Thursday Evening

A/N~ The second chapter I promised you before New Year's.

A little side-note. I can write 2k of my novel in an hour. But it takes me forty minutes to write 674 words of this.

Anyway, this is all Jon's POV. Hopefully, I'll have Andrew's chapter up by the Jan. 1st. No guarentees, though. The promise is what Jon says after the rant. I can't remember what number chapter that was. However, I copied and pasted it here for your convenience .

“If you stay with me… I won’t let you go back. I won’t let you be hurt, anymore.”

Oh! Happy New Year!

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I healed. It took a while, but in a few weeks, I was back to being “the pretty one” as he liked to call me. I’d always disagreed with him when he said things like that. He had the more delicate features, as I pointed out, many, many times.

I spent a couple days at home, just trying to heal. During that time, I realized what I wanted to do for him. Since he’d been so good at taking care of me for those couple of days. And it revolved around his sister.

I’d find her. And bring her to him. I knew that he missed her. After what he’d done for… he at least deserved to see what happened to her.

I put the money that I would have spent on him into finding a private eye. He found her, soon enough. But I was wary of what he found. She had been arrested for possession, dropped out, and apparently, whored out.

I thought of Andrew and all the strides he’d made to put the whoring in the past. Would he want to know what his sister had done? Would he want to know his sister then?

I wanted to meet, her, though. I wondered if she knew what had been done for her. And if she was grateful at all. See if she changed. The eye arranged a meeting with her sooner than I would have been able to imagine. But I knew, I knew that I couldn’t bring him with me. In case she lived up to her reputation.

We met at a restaurant. It was a simple, fast food restaurant.

I sat in the back, eyeing people as they entered. I sucked back on a soda, the only item I ordered. I would sit up straight as every teenage girl came in, until, finally, the girl known to me as Sarah sat down.

She was about fifteen. Her eyes were the same color as her brother’s, though they were not nearly as pretty. Maybe it was the heavy eye make-up. She was covered in bruises and I could see faint red lines on her arms, like healing cuts.

This was a mistake. But I couldn’t leave. Not until I knew for sure. I owed him that.

She asks me if I’m Jon. I want to lie and say I’m someone else, but I don’t. I can’t.

I nod and reach for the picture of him that’s in my wallet. He looks annoyed in it, because he hates pictures. But it makes me laugh and think of the occasion. I ask her if he’s her brother, and I’m praying she says no, but she doesn’t. Instead, she scoffs and tells me that he was never that skinny. But that it is him. She asks me, longingly it seems, if her brother is dead.

I dislike her. I want to hit her. But she’s a girl, and I cannot.

She explains that they had to move because of him. That her parents had not liked being sent money by their son, the ‘whore’ as she referred to him as. She never called him by his name. Like he was some horrible thing that shouldn’t be mentioned. Or if he was to mentioned, call him something degrading to make up for it.

I try to ask her if she’s past the rebellious stage. If she’s being good. If she’s ever had sex for money. She smiles oddly, as if she was expecting me to say this the entire time.

“You’ll find me *quite* affordable. Better not get caught though. I’m jailbait. And I think that in prison, they’d like your pretty face.” She closes in to whisper. I smell cigarettes.

“But I wouldn’t like theirs.” I say, and leave.

I almost start laughing at the thought that brother and sister had called me pretty. But, she would have to be kept from him. She could be the trigger that could make my promise hard to keep.

And I plan to keep that promise.