Last night was the best night of my entire life.

Lydia was everything I had ever wanted in someone, and more. I couldn't imagine my life without her, but I had only known her for a few weeks. She had brought something out in me that I thought was dormant, something that I thought was erased long ago from the stains of my childhood.

I remembered my father telling me that no one would ever love me, and my mother pretty much sealed my fate and made that statement true with her actions, but Lydia would hopefully prove them both wrong.

I was in love with Lydia, and I was determined to make her feel the same way about me, too.

She disappeared to go and pick up her friend from the ramifications of her wild night out and I strategized on how to make Lydia see that we were meant to be together.

She was going to Harvard, and I was going to be a Patriot. It was all working out too well for us not to be perfect together.

I used to be scared that I'd never find a woman like Lydia...someone who could understand the trauma of what I'd been through and come out on the other side of it. She didn't relate to the exact type of issued I'd gone through, but she was strong. She was a fighter, a survivor.

I thought I'd forever be stuck dating Marnie's for the rest of my life, never fully realizing what it meant to love someone the way they deserved to be loved, but I knew for Lydia, she was it for me.

So when she called me after I got back from my run, screaming about Rafael, Amalia, Marilyn and a taser, of course I was worried.

I was more worried than I'd ever been when it came to her. She was ranting on and on about how she'd punched him and my body locked up in a terrified panic.

"You did what?!"

I was back there, in that moment, as a little boy watching his father beat and terrorize his mother right in front of his own eyes.

Every slap was like a break across my own face, every teardrop sliding down her cheek felt as if it had landed on my own.

My emotions tore through me in that moment and I knew if I didn't get a handle on them I would explode but soon she arrived back at home, and there was no putting a lid on anything anymore.

Amalia and Marilyn escaped to Lydia's room in a quickened hurry, their tear soaked faces proof enough that what they went through was traumatizing. But my eyes could only focus on Lydia.

The crack of my father's belt exploding behind my ears, she began speaking. Everything was muffled, as if I were hearing her words underwater while I was drowning from the weight of her decisions.

Decisions that could have cost her the life that so delicately rushed through her veins. How could she have done something so reckless? Once she realized it was Rafael's house and that her friends were in danger, she should have called the police, not taken the law into her own hands!

"What were you thinking?"

She stared back at me as if she didn't understand my question.

"What?"

Her shining blue eyes gazed at me in confusion.

"I saved them, what do you mean?"

My voice came out louder and much harsher than I had intended, but I still felt myself drowning, unable to hold back as I lost myself, and my control, completely.

"Do you have any idea what could have happened to you? He could have killed you, Lydia! You should have called the police, should have called me! Do you have any idea how reckless and stupid that was for you to do?"

"B-but I got his confession on tape! I even recorded it and-"

"I don't care about that, and I don't care about his fucking confession! You could have been hurt and all you cared about was his confession? Do you realize how idiotic that was? You don't think about your actions, you just do whatever you want and expect everything to work out! This time it did, but next time? What if you decide to go after Nate next and he actually hurts you?"

She cast her eyes to the ground, a guilty expression crossing her features.

"Oh my god. You were going to go after Nate, next. So, what, if I ever wanted to break up with you or something you'd try to find your way to get revenge on me, too, is that it?"

She rushed up to me, her hands on my arms.

"No no no, that's not it at all. You've never hurt me, you never will hurt me in that way. A break up is civil, what these men have done in their lives is...vile and repulsive and they deserve everything coming their way. I'd never do that to you, you're so much different than them..."

As she tried to assure me that I was different, a nagging voice in the back of my head told me that I wasn't. It told me that I was unworthy of her love. It told me that I had already pushed my luck and she needed to let me go, so she could thrive on her own without me bringing her down.

"So you're not going to stop, then? You're going to go after Nate and that Christian guy too? When is enough going to be enough? Are you going to go around and vigilante random guys who look at women the wrong way?"

More silence and guilty stares.

"Lydia..."

"Okay, I might have done that but just once!"

"What?! Do you seriously have no regard for your own life? Do you not realize that there are people out there who care about wether you live or die, no matter if you do or not?"

"That was a few years ago, but honestly...if I saw it today I'd do the exact same thing."

"So you're not willing to let go of these ridiculous revenge fantasies for a shot at happiness, even with me?"

She looked back up at me then, those blue eyes teetering on the edge of crying but I couldn't bring myself to feel bad.

My father's voice echoed in my mind.

No one will ever love you. Your own mother doesn't even want you.

And my mom proved him right by abandoning me time and time again for the alcohol. How could I trust Lydia with my heart when all anyone in my life had ever done with it was break it?

"I- I don't know what you want me to say, Emmett."

I sighed, finally taking her hands in my own.

"I want you to say that you will give it all up, that you want to be with me."

She could hear the desperation in my voice, but she didn't falter.

"I do want to be with you, but...I can't do what you're asking me to do. Not after what just happened with Amalia and Marilyn. They can't just get away with it. It's not right."

"And they won't get away with it, we'll do it the right way with lawyers and the police."

"Lawyers and police didn't do it the right way for me, Emmett. There will always be loopholes. That's part of the reason why I want to go to Harvard, to find every loophole imaginable and tie it up before it can be exploited. I want to help the girls who were in my position and never got the justice they deserved, but until then I have to do it my way. Why can't you accept that?"

"If it means you putting your own life at risk? Do you not care enough about me to see that what you do hurts everyone around you too?"

Brimming with tears that began spilling over, her eyes met mine in an almost desperate plea.

"I can't just give up on this, it's something I have to do. If you really want to be with me then you're going to have to accept that this is what I have to do."

I sighed in agony, wishing that I didn't have to say what I was going to next, but it came out of its own volition, and maybe it was a product of my father abusing my mother and myself, and both of them abandoning me for their addictions, but it was how I felt regardless.

I'd been left for previous addictions before and Lydia was no different. Revenge was her drug of choice, and I didn't want to stick around and watch it destroy her.

"I want to be with you more than anything, but you apparently don't if you're not willing to give this up for me and do things the right way. I can't go on with you like this."

Fire burned in her expression and it was nice to see something there besides pleading sadness and emptiness that had been there when I first met her.

"Fine. But if we say goodbye then that's it. I don't want to hear from you, I don't want to see you...and you won't hear from me, either."

"If that's how you want it. I won't stick around to watch what this does to you."

"It's going to liberate me, Emmett. All my life I've let men control me and my emotions, and I can't be in a serious and healthy relationship until I rid myself of this...hatred that I've grown to have against men. It wouldn't be fair to you, regardless."

I knew I was doing the right thing, so why did it feel like t he time that the social worker told me that my mother had overdosed on her pain meds...again?

"Then this is goodbye."

"It is. You can have the bigger room back, I'm moving to Harvard sooner rather than later. They offered me a summer position and you just made my decision on if I'm taking it or not."

She was going to be in Massachusetts. The same state...same city that I'd be in for football if they really recruited me. It would be torture not trying to go out and find her every single day.

"I'm happy for you. I hope you get what you're looking for out of life..."

Her head drooped to the floor and for a moment I thought she was going to take it all back and jump into my arms, but she held back. I had to practically force my arms from going around her waist.

It was like there was a magnetic force that had been drawing us together that never wanted us to part, but finally it snapped and in an instant I was free of her pull.

"Goodbye, Emmett."

I watched in agony as she retreated to her room with the girls, presumably to pack all of her things and shut the door behind her, leaving me wondering what in the hell I had just done.

I could barely see through my tears as I said goodbye to Marilyn. Amalia was in the seat beside me and we were all packed up and ready to move.

I'd said my goodbyes to everyone, including Emmett, thought that one wasn't particularly a fond memory.

It had been two weeks since our fight/break up, and it didn't get any easier seeing him in the halls as we passed by each other on the way to get coffee or food from the kitchen.

He was always acting as if he wanted to say something more, but couldn't quite get the words out as we had only had one word conversations in passing, asking if there was any creamer left in the fridge and things of that sort, but for the most part he tried to stay as far away from me as humanely possible.

Amalia and Marilyn had gone to the hospital later that day to get rape kits done and DNA taken for their police report, but once I sent my dad the footage I'd taken of Rafael, the DA declared that there would be charges filed immediately, and Rafael's lawyer convinced him to take a plea deal for less time in jail, because a jury would've given him the maximum sentence.

A coward, even when he could've fought for a fair trial and he still chose the easy way out. He'd be out of jail in ten to fifteen with a chance of parole from good behavior but I was told what the convicts did with rapists in jail, and the thought of what they'd do to him eased my mind just a bit.

It wasn't anything less than he deserved.

I didn't waste another thought on Rafael as images of my life with Nate flashed through my head.

Every repressed memory that came to the surface was worse than the next, and although I was moving far away from him and Layla, it was still bittersweet knowing I'd have to wait longer to get my revenge on Nate, but that just meant that it would be all the more sweet when I finally dished it out to him.

I didn't expect Lucas to call me when we got to Boston, as he wasn't too keen on the idea of me leaving in the first place, especially with our relationship still not completely mended, but I wasn't the one who had broken it in the first place.

The sunlight streamed in through the driver's side window as I adjusted the sun visor so I wasn't permanently blinded by UV rays, and peered over at Amalia in the passenger seat of the giant U-Haul that we'd rented for the massive trip up north.

My car trailing behind us and hooked up to the truck's hitch, we began our journey to our new lives.

Since I was living in a single dorm room, there was plenty of space for Amalia to stay with me until she found a job and a place of her own before the officials at the school got suspicious about someone living with me.

She was more than traumatized after what had happened with Rafael and wanted to put it all behind her and start fresh. Unfortunately, I was all too accustomed to trauma and grief so after a few sessions of her crying on my shoulder I recommended her to my therapist who gave her two good sessions. She recommended a good doctor up in Boston that we could both visit to get our heads on straight while we were on our own.

I had said goodbye to my father in person, with a meeting over coffee sans my mother. He tried with everything in him, bless his heart, but I would not let my mother see me off to the school of her dreams.

I wasn't doing it for her, though. I was doing it for me, and the countless other girls who had been screwed over by the very institution that was put in place to protect them. It was time that someone stepped in to fix their mistakes, and I was more than willing to take up the helm.

We had just crossed over into the state of Massachusetts when we pulled up to a red light and I leaned back with my arms over my head, milking my stretch for everything that it was worth.

I looked over at Amalia and smiled as the headlights of the cars passed us by as it was far past sundown by that point.

Her smile back quickly morphed into one of pure horror and panic but as I turned my head to figure out what it was that she had seen, my ears were filled with the grotesque sound of crunching metal as our bodies were slung around in the truck.

One of the last things that I remembered was Amalia's hand that was still clasped in mine releasing me as she succumbed to her injuries.

I fell back into the black abyss of the night as the twinkling sound of falling glass whispered by my ears and thick rivulets of blood seeped down my face, almost like the tears of a pain long forgotten, now replaced by this moment that would be forever etched into my consciousness until the day I died...if I wasn't already.

To Be Continued...