Harder Than You Know

He looked at me dumbfounded, his eyes starring deeply into mine. He opened his mouth to say something, but his words were incoherent. Then my name flowed from his mouth.

"Addison?" He questioned. I bit my bottom lip, and nodded my head in reassurance. He dropped his head slightly, shaking it.

"What- I'm- I'm so confused." He blabbered.

"Look, do I need to explain you the story?" I asked.

"Yeah, it would be pretty fucking helpful." He retorted.

"Okay. When I.. left.. I came to Las Vegas. I meet Ronnie Radke, who you happened to met the other day so I heard. Then, we started dating. Things got sort of.. bad. Everything went downhill after.." The baby. Alex didn't know. I couldn't. Not now. This would be murder if he knew.

"After..." Alex nagged, wanting to know.

"I- I can't." I studdered out somehow, tears now streaming freely down my face. I hadn't realized they were falling, until they fell onto my exposed leg. I stood, ready to leave the room and get comfort from Michaela. Of course, Jack and Rian still didn't know the truth either. Alex jerked me back, not letting me leave.

"Yes, you can. Addison. I've lived almost two and a half years without knowing whether or not you were still alive or not. When you left -you took a big chunk of me with you. I haven't been the same since then. I've never felt so much pain in my entire fucking life, I'll have you know. The longer you were gone, and the less and less information I knew, slowly but surely let my faith that you were coming back vanish.

"Now, you can't just fucking walk in here and tell me half of the Goddamn story without finishing it. I'm sure whatever the hell it is won't kill me, Addison. What you put me through those two years was horrible, surely it's not any worse than that." His eyes were now brimming with tears -I had never seem him cry. It broke my heart, just at the sight.

"Alex, you don't understand. I wasn't the only thing you lost." I whispered.

"What do you-" He stopped, realizing what I had meant. "There's no way. Your kidding, right?" I shook my head no, looking down on my lap.

"Was it Ronnie, that.. that killed it." He, to, whispered. I nodded my head this time, recalling ever painstaking memory when he brought it up. Alex slouched back onto the couch in the recording room, placing his head in his hands. I slid down against a wall, my breathing extremely slow.

"I'm so fucking sorry Alex. I know I caused you so much pain, trust me, I really do. Then losing the baby, made it ten times worse. You didn't have your best friend sit there, telling you that you had lost your child due to some fucker, and then you couldn't do anything about it besides pray he rotted in jail. Obviously, my prayer hadn't came true." I murmured the last part, jerking my head to make sure he couldn't see my face.

He crouched beside me, taking my hand. I didn't look at him, I didn't want to see all the pain he tried to hide in his eyes. I could see right through him, reading him like a book. It was simple, to me anyways. I whimpered as his hand caressed my cheekbone, and he forced me to look at him. When I did, his lips captured mine his a hard kiss. It wasn't lustful, but was holding all the love back he had been holding in.

"Don't you ever fucking leave me again, Addison." He said through his sobs.

"I won't. Never." I promised. A knock came from the door, and Michaela pulled it opened slowly. She shot me an apologetic look, then spoke.

"Addison," She said, glancing down at Alex, "Craig's here. He wants to talk to you."