"I think you two should go home for a bit, you look terrible," Ray says, putting his hand on my shoulder. "We'll stay here."

Tina is so exhausted she can't lift her head up. "N...n-no."

"Tina I think you should go home," I pat her shoulder, "you've had a rough night. First your grandpa and now Katie. We can check on him every once in a while for you."

Ray helps her up. "Come on I'll drive you home." She nods and slowly leaves.

After they leave, Stephanie sits down next to me. "You still love her don't you?" she whispers, resting her head on my shoulder and patting my wrist

I'm slightly taken aback. "Yeah...I do. How did you know?"

"It's the way you've always looked at her," she smiles slightly, "it's never changed, from the first time you told me about her, to yesterday, when we were listening to her speak. Please tell her when she wakes up."

I nod as she pulls me into a comforting hug.

Everything hurts.

Why does everything hurt?

I struggle to open my eyes. It's so bright.

I blink a few times, and the room slowly comes into focus. I'm in the hospital?

"She's awake!" I hear a voice call.

I look around. Lincoln, Stephanie, Ray, Tina, Leena, and my parents are in the room. Everyone looks tired but relieved.

"What happened?" I croak, my throat feels hoarse.

"You were in a car accident honey," Mom says.

I have very little recollection of driving recently. In fact I have very little recollection of what happened recently in general. I look down at my body, I see two casts and a bunch of scratches and bruises on the parts of me not covered by the hospital gown. "Makes sense."

Dad chuckles, "I guess your sense of humor didn't get hurt."

"We're so glad you're OK," Leena rushes up to me, "your parents and I woke up to frantic voicemails from Lincoln."

"I saw the news about the accident first," he explains with a pained look on his face, "I called everyone."

"This poor guy was hyperventilating in the hallway," Tina smiles slightly, patting his shoulder.

I'm a bit amused. "Thank you Lincoln," I say gratefully. "How did you manage to find Leena's and my parent's numbers though?"

He and Tina look at each other and laugh a bit. "It involved a bit of Facebook stalking and going through a very long chain of people."

My heartbeat quickens slightly at how caring and thoughtful they are. I assume I'm not in great condition, so that's probably a bad thing to happen right now.

A young doctor walks in. She looks a little surprised at the number of people in the small room. "Hello Ms. Sato, I'm Dr. Data, I'm glad to see you're up," she says with a smile. "Your vitals are doing remarkably well considering the trauma your body went through. Unfortunately, you have a broken leg, broken wrist, and a couple broken ribs. We're going to keep you here for a couple more days just to monitor for any signs of head injuries."

"Thank you Doctor," I nod. I don't know how severe the accident was, and I don't really want to know right now.

"Lincoln you should probably go get some food," Stephanie advises, patting his back.

Ray turns to me. "He literally hasn't left your side at all for the entire 16 hours you've been in this room. We had to bring him food twice so he wouldn't starve."

I smile at Lincoln. I can't believe he did that. "Thanks," I whisper, "but please go eat."

"Alright," he chuckles, "Mr. and Mrs. Sato, Leena, you should come with me, you haven't eaten since you arrived."

They leave. Ray, Stephanie, and Tina pull chairs closer to my bed and sit.

"Hey, where's Jason?" I ask, suddenly noticing the lack of his presence, "I mean, we haven't been close lately but I'd like to think he cares about me even just a little."

They look at each other awkwardly.

"It's...complicated," Ray begins slowly, "could you tell us the last thing you remember?"

My head still really hurts but I try and focus. "I...was sitting at the bar with Tiffany. A girl showed up and sat with Jason," I say slowly, "that's all I remember."

I notice Stephanie is gripping the bars on the side of the bed very tightly. "We asked Jason to watch you after you drank too much," she says through gritted teeth, "but he still let you drive drunk."

"Oh," I whisper. I don't remember any of this.

"I have a friend who works at a bar, she told me she just saw him there with a girl an hour or so ago," Tina says, looking at her phone.

"God damn typical," Stephanie rolls her eyes, "finds a girl and just worships her."

"What do you mean?" I ask, not liking where this is going.

"He's been so desperate for a girlfriend," Tina rolls her eyes, "he normally ends up spending all his free time with her, but this time he's spending allhis time with her because of how desperate he was for this one."

"The truth is, Jason is incredibly insecure," Ray sighs, "it's a power thing with him."

"I don't understand," I frown. Jason might be the most arrogant person I've ever met.

"He has a huge ego. He always needs a girl with him to make himself feel good about himself, apparently even if he doesn't have feelings for them," Tina says sadly, touching my uninjured wrist. "I guess it seems you were sort of a 'placeholder' for him in between girlfriends."

Ray continues, "He wasn't having luck with his dates, but I guess he knew he could manipulate you into staying around, which kept his ego boosted."

"We're so sorry we weren't there for you," Stephanie sighs looking heartbroken, "we honestly didn't realize what was happening until the four of us pieced together everything in the last couple hours while we were waiting for you to wake up."

"Yeah, at first we were honestly impressed. Jason has never really had platonic relationships with females," Ray explains, "he's always just ended up dating girls he gets close with."

"And then avoids them like the plague after they break up," Stephanie adds, rolling her eyes.

"So we thought he had matured, after seeing how long you were around," Ray continues. "We thought everything between you two was purely platonic. But then when you quit the club, we started to get suspicious based on your explanation."

"And then after what you told us over the phone at the Christmas dinner, we understood," Stephanie explains.

"The three of us concluded that he was most likely inconsistently nice to you in order to keep you coming back to him, even after he kept hurting you?" Tina asks, "Were we right?"

I nod. "How'd you figure that part out?"

Ray grimaces. "There was a similar incident a couple years back."

"I see. Please don't feel bad though, it's not your guy's fault," I try to sound reassuring. It breaks my heart to see them all look so guilty and sad.

"It feels like it is though. He would lie every time we asked about you, and I believed him," Ray frowned.

I smile sympathetically. "I don't blame you for that, you've been friends with him for over a decade."

Tina shakes her head. "You're really too kind Katie."

I shrug. "He seemed so nice though. He told me about how he saved Lincoln from getting expelled last year because of that party."

They look at me with wide eyes.

"He told you what?!" Stephanie shouts, standing up, looking ready to go hunting for him.

"That piece of shit."

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Oh no my heart 🥺💔

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