Eventually, the embarrassment started creeping through me.

I was crying. In Zane's arms. And judging from the damp spot on his shirt, I was crying on Zane.

Zane must have felt the way I stiffened in his arms, because he made the first movement he had made in a while. I felt his head twist, and his jaw rest on the top of my head. Almost as if he was trying to look down at me, but I didn't want him to see me. I looked down at my feet instead.

"Seren?" His voice was soft, delicate. He spoke to me like I was nothing more than a cloud of mist that could disperse and fade into the air at any second.

I unclenched my fingers from his shirt, letting go and backing into the wall as much as I could. Trying to create even an inch of space between us.

"Yeah." I responded, but it was so quietly I wouldn't be surprised if he couldn't hear it.

"You're going to be okay." Zane told me, stepping back.

I didn't know whether he was lying to me or he was stupid enough to have that hope.

"Sorry." I was scared to look at him. He must think I'm crazy. He must realize how broken I really am.

"Hey." Zane said, and he gently grabbed my chin and pointed my face towards him, like he knew what I was doing.

"Hey." He repeated when I wouldn't meet his gaze.

I slowly raised my eyes up towards his face. He wasn't looking at me like I thought he was going to look at me; with pity, or disgust. He was looking at me like he cared about me. I wondered if he really did.

"You don't have to be sorry, Seren. It's okay to not be okay." Zane said as my eyes met his.

How did I tell him that I wasn't simply not okay? I was gone.

"I told you that I would be here for you. I told you that I'd listen. This is what that looks like." Zane continued. "Even if you're not ready to talk. I shouldn't have pressed you to."

"You shouldn't have. You shouldn't have read that letter, either." I told him.

"I know. I shouldn't have. I apologize." Zane replied. He looked sincere. I want to believe him.

I dropped my eyes again, folding my arms across my chest. How is that one moment I was perfectly happy, high and watching Spanish sitcoms, and the next I'm crying to some boy I barely know?

Zane thinks he knows me, but how can he? Why would he want to?

"Have you eaten?" Zane asked me, jumping me out of my mind.

I nodded, and he arched an eyebrow. It annoyed me that Zane knew when I was lying. But also... it felt nice. I had grown so accustomed to lying. I lied like I breathed, thoughtlessly. And no one ever knew any better, before Zane.

"Skittles don't count." Zane said, glancing over at the open packet on the couch.

"Why not?" Food was food.

Zane chuckled lowly as he walked towards the abandoned bag of takeout on the coffee table. "Will you eat if I heat this up?"

"What is it?" I asked him. I didn't really like soup, there was only one kind I would eat.

"French onion."

"How'd you know?" I asked him. I'm beginning to think Zane was a mind reader.

"How did I know what?" Zane asked, and even though he looked confused he was still smiling at me.

"That French onion is my favourite soup."

Zane titled his head at me, and his smile grew bigger. The side of his cheeks dimpled at the sides. How had I never noticed Zane's dimples before?

"I didn't. I'm glad to hear it though. Here, sit down. Watch whatever..." Zane glanced at the TV. "This is." He turned on his heel with the soup in his hand, seemingly headed towards the kitchen.

I only wondered for a split second how he knew where to go before remembering he had been here before. He had probably been here many times. It was interesting to me, this sudden realization of mine. Zane had been in my life for a while, but he was never in my mind. I had never paid attention to him. I had never looked for him, or wondered about him. He was like an accent chair in the far corner of the living room, he was there but easily forgotten. The one you walk by every day on your way to the couch.

Now in the last couple of days, Zane was the only constant. Besides Jax. In my mind, Jax was constant and never ending.

"You didn't sit?" Zane called out as he entered the room again, and I realized I was standing in the same place as when he left.

"Oh. Right." I mumbled, walking on to the couch and sitting down. I felt awkward, like I didn't know what to do with my body.

Zane handed me a bowl of soup, with a spoon poking out and resting to the side. It smelled heavenly. I didn't want to tell Zane that I hadn't eaten anything substantial since we were together at the Bridge yesterday. Then again, I got the feeling Zane probably already knew.

"You're not eating?" I asked him, noticing that he was now empty handed.

Zane rolled his eye at me. "I bought the soup for you, Seren. Not for me."

I nodded, bringing a spoonful of the soup into my mouth. I almost let out a sound at how good it tasted. Almost.

Zane was pretending to watch the TV, but I could tell he was really watching me. Probably making sure I ate. I didn't mind though, because I was lost in my own thoughts.

And like for the past hour, they were all of Zane. There was a part of me, deep down, that was telling me I should trust him. Could I trust him? Could I trust anyone ever again? I wasn't sure. But the way Zane looked at me made me want to. He didn't look at me like he wanted to fuck me. He never has. He looked at me like he cared about me, but that didn't make sense either.

"Why didn't you ever talk to me before this weekend?" I asked Zane, who halted in his movements. Probably from the bluntness of my question.

Zane looked at me for a moment, the way he always does, his eyes dancing around my face, looking for the words I'm not saying.

"You didn't want me to talk to you." He answered finally.

"So?" I urged him on. "That doesn't stop most guys."

Zane rubbed his chin, and I knew that he knew there was an underlying question that I wasn't putting into words.

"It's not hard to understand when a girl doesn't want your attention, Seren. You've never wanted mine." He said simply.

I nodded, placing my now empty bowl on the coffee table in front of me. I leaned back into the couch, folding my legs underneath me.

"We don't have to watch this." I said, referencing the show I had never bothered to change.

"Okay." Zane looked at me, before bouncing his eyes across the room. "I can go, if that's what you want?"

"We can watch a movie." I said, surprising the both of us.

"Yeah?" Zane said and he did that smile again. The one that makes me want to smile back at him.

"Yeah." I confirmed, and I felt something in my chest. Whatever it was, it was nice. The opposite of the anxiety I usually felt.

I picked up the remote, switching the TV over to Netflix. I didn't bother asking Zane what he wanted to watch, I already know what he would say. He would tell me to put on whatever I wanted to. Anything to bring me one step closer to wanting to live, in his eyes.

As I watched the movie, a blanket that lives on the couch wrapped around my legs, I did something that surprised me. I didn't think about doing it beforehand, it's like my body just acted on its own. I leaned my head onto Zane's shoulder. I relaxed my body against him. It was just something about his touch. It was like a subtle version of the pills I took. It calmed me.

Zane only traced light tracings on my knee in response. And I breathed. I felt like I haven't breathed in a while.

Was this what it felt like to have an actual friend?

I often thought about my actions and my life in terms of Jax. Pre Jax. How did I act before he did this? How did I feel before it happened? Pre Jax. Before Jax.

Maybe there was another person I could relate that feeling to. Pre Zane. Before Zane.