see her either.

One day, as Baker and I are enjoying a brief ten minutes in his car together at the end of lunch, his warm lips pressed against my collarbone as he tries to take advantage of the time he has, I confess to him how much I've missed this. At first he thinks it's making out, but it's more than that. It's just... doing things outside of school that don't somehow involve school. Going out and having fun.

It's idle talk, really. I don't expect him to do anything about it. It's our senior year of high school, which just so happens to be the busiest year of our public school education. But he surprises me when he pulls away and looks directly into my blue eyes. "Let's get out of here," he says in a way that isn't really suggestive, but still makes the butterflies in my stomach start dancing.

"Get out of where?" I ask, confused.

"Here," he replies, lifting his chin up toward the school. I glare at him, and he grins. "Come on, Lumen. Don't pretend like you've never done it before."

I scoff and shake my head. "I should've never told you I ditched school with El last year," I say, folding my arms across my chest as I scoot off of his lap. He slides his arms around me and pulls me closer. "Baker, come on. We can't ditch."

"Why not?" he asks, his eyebrows shooting up into his hairline. I give him a you-know-why face, and he sighs. "I haven't had a break in months, and neither have you. It's been pedal to the metal since the year started, Summer. We deserve a break."

"What would we even do?" I ask.

He grins as he buries his face in my neck again, pressing a kiss against the gold chain of the necklace he got me for Christmas. "I can think of a few things," he mutters, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. This teasing is torturous, and again, I wonder if he's ever going to take the big leap with me, or if we're going to be like this forever.

"Baker," I groan, my resolve crumbling with each and every kiss he places along my neck. "This isn't a good idea. We could get caught."

He shakes his head. "We won't. Come on, baby. Please? Besides, I have a place I've been wanting to take you anyway, and now is as good a time as ever."

This catches my attention. "A place? What place?"

He smirks, knowing he's won. "Guess you'll just have to come with me and find out," he says, and I roll my eyes.

"Fine," I say with a sigh, and he nips at my neck playfully. "Baker!"

A laugh escapes his throat. "Sorry! Guess I got a little excited. Nothing like a bad girl to turn a guy on." More teasing. He's killing me.

"Oh my God," I reply with a roll of my eyes. "Just... let's go. If we're going to do this, let's do it now before someone catches us."

He nods his head, allowing me to slide off of his lap and into his passenger seat. After reaching into his pocket for his keys, he puts them in the ignition and pulls out of the school parking lot. Meanwhile, my eyes scan around, looking for someone who's going to see us leaving and report us to the principal. Even when we turn onto the main road and get a mile away from the school, I'm still nervously looking around, expecting to be caught.

Baker reaches over and takes my hand in his, pressing it up against his lips. "Take a breath," he says softly, and I nod my head and close my eyes. "You're okay. This is all part of the teenage experience, Lumen."

I scoff. "I hate ditching school. It makes me so nervous. I mean, I missed a few days of school and lost the top spot in the class. I don't want to take a chance of my GPA dropping any further."

He chuckles as he rubs his thumb against my knuckles. "Columbia won't mind if you skip half a day. Besides, I'm skipping with you, and I'm the one you have to beat, right?" I nod my head. "Okay, then relax. Let's just try to have fun."

I breathe again as we turn the corner heading into Hayden. "Fine. But where are you taking me, anyway? Is this like an impromptu date or something?"

A smile tugs on his lips. "No, but now that you mention it, we should probably do that sometime." I turn and stare at him and see his cheeks are turning a light shade of pink. "A date, I mean. It's kind of weird, right? Like... we've slept in the same bed, but we've never gone on a real date."

"Baker," I reply, rolling my eyes again. "We've gone on plenty of dates."

Now it's his turn to scoff. "Study sessions and brief trips to the grocery store don't count, baby," he says, shaking his head.

"Well, maybe not to you," I reply, frowning. "But they do to me. Besides, don't spend any money on me. Please." This has been an ongoing argument we've been having. Ever since I learned how much money he spent on my Christmas present, I've been demanding to buy everything. He's supposed to be saving his money, I remind him, not blowing it on me. He hates when I say this, but he also knows I'm right.

"This place doesn't cost a thing," he says as we pull onto 4th Street heading closer to Hayden Lake. "Trust me, okay?"

Trust him. Seems like that's an ongoing theme. Trust him as he continues to have his ass beat by his father every other day. Trust him to keep his secret. Trust him and his plans for his future. Our future. And the thing is, it's not that I don't trust him. I do. But the things I'm trusting him with are so huge that every time he says it now, that's all I can think about. The gamble he's taking. The risks. Are they worth the reward?

A few minutes later, we're pulling up toward the vacant lot he had me take him and Ian to last year after his fight with Ollie. He parks the car off to the side of the road and hops out, leaving me wondering where the hell he's taking me. "Come on," he says as he moves to my side and opens my door. "It's not far, I promise."

I glare at him teasingly as my lips quirk up in a smirk. "I think I see your plan now. Make me fall in love with you so I'll follow you to the middle of nowhere. You kill me, and then you'll never have to worry about me taking the top spot."

He laughs as he holds out his hand for me. I take it, and he helps me out of the car. After a quick kiss on the cheek, he grins and says, "I don't have to kill you to keep the top spot, baby. I'm doing that just fine."

I sigh. "I hate you," I say, and he laughs again as he holds my hand and leads me across the vacant lot toward the woods. It's weird being outside like this right now. There's still an inch or so of snow on the ground, which makes traversing the rocky path a little more treacherous this time of year. I'm no stranger to hiking. Beth and I have gone several times, and my parents and I used to go to Tubbs Hill when I was younger. But only ever during the summer time. Definitely not in the middle of winter.

"How much longer?" I ask him breathlessly as I slip down another small hill, coming dangerously close to falling.

"Another minute or so," he replies as he turns to look at me. I nod my head and follow his lead until we get to an old looking shack in the middle of nowhere. My eyes take it in as he smiles lovingly at it. I don't see what there is to love. It's clearly an old structure on someone's property. It looks forgotten about, as it's so rundown that it seems it could collapse at any moment. "Here we are," he says, spreading his arms out wide like he's showing me a mansion he built himself.

My lips fall into a little frown. "This is what you wanted to show me?" I ask, and he nods his head excitedly. "Um... no offense, but this doesn't look like a good place for a date."

A laugh escapes his lips as he shuffles forward, his shoes leaving tracks in the snow. "Come on. Let me show you."

Hesitantly, I follow him into the old shack, and I'm not surprised to see that it looks almost as run down inside as it does on the outside. There are a few pieces of furniture set up to make it look a little homier, and in the corner I spot a small portable generator with a space heater sitting beside it unplugged. The wood seems to have rotted some, but it looks like someone came in fairly recently and attempted to replace some of the rotted beams with new ones in order to stabilize the structure. Well, at least I know it's not going to collapse on top of us.

"Do you like it?" he asks, and I turn to look at him. His smile tells me it's a serious question.

"It's...," I trail off, because I don't know what it is.

He runs over to an old cupboard and pulls out some cans of food. "You like chili, or are you more of a tomato soup kind of girl?" he asks as he pulls a multitool out of his pocket.

"Um... chili, I guess," I reply, and he nods his head as he starts opening the can of chili. Then he grabs a pot off the counter and dumps the chili in the pot before setting it on what looks like a hot place. "Baker, what is this place?"

He plugs the hot plate into another generator. "This is our sanctuary," he says simply as he stirs the chili with a wooden spoon. "Found it in my freshman year of high school. The property is huge, so the owner probably doesn't even know this little shack exists. If they do, they never use it. So Ian and I have kind of made it our little spot."

"Spot for what?" I ask as I continue looking around. There are a couple of posters on the walls. A baseball player who I don't know the name of. A supermodel standing over a car wearing nothing but a bikini top and a pair of shorts so tight you can see every minor curve of her ass. There are some bookshelves lining the walls as well with what looks like old books taken from different libraries in the area. And a dark brown table off to the side of the kitchen space.

Steams starts coming off the chili as he continues to stir it. "This is where Ian and I go when it gets really bad," he says, and I turn to stare at him. "Last winter, I practically lived here. My dad lost another job, so he was home a lot more. It was... a really hard winter. Worse than this one, if you can believe it. So I spent a lot of time here. It's kind of like a second home to us, you know? The one place in the world where I feel truly safe."

It feels like someone has reached through my sternum and squeezed my heart. We stay silent for a few minutes as he finishes with the chili and pours it into two separate bowls. Then he hands me a bowl with a spoon, and the two of us sit at the table and eat our small meals quietly. I don't know what to say to him. Don't know how to react to all of this. The fact that he has to sneak off to some rundown shack in the wood to feel safe... God. What am I supposed to say to that?

"I brought you here," he says softly as he takes on final bite of his chili, "to show you that I have a place to go when it's bad. I want you to know I'm going to keep my promise. That I'm going to tell you if it gets to be too much. But I also want you to know that it's okay. I'm okay. I have this place. And I have you and Ian. So everything is going to be okay, Summer. I will be okay. And I just... I love you. I love that you trust me. That you believe me when I say I have this handled."

There are tears in my eyes as I swallow down a bite of chili that tastes like cardboard. "This is not easy for me, Baker," I whisper, and he gives me a sympathetic smile as he reaches across the table for my hand. "Keeping this secret keeps me up at night. I love you too. And I want to protect you. I want to know you're safe."

He nods. "I am, baby," he replies, but I shake my head.

"No," I say firmly. "This isn't safe, Baker. I get that you've made a second home here. But it isn't safe. Nothing about your situation is safe. And it terrifies me." He winces and averts his eyes. I squeeze his hand. "What would you do if it was me? If I was in your shoes?"

He looks back up at me, and his eyes light up with fury. "I would fucking kill him," he growls. "I would destroy him if he ever laid a hand on you."

I nod. "Exactly. So why don't you do that for yourself?"

He sighs as he looks up at the ceiling. "First, I don't know if I can take him. My dad... he was a boxer when he was a kid. He still practices in the garage all the time when he's drunk. And he's strong as an ox."

"You're a football player," I remind him.

"Yeah, and he's still stronger than I am," he replies. "So if I did try to fight back, he'd probably kill me. Or, if he didn't, I'd end up back in foster care. Ian could end up in foster care. So I just... I have to deal with it. For a little longer. Just until May. Just until I turn eighteen."

I shake my head. "I don't get it. You're a scrapper, aren't you? That's what Beth told me a long time ago. She said you got into a fight with a guy years ago—"

He laughs sadly. "Summer, I started that rumor," he says, and I blink in surprise. "That was me. The guy she says I fought? He just moved away. I made it up because I needed a reason for the bruises. I needed people to think I was a fighter so they wouldn't question me. And then I started playing football, and if someone asked, I told them the bruises were from the game. Honestly? I don't even really like playing it. But it's a reason. Everything I do is protect myself and my brother, Summer. Everything."

There are tears in my eyes as I look away. "Baker... this can't go on."

"It's not going to," he says. "I just need until May 4th. That's it. That's when I turn eighteen and can get this show started. It'll be hard. My dad is not going to be happy. But I've got so much proof. I'll have Ian in my care within a few weeks, and everything will be fine. You'll see. It'll work out."

I nod my head, but I'm not as sure. This whole situation makes me feel sick to my stomach. "Just... just don't let it get too bad," I say.

He gets up and walks over to me, wrapping his arms around my middle as he rests his head in my lap. I slide my fingers through his dark hair, and he sighs. "I won't. And if it starts to, I'll come here. That's why I wanted to show you. So you'll always know where to find me."

I lift my head up to the ceiling and close my eyes. I hate this situation. I hate that I don't know what to do. I'm not used to not knowing the answers, but this... it's worse than any math equation you could throw at me. The amount of time I've spent tossing and turning as I ponder over different ways I can help them is outrageous. It's constantly there in the back of my mind. Because I love him, and I hate seeing him in so much pain all the time, both physically and mentally. But at the end of the day, I can't think of anything I can do to help. So I have no choice but to trust him. To trust his process.

"Thank you for showing me," I whisper, and he looks up and kisses me deeply, pouring every ounce of love he has for me into the kiss. And, I realize, I'm forcing him to trust me too. Trust me not to say anything about what's going on at his house. It's dangerous, this game of trust. Like playing game of Hot Potato with a live grenade. I just hope it doesn't explode in our faces when it's all said and done. 

Author's Note:
This chapter was much longer than I intended it to be. Sorry about that! But I hope you all like it. I know this story has gotten a bit heavy lately, but I warned you at the beginning that it was probably going to be my most triggering story. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and I'll be back in a few days with another chapter. Stay safe and healthy until then, my dears!
XOXO,
~Aly