Tyler had Noah pinned down on the floor, pounding his fists into Noah's face. A vein popped out in his neck and his lips drew back in a snarl, and I'd never seen Tyler act in such a violent nature before, but it was clear that this was one of the ugly parts of him, his true face.

He wanted to kill Noah with his bare hands.

"How dare you touch her with your filthy hands?" He kept repeating that as he delivered blow after blow into Noah's face, acting oblivious to my presence in the room. He'd transported to another realm.

"Please stop," I whispered but it was like Tyler was possessed by his need for violence.

Noah managed to push Tyler back and punched him back a few times. Soon they were both tangled in a wrestling match. Two very strong hockey players beating the shit outta each other, it didn't seem like Noah would hold against Ty for long seeing as Ty was trained in martial arts. Noah was at a disadvantage there.

I couldn't even try to break up their fight for fear that I could get caught in the crossfire.

"Tyler..." I tried calling him.

I picked up my phone from the bedside table and called my brother, "You need to come home, right now!"

"Just parking the car, what's wrong?" Archer sounded concerned. "Are you okay?"

I probably sounded very hysterical, "Come upstairs."

Archer was upstairs a few minutes later, he stumbled over the bouquet of roses on the doorstep and his eyes widened at the obvious display of machismo in my room. His nose flared in anger and he reminded me of a fire-breathing dragon. Archer hardly showed anger, and never with violence, but there were a few times when his eyes turned dark. He got hold of Tyler by the back of his shirt and pulled him away from Noah who scrambled to stand up; his face was caked with a lot of blood. Tyler was hurt relatively lesser, his lip was burst but that was probably it.

"He's trying to kill me!" Noah shrieked angrily, "This lunatic!"

"He touched her!" Tyler screamed back. "He sat on Vicky's bed, and put his filthy hands on my baby."

Archer turned to me, "What happened?"

"Noah came to check on me, and we ended up playing board games. I felt the baby kick so he asked me if he could feel what I was experiencing. I allowed it and Tyler walked in at that time..." I said, sneaking a glance at Tyler who still seemed to want to draw more blood. I hugged my stomach instinctively.

I could say that the contents of the diary didn't affect me, but that wasn't the truth. It changed how I saw Tyler, he was hiding far too many dark secrets and the skeletons in his closet continued to grow more, and I couldn't just turn off that switch and tell my brain to stop thinking. I loved him regardless, and it was so hard for me to see him in the light of the discoveries of his diary. I wondered how someone capable of yielding such brute force could touch so softly, kiss like he was born to do it, and hold me like I was everything to him. What if I moved in with him in the future and we argued? Ty could punch me like that and think nothing of it.

But Tyler wasn't capable of hurting me...

Right?

He's always been my best friend before everything else.

"You heard her, Tyler?" Archer asked him, still not letting go of his collar. "He wasn't doing anything wrong."

Tyler gave out a sarcastic laugh, "Right, just copping a feel of my pregnant fiancé."

"Disgusting bastard," Noah said as he wiped the blood from his left eye. It was going to be swollen. "I'm sorry, Vicky, you might not like it, but I'm going to press charges against him." He declared, and then looked at Tyler, "I won't go to the cops unless he apologizes to me."

"Fuck off," Tyler growled.

Noah smiled, "I knew it."

"Look, I don't care who is in the wrong here, but this has caused distress to Vicky and she's the only one who's important to me right now. So I would appreciate it if you guys could resume killing each other outside this house." Archer said firmly. "Or I'll issue a restraining order against both of you, especially you, Ty."

Tyler stared at Archer incredulously, "I'm the father of the child she's carrying. Are you telling me..."

Archer put his hand on Tyler's chest and gave him a slight shove, "You need to back off, buddy."

Tyler wouldn't budge; he didn't touch Archer but sidestepped away from him to approach me. He threw open my wardrobe and started putting my clothes in a duffle bag he found inside.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"You're going home with me." He said silently, packing my stuff in the bag.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Yes, you are. This house is too toxic for you."

"You let me be the judge of that. I'll decide what or who is toxic for me." I told him as I reached towards the last drawer of my dresser and pulled out a first-aid kit that I usually kept in my room for emergency reasons, and it was handy when Hazel arrived home covered in bruises from the playgrounds. I opened the box and started cleaning Noah's wounds completely aware of Tyler's burning stare into my back.

"I can't fucking believe this." I heard Tyler yell in frustration.

"Ty, I'm going to ask you to leave. She's still seventeen and my mom has the right to decide who she lives with. Come back when you're in a mood to talk in a civilized manner."

Before I knew what was going on, Tyler's eyes caught something and ducked to pick up his diary that I'd kept under the bed. I think he'd seen the corner of it showing from underneath.

"What's that?" Archer asked.

Tyler stood there, immobilized; his hands were shaking as he clenched the diary. My stomach knotted as I wondered how he was going to react to it, finding out that his darkest secrets were uncovered. His steel-blue eyes cut through me, "Can I talk to you alone for a minute?" he asked me calmly. "I'll leave right after that. I promise."

I looked at Archer who took that as a signal that it was alright to leave me alone.

"I'll be outside, Vicky." He took the first-aid kit and led Noah outside with him. The door of the bedroom closed behind them.

Tyler kneeled in front of me, and I noticed how he wasn't trying to make eye contact, his gaze remained fixed on my lap as he asked me softly, "Did you take that from my room?"

I nodded.

He looked at me with the most anguished look on his face, "Those were my secrets, Vicky! MINE!" He gritted his teeth. "You had no right to read the diary."

"I didn't mean to, I'm sorry." Regardless of what was written in that diary, it was still a breach of trust he'd put in me and I owed him that apology.

"How much do you know?" He questioned, flipping through the pages.

"Mostly everything," I confessed.

"Is that the reason you don't want me anymore?" he asked, reluctantly.

Would I ever not want him?

His eyes were glistening with unshed tears, and it was the first time that I'd seen Tyler so completely haunted, and perhaps even scared. And I'd never seen Tyler even remotely scared, not even when he'd been bitten by a venomous snake. I could be crazy to say this, but the broken version of him looked sooo...beautiful. He was kind of like a rare and expensive painting that was meant only for admiring. His soul was black, but that's what had drawn me in, the darkness inside him.

"Vicky..."

"I won't tell anyone so you don't need to worry about me going to the police and—"

"That's not what I'm concerned about." He assured me.

He didn't care about me going to the police so that meant he had a backup plan in case someone was to read the diary and hand it over to the authorities. Even if he was a kid when he'd done it, it was still murder. God knows how much money they'd spent to make the murder look like the people had simply disappeared. If I wasn't going to hand over the diary to the right people, what did that make me?

A fool in love with a killer.

"I'm...I'm not a monster." He admitted, No, he begged me to believe him. "I'm not that person, I don't know what was going through my mind that time, but I wanted to set those men free. I would never hurt someone now." He took my hand in his and caressed it softly, "Tell me you understand."

I could hear the desperation in his voice.

"I need time," I said finally. I needed to be honest with him. "I know that you were a kid when it happened, and you couldn't distinguish right from wrong, and I'm willing to forget it but it's hard, Tyler. We're having a kid together, and sometimes you act so violent, it scares me. Noah wasn't doing anything wrong. He was being a good friend like he's always been. I don't want you to be the kind of father that teaches his child that beating someone up is okay because they could get away with it."

"I promise you that I'll be the best dad this kid could ever have. The past is behind me and I want to look at the future that exists only for you and our baby." He opened the diary and tore the pages of it, every single one of them.

I'd yet to read some of the later parts of the diary, but Ty was making sure I couldn't get hold of it again. He dumped the contents in the toilet and flushed it which proved that there were more things in the diary that he didn't want me to read about.

There was a pensive gleam in his blue eyes as he stared at me, "Are we good?"

"I told you I need time."

He touched my stomach tenderly, "I'm sorry I got defensive when I saw him touching you like that. It's like he was trying to take my place or something."

"That's never gonna happen. You need to trust me." I said, firmly. "And you have to apologize to Noah, okay?"

Tyler nodded. I knew he wasn't going to apologize to him. Tyler never apologized to anyone unless he could gain something from it.

"You make things easier for me, Vicky. If I lose you, I have nothing. And every time I see some other guy with you, I'm blinded by inexplicable rage. I don't normally feel emotions like that, not with everybody, but with you...I don't know how but I can't control myself."

"I know." I kept my hand on his and smiled.

"You'll give me another chance?"

I knew that what Tyler meant was true, he was attached to me, and I don't know if it was love, or his need to have me under his possession completely, but what I also knew was the fact that he was excellent at manipulation. He was doing it for years.

"If you screw this up again—"

He kissed the top of my head. "I won't. I can be a perfect boy-scout."

"We'll see about that."

Tyler brought the roses that he'd previously thrashed at the door and placed them on the bed beside me. "Some of them got spoilt." He ran a hand through his hair, I guess me knowing about the murders was putting him on the edge. "Call me if you need me."

"Sure."

When he left, Archer came back to my room to ask me if everything was okay. Turns out, Noah was going to press charges against Ty for the assault. I was sure the Lockhart's would take care of it. They were good at dodging the law.

I lifted the pillow cover and found the pages I was looking for. I knew that when Tyler discovered the diary with me, he'd destroy it and I might not be able to read it further so I'd clicked pictures of the pages in my phone and printed the entire thing.

I started reading it.

To me, Vicky means stability in my life. She's someone I know who would never leave regardless of what the circumstances might be, and yet I would rather die than let her find out certain details about myself.