teach me to be innocent, l.hemmings

#20: i'll always be back for you

I found Luke, Ashton, Calum and Michael already sitting at a table by the time lunch rolled around. I walked over to them and sat opposite Ashton. He didn't even glance up at me.

"How did it go with... you-know-who?" Michael asked, but Ashton merely snorted.

"You don't need to refer to her as Voldermort. Katherine is equally as damning." He muttered, stabbing at some French fries.

"I... I didn't really get anywhere with her." I winced. "Sorry. She's really hard to question."

Ashton's face crumbled. "I'm never going to know what happened between them." He muttered, grabbing his back and storming off, leaving us all surprised.

"Someone needs to talk to her." Luke sighed, before getting up from the table.

"Wait, where are you going?" I asked, rushing to keep up with him as he walked through the halls.

"I'm going to speak to Katherine. Ashton needs answers or he's going to self-destruct."

"How do you know where to find her? This school is massive Luke." I groaned, but still followed him as he turned the corner and walked out onto the oval.

"She loves that oak tree." Luke said quietly, before walking towards it.

I hesitated. Did I really want to hear what they had to say to each other? I shook my head and pushed on. I deserved to hear whatever was going to be said.

Surely enough, Katherine was sitting behind the large oak tree. I was a little miffed that Luke knew she would be here and I didn't. She didn't seem surprised to see us, maybe a little tired though.

"Luke... Arizona." She sighed. "What are you guys doing here?" She closed her eyes. "I really don't want to talk about what happened Luke."

"Katherine, I'm not here to talk about us." Luke sighed. "I'm here to talk about you having sex with Hugh."

"That has nothing to do with you." Katherine's eyes darkened. "That's none of your business." She paused. "If you want to talk about us, then fine. But you don't get to ask me questions about my life. Not anymore."

"Fine." Luke gritted his teeth. "Do you really want to talk about us? Get it all off your chest, Katherine. Tell me why you're so fucking broken up about this when you were the one who ended things between us!"

"You fell in love with my best friend after promising me that we'd be together! You ruined me. You took every bone from my body and broke it. You ripped every organ out of my chest and butchered them. You breathed in every essence of my soul and never returned it with your own. So yes, I became lost without you. Yes, I forgot how to function without you; but that's only because you took all my pieces, made me a gigantic puzzle and never put me back together." Katherine breathed, her words furious and fast. "So yes, I screwed up, but don't you think for a second that I wanted any of this."