There were more bruises and cuts on his stomach than I could count, some looked fresh, some looked slightly old.

"What.. What is this Adam?" I gaped at his face, looking for an answer.

"Nothing." he said, pulling the shirt down.

"Nothing? It doesn't look like nothing." I retorted, feeling both angry and sad.

"It is none of your concerns Alicia." Adam said sharply, irritation dripping from his tone.

"Yes it does. Is it so hard to understand that everything you do concern me?" I spat, leaning against the other wall.

We both stayed still on the opposite sides of the Janitor's closet, neither of us spoke anything. The tension in the air was so thick that it became difficult to breathe.

"Do you participate in street-fights?" I asked in a hushed voice, a strange fear gripping my insides.

Please say No. Please say No.

I got my answer when he didn't speak anything and lowered his head down.

"Adam!" I emitted in strained voice, a thick mask of indifference coated his face.

"Why?" I asked and he didn't answer. My stomach clenched in a painful way and I bit the insides of my cheeks. I knew how dangerous it was, one wrong punch and he might die.

"It doesn't matter." he said, flicking his eyes back and forth to my face.

"Tell me. Please. Share your pain with me." I almost begged, feeling vulnerable under his gaze.

"You won't understand." he looked square in my eyes and answered through clenched teeth.

"Why won't I understand?" I asked.

"Because you don't know what it is like to suffer." He blamed, as if he was sure I've never felt pain. "You would never understand how difficult it is to survive sometime Alicia."

"You don't know me Adam." I whispered under my breath, looking at him with watery eyes.

He let out an empty chuckle, not a hint of amusement in his voice. He stepped near me, his body blocking the view of the narrow room.

"I know you enough to figure everything out. For people like you, there is black and then, there is white." he said and I didn't understand what he meant. "I am fucking gray, damn it."

By now, his breaths had turned ragged and his eyes screamed of anger. My own cheeks were now strained with tears, his accusations had broken a piece of my heart. For him, I was a stupid girl who was so engrossed in her life that she won't understand his issues.

"Well, thanks for knowing me too damn well." I lamented, balling my fists at my sides and storming out of the closet. I heard his footsteps behind me but I didn't turn to look at him. If he really thought that low of me then maybe, we were better off without each other.

...

I didn't know why I was crying but I couldn't stop the tears flowing down my cheeks.

I had no idea what made me so sad. The fact that he was hurt badly or the fact that he didn't think I would be able to understand his problems or the fact that this newly budding romance between us didn't live for even more than a day.

I wanted to talk to him, I wanted to ask him the reason behind his behavior, I wanted to slap his arrogant face and then, I wanted to pounce on him and kiss the life out of him.

But I won't do any of these things.

I would just curl up in a corner and cry like there is no tomorrow.

It was 6 in the evening. Dad would be returning soon and he would figure it out in no time that there was something wrong.

Deciding to take a shower, I hopped out of my bed and while passing in front of the mirror, looked at my reflection. My eyes were red and swollen and my face was all puffy.

"Knock knock, who's there. Mr. Hottie McAwesome." I was about to walk into the bathroom when I heard the familiar voice, followed by a knock on my door.

"How did you come inside?" I asked, looking around in confusion.

"Somebody forgot to lock the door." Noah shrugged, narrowing his eyes at me and assessing my face with his piercing eyes. "You were crying."

"No. I was not." I looked square into his eyes and lied.

Without averting his eyes, he took small steps towards me and stopped right in front of me. "Yes. You were." he whispered, looking down at me from his tall height.

"Umm.." I swallowed, ignoring the itching around my eyes. I contemplated between lying to him flatly and telling him the truth. At the end, the former action sounded better to my own ears. "I gained two pounds." I mourned and his frown wiped off.

"You are crazy Miss. King." he shook his head side by side.

"Suit yourself. I'll be back in a moment." Leaving him there, I walked inside my bathroom to take a shower. Adam's face flashed in front of my eyes and I clenched them tightly, letting the warm water wash down his memories. When I was sure my face didn't look half as swollen as it did, I turned the shower off, wrapped a towel around my hair and put on a black crop-top with a pink high-waisted leggings.

When I walked out, Noah had already made himself comfortable on my bed and was now reading a fashion magazine. Unwrapping my hair, I ran the brush through them to entangle the knots and then settled on the space beside him.

"Don't you have atleast a little bit of shame?" I rolled my eyes and asked, looking at the half-naked woman he was drooling at.

"In between girls and shame, I choose girls." he winked, putting the magazine away and turning his face towards me.

"Why were you crying? And don't feed me that two pounds crap. You are better than those self-centered, crazy girls at school." he asked, his green eyes glaring into mine, as if stripping me of the cover I just built with lies and leaving me naked and vulnerable.

"Please Noah. Don't force me to tell you." I requested, putting my hands over him. He shivered under my touch, or at least I felt like he did. "Just being here is the most you can do."

His gaze switched between our hands and my face, before he let out a deep, aggravated sigh and plastered a smile on my face. "So tell me Pooper, is there anything in your kitchen that can feed my cute, little tummy?"

I smiled at his words and switched my phone on, "Nothing. Let's order pizza."

He agreed immediately, just as I thought. After placing our order, I rested my head against the headboard. After a moment, I felt a light touch on my cheeks. Opening my eyes, I jerked away when I found Noah's intense gaze on my face.

"What in God's name are you doing?" I screamed and his cheeks reddened.

"Well, that was not creepy at all." he chuckled awkwardly and then leaned backwards, resting his head against the bed in the same way as I was doing.

"Wait! I didn't ask what you were doing here." I asked as soon as I realized. I wasn't someone Noah would like to spend his time with, considering I wasn't one of his many Fuck-buddies, as he like to call them.

"Can't I come to meet my little ray of sunshine?" he pouted, jutting his lower lip out. He looked like a cute child and a strange desire to pull his cheeks erupted in my heart but I quickly brushed it off.

"Yeah right." I said sharply and closed my eyes again, waiting for the pizza delivery guy to come.

I was about to surrender to sleep when I felt him poke my cheeks. I grunted before pushing him away and muttering few curses at him.

"Talk to me." he whined, turning his body towards me.

"I'm tired." I said, letting out a yawn.

"You are so damn strange Alicia. Girls die to get me in their bedrooms and you are just flatly ignoring me." he complained and I just grinned, enjoying his irritation.

At the same time, we both heard the knock on the door. "Make your whiny ass useful and go bring the pizza."

"Again with the ass comments babe. If you do it one more time, I might get some wrong ideas." he said while moving out of the bed. I threw the pillow towards him as he was exiting the room that hit him right in his arse.

"Don't tempt me to file a sexual harassment complain about you." he smirked and left and I finally got a moment of calmness in my room.

Noah returned after few minutes empty-handed. "Did you eat the pizza all by yourself?" I questioned, looking for any sign of a box behind him.

His cheerful face had now turned serious as if something was bothering him. "It was Adam who knocked. But he left without saying anything when I opened the door. No wonder people call him weird." he answered, scratching his chin.

Great. Just great.

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