"Oh good, phew… Just please, don’t wander through the park alone."
"It’s not that easy. The campus sprawls over a huge area, surrounded by forest. The administration makes it their top priority to turn the grounds into a green oasis, full of small groves and thickets, but campus security doesn’t have much patience for me anymore."
"Then try not to go places alone, walk with other students," Jared mutters and looks away.
"Jared, please. It’s not that simple…"
"So what do you want me to say? That you should move out, sell the house, change campuses? You don’t want to go through the… rape. And if they come back, you might not have some rando there to help. Consider leaving, these guys are bad news…"
Selling the house makes me shiver. It’s Bay’s gift! The embodiment of his generosity and the way he cared about me…
I press my hands to my eyes.
"Jared, just… I’m begging you, do this for me, stay with me until the end of the school year, finish high school, at least give me that. Okay? Please!"
He gives me a quick look, hesitates, silent, shifting from foot to foot. I can see he is thinking hard about something.
He’s frowning hard and biting his lips, then finally sighs, "All right, I’ll stay until the end of the school year."
I feel a wave of relief wash over me.
"But I don’t want you giving me lectures if I come home late!"
"I’m just asking you not to do anything reckless, nothing that might affect your future. There are diseases; you can catch something that will stay with you your whole life, or you can become a victim of predators…"
Jared stays silent, staring at his hands and turning the rings on his fingers.
I force myself to make my voice softer. "I have a question for you. The Tanners said something that caught my attention. They mentioned they had some plans for you. Do you know what they could have meant?"
Jared presses his lips together, then speaks with visible reluctance.
"They wanted to record short clips with me, you know, while they were fucking me, but I didn’t want to."
"Whoa! You did the right thing, it isn’t safe, and stuff like that stays online forever."
"Oh, c’mon, I ran away, didn’t I? Do you think this is the life I would choose?" he suddenly bursts out, his lips trembling. "You know what I really want?" His voice shakes. "I want a family someday, a bunch of kids and an amazing husband who would have eyes only for me, and I would be only for him!"
He turns fully toward me and throws his arms out in a dramatic gesture. "Yes, that’s what I want the most, but I look the way I look, every alpha on the street turns to stare, I get hit on constantly, people always want something from me, they offer me money, they offer me career opportunities, and I don’t know how to find the one person who’s actually meant for me."
I close my eyes. "Maybe that takes some patience, Jared, maybe it won’t show up right away, but someday it will. Just don’t destroy that future with risky choices you make now, because some things can’t be undone. If you fall in with the wrong people you may not be able to break away, and then that future you dream about will never happen. They will poison you, destroy you."
Jared’s eyes look a little wet. He sniffs and speaks quietly.
"You know, on a conscious level I agree with everything you’re saying, but you don’t know what it’s like to be me, you don’t know how hard some things are for me. Since…what happened to me, I changed, I hate myself sometimes, I’m disgusted by myself!"
Is this the moment when I finally have a chance to say something uplifting? Is he more open to it now?
I take a sudden step and pull him into a hug, even though I feel him flinch a little.
"Don’t. Don’t you ever say that. You don’t let them take anything from you. You are beautiful and worthy, and you will be loved someday, Jared, I’m sure of it. Please don’t give up on yourself. Don’t devalue yourself!"
He goes quiet, and I don’t want to push him with too much closeness, so I step back a little and meet his eyes.
Jared just looks sad. And kinda resigned.
And then I make the mistake of talking about myself again.
"Believe me, I know what it means to deal with hard things, I lost everything—"
