Just pretend. | l.h.

Chapter 40 ~ Underageness.

((Song of the Chapter: Haven't Had Enough by Mariana's Trench ))

"Hey Addie, can I talk to you for a moment in the hall?" Luke questions with a serious look on his face.

"Yeah, sure," I get up along with Luke and the bodyguard. I give my mom a disproving look. I can't tell the detectives that I was lying. There is just no way that I will. Jace deserves every single moment of jail that he gets sentenced to. I should have told the truth long ago. If I would have I could have prevented this whole kidnapping thing from happening. Oh how nice that would have been.

Luke has me follow him to a corner of the front are of the city building. He asks the body guard to sit a few seats away from us as we needed to have this conversation in private. I take a seat on a chair next to Luke. He takes a deep breath and looks at me confused.

"What the hell was that?"

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"With your mom. Why is she so against you telling the truth about Jace? Is she really that worried abut your family name getting ruined because you tell the police that a man raped and kidnapped you?"

I stay silent. It is kind of a long story and my mother does have her reasons, as insignificant and ultimately unimportant as they may be. She is my mother so it's hard not to look past, especially since I am a minor.

"Adds? You can tell me."

"Back after the first incident Sydney made me tell my mom. She could tell that I was acting detached and different after Jace you know.. I only ever told Sydney because she practically forced me to when she noticed those changes in the way I was acting as well as she saw some cuts on my wrists during a sleepover we had. She didn't buy into the whole 'I was cutting vegetables and the knife slipped' thing. So, when I finally got up the courage to tell my mom she didn't even react. She said that I needed to stop lying to gain attention from her and others. Even if she did actually believe me, she claimed to not. My mother told me I was not allowed to go to the police with my 'childish claims' and that I had to continue playing soccer on my team because 'nobody likes a quitter.' It was hard enough to have to deal with what had actually happened, but on top of that my own mother didn't want to believe me." I let a single tear fall.

"Oh Addie, you should not have had to go though that. I can't believe she refused to believe you," Luke's eyebrows are furrowed.

"To be honest, that only made things worse. Let to the whole overdose and attempting to end my life thing. That's when Shane found me. After that incident I told Shane and he too couldn't believe my mother. But, he didn't really do anything to help me convince her, he simply stood by my side and was there for me during the hard days. And trust me, there were many hard days. Even after I didn't have to see Jace every day anymore, there were still hard days."

"Promise me you're not going to go and take back all of your allegations against Jace," Luke looks into my eyes quite seriously.

"I won't. Let's just sit out here for a bit so she can't try to convince me otherwise."

"Okay," Luke agrees, "Want to listen to my new Spotify playlist that I made?"

"Sure, what did you call this one?" Luke is always coming up with some funny names for his many playlists. Some things I love most about Luke is his wit as well as his ability to find beauty in almost everything, for example he could listen to the oddest song and still tell you why it is a piece of art.