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"I care about you, Sean, you know that I do," she told him in a voice barely above a whisper "And when I saw the picture on top, when I realized it was your le syllable "I’ive her a chance to try to answer "I thought I knew you"

"You do knowan idiot, blinded by your face like everyone else?"

It stung, God, how it stung, to hear his on theht that he was the only person in her life who didn’t look at her face as a co at the pictures without your consent, sorrier than you’ll ever know," she said again as she tried to push away his heated words, words she didn’t want to believe he could possiblyand in terrible pain over the loss of his ht all of those feelings back up before he was ready to deal with them "But I’ve seen the way you look every time your mother comes up and I want so badly to be there for you"

"So this is how you thought you’d do it? By snooping through s?"

Why couldn’t he see that she hadn’t meant to hurt him? That she’d only done what she had because she cared so much about hi down, shutting her out so completely?

"You asked me from the start to trust you You said it was okay to be scared, because you’d et hurt, and that ouldn’tyou, tried so hard that so some of my own demons But noith these photos which obviouslyto you, why can’t you trustway down deep inside of her it felt like everything was starting to shatter, she still couldn’t let herself give up on him On them "I know I can’t understand what it must be like to lose your mother But if you can just try to let me in a little--"

"How many times have you spoken to your mother since you’ve been on ca all night rather than sleeping in Sean’s ariven anything to talk to ain? You haven’t even talked to yours at all, but now you wantdead?"

She kneas hurting terribly, but for everything he thought she didn’t understand about him, there was just as much he didn’t understand about her And what he didn’t know about her mattered Mattered a lot, even if it wasn’t life and death

"Do you knohy I haven’t talked to my mom? Because she won’t callat all to do withh she doesn’t understand why I need toso hard to ht ones" God, she could hardly think it, let alone say it aloud, but she had to "Now you’reI ever did was trust you withfast and her ears were ringing as if she was in the front row of a hard-rock concert "I’ I’m so sorry you lost your s I shouldn’t have done it I shouldn’t have kept looking at your pictures One day I hope you’ll be able to forgive et the words out around the tears that clogged her throat as she reached blindly for the doorknob, needing to run so he wouldn’t see just how broken she felt about opening up her heart to him just in time for him to break it in two "One day I hope you’ll find a way to be happy again Because there’s nothing I want e shock to see Serena going through his pictures But it had been an even worse shock to see the photos of his ain

Sean hadn’t just stayed away from his camera since the day his mom died He’d co Olivia dig into them for the funeral when she’d needed some extra photos to display for the hundreds of people who had come to pay their final respects

Just hours earlier, he’d fallen asleep holding Serena in his arms, and it was her absence that had woken hilad to see that she was still there But then, when he’d realized what she was looking at, it had felt like all his skin had been ripped off and there was nothing left of hiuts in front of her That hy he’d reacted so harshly Too harshly Like a cos he didn’t even believe about her fro out of his mouth

Not until she’d turned to walk away froh his thick skull that she was leaving

Leaving hiht her halfway down the back stairs "Please don’t go I’ I just did" He didn’t care who heard theether All that mattered was that Serena kneas sorrier about what he’d said to her than he’d ever been for anything his entire life "If I could talk about my mom with anyone, it would be with you I didn’t , painful ht for sure that he’d lost her

But then, when she finally turned back to face hiht nearly to his knees Because instead of looking at him with hate…all he could see was the pure truth of how much she cared about him Just like she’d said over and over when he’d been blinded by grief

"I know you didn’t," she said softly And then, though he didn’t deserve it after what he’d said, after the way he’d behaved--when anyone else would already have been gone by now--she slid her arainst his chest "And I know you would"