A/N: Hi everyone! Glad to still see you here. Some people probably find this story too slow but to make Star go from point A to point B, we have to show how she gets there and we have to show that it was no easy feat. After all, it it were, she would've gotten there a long time ago. 

Also, this story has some darker themes. Themes that continue to have divisive opinions on them. I'm writing this from the perspective of someone who had to bear the brunt of the consequences of people's mistakes so if you sense the bitterness, I hope you can see where it's coming from.

Hope you enjoy!

***

I'm not a big fan of good intentions.

Seems like they only come up once we've already screwed up or we're at least on our way there. They're like a handy sticker label for something that suddenly needed justification because do we ever really have to justify something that turned out great?

If nothing screwed up, it would just be as it started out—a plan to execute. Ever noticed that?

So when I gave Julian a reluctant yes to drive down with him to LA for Thanksgiving dinner with his parents, I did so with good intentions. I knew that no matter how hard I tried, I was bound to screw up. It's like going on stage to perform a dance I've never rehearsed in my life. I was bound to trip and fall flat on my face.

The extent of my meet-the-parents experience was occasionally hanging out with Ram's mother, Dolores, either at her house or her hair salon. There was no impressing her—she knew exactly what her son's sins were and even thought me too good for him. She was a lovely woman—one with a backbone I often admired. She was probably the only person Ram feared.

The situation with Julian was different.

For one, his family didn't know me well enough. Even Julian didn't know me well enough. What I might yield as an advantage from the perspective of people like Ram and Dolores might not exactly measure high on the scale of people like Julian and his family whose world was still much too unblemished to be tolerant of the slightest flaw.

And I was pretty sure that even if they did know me well enough, they wouldn't see too much they could be impressed with. Whatever I've accomplished for myself had been mostly accomplished with ruthless calculation and self-serving schemes. I certainly never got here by saving baby rabbits and gifting unicorns to starving nations. That would be more like Cammi's style.

Nevertheless, Julian insisted that we would all have a great time and that his parents were excited to meet me.

"When did your brain short-circuit that you thought it would be cute to tell your parents about us?" I muttered grumpily the evening before we drove out, when Julian was trying to gently coax me out of not going.

"I had to explain when I told my Mom that she and Dad couldn't come visit me last month," he said with a long sigh, stretching out on my bed next to the duffel bag I was refusing to pack with an overnight's worth of clothes. "You can't just cut your parents out of your life without an explanation, no matter how temporarily."

Why not? I did exactly that.

Which clearly defined me as the bad child and Julian as the golden one.

"I didn't know they wanted to come and visit you," I said quietly, watching the pensive look on his face as he laid there and stared at the ceiling. "You could've told me and I would've stayed out of your way."

He glanced at me with a raised brow. "The last thing I wanted was to give you another reason to keep your distance. I told them there was a girl. And that I didn't want to scare her away. My mother let me off the hook with the promise that I was going to introduce her to them soon."

I couldn't resist a wry smile. "So sure of yourself, weren't you? What if you couldn't introduce me more than just a roommate?"

He just grinned. "I knew you would eventually give in to me."

"No, you didn't!" I laughed and threw a pillow at him. He caught it easily and tossed it to the side before grabbing me by the waist and pulling me down on top of him.

"Starlight," he said softly when my face was merely an inch away from his. "Please. Say you'll come with me. Give it a chance. It's one dinner. You'll even get your own guest bedroom."

"You know this is a bigger deal than you're making it out to be," I said as I settled in more comfortably on top of his long, hard body. "You don't have to be reckless like this. You can go and stay with your parents for the rest of the weekend and I'll be here when you get back."

"You don't really want me to upset my mother by being there with them physically at the table while my mind is still here stuck with you, do you?" he said as he tightened his arms around me, kissing my chin. "She's going to be devastated that I wouldn't even notice all the good food she'd spent so much time preparing."

I scowled at him. "You don't play fair at all."

I could choose not to care about their little family dinner. I've had very few of those in my life and they've all had terrible endings. It's just another thing people hyped up too much—or at least I tell myself. Despite my protests—and even Cammi's—still ringing in my head, I knew I was curious. I knew I wanted to find out what it was like, just for a little bit.

And you want to ride this high for as long as it could last you because you might never find it again.

And gazing into Julian's eyes, I could see how badly he wanted it.

Why, God only knows.

But it's been harder and harder to deny Julian when his happiness seemed to cause a spike in my own.

It was dangerous, I know, but wasn't that the whole point of this exercise?

This with Julian felt good and I wanted it for as long as I could hold on to it.

So I said yes, good intentions and all that.

On Thursday, at about four in the morning, we drove out of town in Julian's roadster—our first ever ride in it. For a classic two-seater over fifty years old, it was comfortable and still luxurious with just enough space in the trunk for a couple small overnight bags. It was a little over ten hours of driving but it was a beautiful sunny day full of scenic California coast view.

I expected Julian's family to be rich based on the quality of life he lives for a college student but I wasn't expecting a sprawling private estate on the top of a knoll in Hidden Hills, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the LA area.

My guts twisted nastily inside me as Julian pulled up in front of what very much looked like a French chateau.

"I thought we weren't staying at a hotel," I said dumbly as I stayed rooted in my seat while Julian hopped out and stretched his long legs.

Julian saw my face and laughed. "This isn't a hotel. It's just a nice house, Star, and my parents just happen to live in it."

I knew people with money.

Ram had a shitload of money but it never bought him the kind of elegance that certain people who were born into that world simply possessed. It was the kind of refinement Selene naturally exuded. The same kind of polish that my own father's gruff nature couldn't distract from.

The Wilde residence had a similar element in spades.

It was like a dream—or a pretty picture you cut out from a magazine.

And it felt like my grubby hands were dirtying it up.

"Come on, baby," Julian murmured into my ear as he opened my door and leaned in while offering his hand. "I'm walking through that front door with you so don't worry. I've got you."

I stared at his waiting hand for a moment, swallowing hard at my first surge of hysterics as I took it and pulled myself out of the car.

"Oh, honey, there you are!"

We both looked up at the cheerful greeting of a woman and saw a tall, statuesque brunette hurry down the front steps in her ivory-white pumps with a much taller man following behind her in a more reserved pace.

Julian's mother was a vibrant beauty with fresh rosy cheeks and sparkling green eyes for someone her age. And she absolutely adored her son who laughingly picked her up in a tight hug.

His father, about the same height as Julian but with a leaner build, had dark blonde hair, a face structure as angular as his son's, his smiling eyes warm and friendly behind his thin-wired glasses. He hugged Julian as well after he released his mother and patted him hard on the back.

"It's good to see you, son," his father said, pulling back to give Julian a quick perusal. "It's been a few months but you look well and happy."

"And might you be the reason for it?" his mother said without hesitation as she turned toward me, a big smile stretched across her pretty face.

"Mom," Julian muttered under his breath, a wash of pink staining his cheeks as he put his arm around me. "This is Star Matthews. Star, my parents—Daniel and Alice Wilde."

I told myself to smile, to stop trying to follow Alice's gaze as she took me in and interpreting every micro-second it took her as a fast-rising tally against me. I started to have some success with the effort when she abandoned the usual courtesy and gave me a quick hug instead.

This family sure liked to hug.

"It's so nice to meet you, Star," she said as she released me, her smile almost giddy. I couldn't detect any fakeness in it but my senses were so overwhelmed that my bullshit-radar wasn't working too well. "Julian told us what a lovely girl you are and he's absolutely right."

"He swore up and down you were very pretty but that most importantly, you were an incredible person," Daniel added with an approving expression as he shook my hand. "He told us about your scholarship, your relentless drive to work hard for your future and we admire that tremendously."

"Thank you," I managed to say without sounding like a lunatic even as I gave Julian a sideways glance as if to ask just what the hell kind of things he told his parents about me to have them make me into this paragon. The 'scholarship' they were talking about wasn't even a real one. "I assure you, I'm just doing what's necessary."

And that necessary can sometimes include a little selling out of your old friends, a bit of blackmail, and a purging of the past but let's not nitpick.

"Well, I hope you won't find any of that hard work necessary on your time off this week," Alice said with a dainty chuckle as she motioned to the house. "Come on. I have a feast waiting. I cooked every Thanksgiving favorite of Julian's that I could think of. We've got movies and games and all kinds of fun stuff. And your rooms are all ready and I hope you find them really comfortable..."

The three of us listened to Alice tell us all about her preparations as we followed her into the house with Julian carrying both of our bags. It was easy to tell where Julian got his tendency to charm and chatter. His mother was like a music box that played wonderful music and never stopped. His father was a quieter sort but keenly intelligent and very kind.

Despite feeling like a misshapen foot being shoved into an artfully crafted shoe, I managed to relax my defenses and participate in the conversation. As it became more and more obvious that Julian's parents saw nothing in me that they so obviously disapproved of, a little bit of my dry humor came back. Julian looked relieved even though I gave him a look that promised a thorough questioning later on about just how much he'd told his parents about us.

When they told us to take our bags into our rooms upstairs and freshen up for dinner, Julian first showed me his massive bedroom, taking me by surprise when I saw an entire wall of shelves crammed with books instead of posters of sexy girls and all kinds of sports memorabilia I would expect from a teenage boy.

"I devoured books in high school," Julian said with a shrug although he seemed slightly embarrassed. "They helped me make sense of a lot of things. Get things straightened out in my head."

The look in his eyes told me that he spoke of a time after Mikey's death—a time when his perfect world suddenly revealed itself to be not so perfect after all. While I might have issues, what I saw of life had been at least consistent over the years. To Julian's young and naive perspective of the world, finding your brother dead and learning of his destructive addiction was a cold and brutal epiphany.

Addiction, despite appearances, is a downhill destination driven by weakness—sometimes innate, sometimes caused by something painful enough to debilitate our defenses. And while in the end, I always credit choice as the difference between climbing out of that hole or staying down there, I couldn't help but wonder if those who lived in constant shadows could even catch the smallest wisp of light long enough to make the choice to follow it.

And those who only know the light—those like Julian—might never understand what it's like to get lost in the darkness and find no way out.

"Mikey's death wasn't your fault, Julian," I told him, wrapping my hand around his clenched one. "Neither was it your parents'. Sometimes, the fight boils down to just us and the demons we're trapped in the cage with. Sometimes, they're stronger than we are."

He gathered me in his arms and breathed in deeply, as if his chest had loosened. "Sometimes, the only way to win is to open the damned gate and let someone in."

I didn't say anything after that. I just let him hold me as if I was somehow the one receiving comfort when I was trying to give it to him myself.

"As for the question burning in the back of your brain," he finally murmured against my temple. "I didn't tell my parents a lot—not the things you can't bear to the tell the world anyway. I told them exactly what you are to me—beautiful, smart and special."

I looked up and scrunched up my nose at him. "Special is the word people use when you're too different but they don't want to hurt your feelings."

He gave me an unapologetic grin. "Well, you are different and I definitely don't want to hurt your feelings. But special seemed to accommodate most of the adjectives I'd use to describe you without enumerating ten dozen of them. You're bold and bright and prickly and suspicious as hell and stubborn and sexy and funny and..."

"Okay, okay, special it is then," I said with a laugh, pressing my fingers flat against his lips to stop him from talking. "I'm not sure I can handle hearing the specifics."

He nipped at my fingers and the moment I took them away, he swooped down to give me a quick but wild enough kiss that I was a bit disoriented when he released me. Then he took my hand and led me down the hall to the guest bedroom reserved for me. It was a full suite with its own terrace, sitting room and bathroom and grand enough to give any top hotel a run for its money.

Dinner was a feast, as Alice promised, with more food than what four people even with hearty appetites could finish. The chatter over dinner was laid-back and pretty easy-going without a mention of Mikey, even as our conversation drifted to some stories of Julian growing up. Whether it was by intent or simple avoidance of a painful reminder, I didn't know but I was relieved to see them put on a brave front. I was no good at comfort, probably from my own severe lack of experience with it, and I would've been no help to them whatsoever.

We were just halfway through our pumpkin pie slices and the recounting of how Daniel's great grandfather turned a modest construction company into one of the country's biggest real estate developer when my phone vibrated with another call after a few attempts earlier that evening just after we'd sat down to eat. I'd ignored it then and the calls stopped. An hour later, whoever was calling was trying relentlessly again. Old instincts made my spine prickle but I ignored it until we were finished with dinner.

Daniel was shepherding us to the family room—which was the size of a small banquet hall—when my phone rang again.

"Sorry, I just need to get this," I murmured sheepishly as I hung back in the hallway while they continued into the family room. I waited until they were all out of earshot, which was well after the caller hung up, before I checked the caller ID.

It was Josie and she'd left a message.

My mother was probably throwing a tantrum right now to realize that I wouldn't be home for Thanksgiving at all—if she was sober enough to remember what day it was, that is.

I punched in my voicemail code and listened to my sister. "Star, I didn't want to call you but Mom's at the hospital. I got home from a gig and found her passed out in the shower. Simon was crying and trying to wake her up. It's another OD."

I exhaled sharply, trying to quell the panic in my chest as my brain reeled from the sudden flash of scenes in my head—a mix of memories, probabilities and predictions.

"I called and left Felix a message, too. He's in San Diego with Ram on business but I think he's going to head back as soon as he gets my message. I need your help." Josie's voice cracked finally. "You know I can't do this alone."

The voicemail clicked off and I slowly lowered the phone with my fingers still white-knuckling around it.

Of course, Josie couldn't handle it alone. She was always the first to crumble emotionally out of the three of us. And Simon was probably scared and out of sorts, trying to figure out why his grandmother, who was supposed to babysit him while his Mommy went to work, wouldn't wake up no matter how hard he tried to shake her. I was that six-year-old kid once. I was never a kid again since then.

An old anger returned in full force.

I could just stay exactly where I was and let destiny fulfill itself after several repeated interventions from us in the past. Maybe Mom didn't really want to live anymore and we were just standing in her way. But I knew, not only because I was under the roof of a family who cared about each other deeply and felt the loss of one down to their bones, that I couldn't do it.

Because I was always the one expected to fix any kind of problem that came our way.

Because I was always the one expected to put the family back together when it fell apart like this.

Because I knew that the girl Julian rooted for—the girl he exalted to his parents, the girl I wished for one reckless moment I could become—opened the cage and busted one demon ass after another.

To my inconvenient conscience, fuck you to hell and back.

I couldn't remember exactly how I walked into that family room and announced that I needed to leave. It was hazy but I recalled skidding to a halt along the upstairs hallway when Julian grabbed my elbow. It took some time for his words to register but with a shake of my head, I eventually realized he was telling me that he was going with me and that he was going to get our bags.

"No."

"What do you mean no?" he asked looking bewildered.

"I don't want you there," I bit out as I tried to shake my arm free. "Stay here with your family and enjoy your holidays as you should have from the very beginning."

"Do you honestly think I could sit here and enjoy anything when I know you're on a dingy bus on your way home to fix whatever emergency that came up with your family?" he asked in exasperation. "My parents will understand."

I finally tore my arm free from his grasp and marched into my room, aiming straight for the closet where I'd hung a couple of clothing pieces I'd brought with me.

"I don't think they will and I don't want really want to find out," I said sharply as I yanked out my overnight bag and started shoving my stuff into it. "Besides, this is none of your business. Stay out of it."

"That's what you tell anyone who gets too close," Julian said as he tried to maneuver around me to get me to stop and face him. "I just want to drive you there and back, Star. I just want to be there for you—not run your life."

At this moment, I couldn't stand his generosity, his kindness.

Because he was giving them to me at the price of his own protection from memories that had shredded through his family.

They say sometimes you have to hurt people to protect them.

Well, here comes the big guns.

I steeled myself and looked straight into his eyes. "My mother is a drug addict, Julian. And we've pulled her from the brink more times than she's attended a parent-teacher meeting for all three of her children combined. I'm not even sure why we bother when she clearly wants to die. But that's shit my family deals with all the time and the last thing you want is to be in the middle of it."

Julian paled slightly with shock but his jaw tensed with determination. "I'm going to be in the middle of it if I have to for you, Star, because I think you need someone, no matter how much you insist you don't."

I wanted to pull at my hair and scream. "Your brother died of an OD, Julian. I'm not going to make you relive your nightmare by making you take part in what's considered regular routine in my family."

"It might have been Julian's nightmare but he's woken up from it—we all have."

Both our heads whipped up and we found Alice standing by the doorway, her face taut with emotion, her lips pressed into a thin, resolute line.

"But from the sounds of it, it seems like you're still living it every day. So if someone can be there for you, Star, to hold your hand and pull you out of it, I say let them."

My face burned hot at the realization that Alice just heard me admit a truth I never wanted to say out loud but did so out of necessity. It was the kind of dirty laundry that never washed out.

But instead of condescension, which I was prepared to handle, I got fucking encouragement.

I couldn't tell which one rankled more—the compassion that bordered too close to pity or the nerve to assume that a little hand-holding was going to fix what's been broken for majority of my life.

It could also be the pathetic surge of hope I felt thinking that someone understood and didn't expect me to blaze into a burning house all by myself, put out the fire, save the day and come out unscathed. That someone could see the burns seared deeper into my flesh each time I emerged out of it and that someday, there would be nothing left in me to burn any longer.

I could find no gracious words to say so I simply nodded at the woman, turned away and went back to packing my stuff.

"Let me grab my bag and we'll be on our way," Julian said, leaning in to press a kiss on my temple before heading out of the room.

I thought I was finally alone but the fact I wasn't was made apparent when Alice spoke up again, this time having walked fully into the room.

"You'll think I presume too much and you're right," she said gently. "It's not my place to say what you should do or what you should let my son do for you. But I'm doing it anyway because I think my son's happiness greatly depends on yours. It's too late for me to do anything about that."

I squared my shoulders and turned to her. "I get it if you don't think I'm good for your son."

"Oh, I think you are," she said with a small smile. "I don't care about your clothes or your money or your family, Star. What's important to me is the glaring fact that you've made Julian care about something more than he has about anything in the last several years. He's a good kid but he's been living in a cycle of shallow pleasures, almost as if he's afraid to care about something he could lose so abruptly like he lost his brother. If you have that power over him, I'm willing to risk and say that he might have just the same power over you."

I stubbornly fought the hopeful flare in my chest, gritting my teeth against the contradicting urge to just storm out because I didn't care for this heart-to-heart talk.

"Your son has too big a heart to have lived through life with cold detachment, no matter how wary he is about getting hurt," I bit out. "It's got everything to do with the kind of person he is and nothing at all with what you seem to credit as my miraculous skills at making your son a better person than he already is."

To my bigger surprise, Alice beamed. "Then what's the harm of letting him be there for you when it seems you can't ask him to be a better person than he already is with you?"

I stared at the woman in disbelief because someone as sharp as her couldn't possibly miss the point. But then, she didn't know everything. "The harm is that your son is too good a person to endure my kind of reality. I don't want him to get hurt."

Alice just shrugged. "He might be sheltered most of his life but he's strong. Let him do the same exact thing you're trying to do—protecting the person you love. He has a right to it as much as you do."

Whatever counter-argument I was ready to launch turned into dust in my mouth as my heart slammed hard inside my chest.

Love—the elusive drug you keep hunting for in an assortment of pills you hope might be the real thing. And when you find it—pure, undiluted and potent—you soar to heights you've never imagined only to crash back down to earth, battered, broken, and wishing for death if it hasn't come for you yet.

Julian appeared at the door, his bag slung over his shoulder. "Babe? You ready?"

I stared at his beautifully sculpted face etched with nothing but concern, those mossy green eyes shimmering with a tenderness that made me ache down to my core.

I took a deep breath, spared a brief glance at Alice who quietly stepped aside to let me through, and walked on.

The ice in my veins at the casual mention of love thawed almost instantly when Julian's large hand wrapped around mine and held it as we walked down the stairs.

I knew Julian wanted to protect me.

I knew he wanted to make me happy.

I knew he would fix the world if he could to make sure it never hurt me anymore.

But who would fix him when my world was done doing to him what it did to me a long time ago?

***

So, what do you think?

The next several chapters are going to test Julian's stand and Star's rules. And we'll pretty much conclude whether these two have a real future together or not.

Hope you stick around for that. I'm thinking just a little more than ten chapters from here and we're good. =)

P.S. I absolutely love this song. There's a rawness to it that just grips me. I think Star could be singing this song in this chapter. The real question is, where is home? 

XOXO!

Ninya

♪♪♪ Chapter Soundtrack: Take Me Home by Jess Glynne ♪♪♪

Wrapped up, so consumed by all this hurt

If you ask me, don't know where to start

Anger, love, confusion

Roads that go nowhere

I know that somewhere better

'Cause you always take me there

Came to you with a broken faith

Gave me more than a hand to hold

Caught before I hit the ground

Tell me I'm safe, you've got me now

Would you take the wheel

If I lose control?

If I'm lying here

Will you take me home?

Could you take care of a broken soul?

Will you hold me now?

Oh, will you take me home?

Oh, will you take me home?

Oh, will you take me home?

Oh, will you take me home?

Oh, will you take me home?

Hold the gun to my head, count 1, 2, 3

If it helps me walk away then it's what I need

Every minute gets easier

The more you talk to me

You rationalize my darkest thoughts

Yeah, you set them free