1 P R O L O G U E

(JORDAN)

"Jordan, Open it!" exclaimed Alec for the nth time.

"No, I won't. I don't care anymore," I said with absolute firmness in my voice.

"Really? Then throw that goddamn laptop out the window. Throw it down this 20-storey building," he yanked the laptop from my hands.

"Alec, stop it!" I got up from my chair and grabbed it back from his grasp. I gently put it back on my table.

"You can't possibly keep staring at it your entire life. You needed closure, right? This is where you get it." He touched the laptop with his finger.

"Why? Why should I? I don't want to care anymore," I spoke through a clenched jaw. "She left me," I forced the words out of my mouth.

Each syllable burned a hole in my chest.

Alec seated himself in the chair across from me, "You don't want to care anymore but you still do. You're probably always going to," he looked into my lost eyes. "I cannot see you like this anymore, Jordan. Just read what she wrote."

I closed my eyes tightly and inhaled. "Okay, throw this," I pushed the laptop towards Alec and turned to face the gigantic window in my cabin.

"Jordan, just give it a fucking CHANCE!" Alec stood up abruptly. "You love her, man. I know it. Hell— even you know it. Don't do what you always do, J."

"What do you want me to do?!" I yelled, banging my palms on the glass table.

Alec kept his gaze steady and fixed on my face, "Nothing," he said. "There's nothing you can do."

Exasperated with my behavior, he turned around and started to walk away but not before I heard him mumble something under his breath along the lines of, "Always been the cause of your problems..."

"No, wait!" I demanded and marched up to him. "WHAT do you want me to do?" I asked turning him around.

"Do nothing, Jordan!" He shouted. "Continue as what you are. You do that," he lifted a finger and pressed it into my chest. "Just forget about the fact she made you a better person, that she got you to face the REALITY. Forget that what you were while you were with her and do what you have always been doing— RUN." He gritted the last word as he looked me straight in the eye.

No one except him would have even dared to speak to me in that manner. No one in this whole wide world would have the guts to raise their voice at me as Alec had done. He was the only person who could do that to me besides her. The only one who would look me in the eye and talk back at me and he used this to his advantage.

"I am not running," I spoke through a clenched jaw. Swatting his finger off my chest, I turned around.

Hands in pocket, I fixed my eyes on the Manhattan skyline visible from the glass windows of my office.

Alec placed himself in my line of sight, "You are running, J. Did you ever think of finding out why she just vanished? Have you ever wondered where she went? Have you done anything to calm that storm of questions brewing inside you?" his tone was accusatory.

My blood boiled upon hearing those words. In a flash of a second, I had my fists grasping at the fabric of his shirt. My breath came out raspy, "You, Alec fucking Brody, out of all the people, YOU do not fucking get to say that!"

Alec pushed me away as he freed himself from my grasp. He straightened his crumpled shirt.

I pointed at his face as fury consumed me. "You know I chased her. You know what I went through. You saw me going crazy as I looked for her everywhere. EVERYWHERE, DAMN IT. I went from place to place for one whole month and I didn't find her anywhere! When I asked her best friend, she had no answers for me. Skylar doesn't want to be found. She's made that much clear if not anything else. If she did, I'm sure Madison would have said something," I breathed heavily.

I tried finding her. I tried chasing her but she was like a dream. Gone at the strike of dawn.

"How do you know she doesn't want to be found?" Alec argued.

"Alec," I seethed. "Because she left no clue. No address, no text, no message. It's been 3 fucking months."

"You have her fucking laptop now!" He jerked his hand in the direction of the device which was resting on my table.

Whatever I was about to say next, I didn't.

My eyes landed on her laptop.

Two months later I have something that she left behind.

"You were a different person with her... A different Jordan. Someone who I always knew existed. She brought the best out of you, bro." He placed a hand over my shoulder.

A different Jordan.

I sure was a different person with her in my life. I was happier. A feeling that made me realize how broken I was before her. To think you're happy, and to be happy are two different things. She showed me that.

I gave her my all.

For someone who hated the idea of love, I was the perfect embodiment of the typical damaged goods. For the longest time in my life, I was just someone who had no regard for emotions. Others and my own. Money was power and I had that.

The image of a selfish, self-centered, manipulative, dominating man (well at least that is what she had called me once) that I once was vanished soon after she stepped into my life. Women were always just a means to an end but she changed me.

A 180° turn in my life and there I was, caring, thinking, loving, wanting just one woman for the rest of my remaining life. Just my Rose.

Damn you, Skylar Rose.

"You were better with her and I implore you, Jordan, you have to read what she wrote to bring that Jordan back."

I forced my eyes away from her laptop and stared into the dark skyline outside. "I'm fine."

"You are miserable!" Alec stressed.

"Whose fault is that?" I looked into his eyes, furiously.

"She didn't mean to do that—" He sighed.

"And how do you know that? Did she tell you? I snapped.

"She did! Yes, she did! And You know what she—" his eyes widened as he gulped his words back. My eyebrows pinched together in confusion.

How is he sure of that? Does he know something that I don't?

"What do you know, Alec?" I asked skipping the dance.

Alec composed himself and looked in my direction, "I know that you're miserable."

"What do you know about her that I don't, Alexander?" I asked again "You've been on my case, hounding me for so long now. You know something that I don't." My eyes stay fixed on his face.

His jaw twitched and he looked straight at me, "I don't know anything about her, Jordan," He sneered. "All I know is that you need to get your shit together and the only way you're getting close to closure is by reading her goddamn journal. I know for a fact that she kept an account of everything that happened on her stupid laptop."

That she did.

The one thing that Rose always did was write. It helped her re-live her life each time she wanted to; she had told me once.

But would that mean she wrote something about that night— the night she left?

My eyes found her laptop again and I gazed at it as my brain did the math on its own.

"Maybe that's why she left it here," he continued. "Maybe that's why she didn't take it with her, maybe this was meant for you to read it. You might find something about her in here." I could feel the hurt he had for me in his voice.

I was miserable.

I loved her.

I still do.

I gave her everything I had.

"I'm leaving it here; rest is your call. Throw it, open it, read it, do whatever you need to with it." Alec gave me a sympathetic look. "Now is the time Jordan. Now is the time when you find her... She doesn't need to be found but you have to find her anyway. I don't know if you still believe she loves you or not, but I know she does. Trust me. Please" He pressed his hand over my shoulder and walked out of the room.

The air went silent again.

Pin drop silence. You couldn't hear any of that city noise up here and nothing about the quietness had bothered me before. But now it just felt suffocating. Just the way it was all those months ago.

Just the way it always used to be since day one.

Until she walked in.

I let her in.

I let her hold my hand and lead the way.

And she led me to LOVE.

There was a storm inside me. A crazy tornado of feelings and theories and questions. So many questions. All of them banging at the walls of my brain, causing me unrest and pain each time I tried looking for an answer.

I couldn't decide on what to do or what to think. Whether to finally hate her and let her go or to give her another chance.

Alec was right, I still loved her. I would always love her. She made me this way. This can't be fixed because she carved my heart into the shape of her silhouette.

I dropped back into my chair and leaned back. I rubbed my temples as I closed my eyes and just breathed.

If there is something that I can still do, I should. I wouldn't be able to live with myself knowing that I could have had all the answers and yet, I walked away.

But I can never truly let her go unless I know the real reason behind this.

Overwhelmed by my thoughts, I jerked and sat up straight. I reached for the only belonging of hers that I possessed and without a second's thought, I flung it open.

But my doubts lingered.

She left me. How can I forgive that?

I'm Jordan freaking Parker. I don't have to forgive her. I just need the answers that I deserve to finally close this chapter, once and for all.

My brain could only trick me so much. When it came to Skylar I couldn't help but only spectate as my heart took over the controls of my actions.

Even though it pumps blood for you and does you a great favor by keeping you alive; this little organ having a size of a fist, when hurt, makes you bleed inside out.

"Okay Jordan, let's do this. I need closure. I deserve closure. So this is for me, not for you Skylar Rose" I said venomously.

While on one hand, I was thinking about the closure, on the other, my heart was beating erratically as I thought about the possibility of finding some answers and maybe even her after all this ends.

Love, however beautiful it might have been for me, sucked balls at this moment.

The screen on her laptop blinked open.

"Password? What the hell!" I looked at the screen wanting to break it.

I scratched at my head as I put in a countless number of passwords. One by one all were said to be incorrect.

I tried all the words that she could have put in. I tried the wackiest words that I could think of because nothing with Skylar was ever normal.

After a few trials, a message popped up on the screen telling me that this was the last chance I had before the system locked me out for good.

I pulled at my hair in frustration.

I had one last chance before this stupid thing shuts away for good.

If Madison planned on dropping this to me, she should have thought of the password as well. How would I crack this open? I didn't know much about Skylar... she was always so secretive.

I could have gotten an IT personnel to hack the system but then I started to think.

As I thought I walked down memory lane.

My heart hurt with every breath I took.

A memory of hers flashed in my brain.

A few months ago,

"Jordan. It's you," she lifted her head from my shoulder and spoken softly.

I, then, turned my head to look at her and watched as the soft breeze blew at her silky hair.

"What do you mean?" I asked, drinking in her beautiful features.

"You're my way out to everything... All that I have locked up, all that has me locked up... You seem like the only way out," she had smiled and put her head back onto my shoulder and we watched the fireflies illuminate the dark skies for the gazillion-th time.

The memory faded.

Something lurked around the corner of my brain, teasingly.

"Jordan?" I said out loud as her words echoed in my ears.

I hurriedly typed my name as the password and the next second I saw a desktop with the background picture of... Us.

Sky and I.

A candid picture that I'm guessing Madison might have clicked. Sky's smile lit up the screen just as it lit up my entire world.

We were sitting in a coffee shop a few blocks from here and Madison had tagged along that day because she insisted on being nothing more than the pain in the ass that she swore to be.

In the picture, I had my head thrown back in a laugh because of something funny Sky had said. Sky's eyes were fixed at me as she smiled.

But why did she put a picture of us?

SHE left me. SHE didn't love me. That is the only justifiable reason. Then why would she keep my name as her password and a picture of us as her background?

Skylar - 2 || Jordan - 0

I searched around her desktop and found a lot of documents and files and folders.

"First day in Manhattan... Birthdays..." I kept on reading the names of the folders on her desktop. I had come across around ten such folders. I opened a few and read them but they had no mention of me.

"Spectator."

I saw the name of the company she used to write for.

I wondered if that had something for me. I clicked open the folder and found a series of files. Each file was dedicated to an account of her days after she started writing for me.

I stared at the screen.

I had to do this.

I had to find her.

Maybe the last time she updated this she wrote something about where she was going. Maybe I would find her again and with that, I would find all the answers to my questions.

I had to do this.

"I'm sorry, Skylar Rose, but you left me no choice but to do this."

I moved the cursor over to the first document in the list and clicked it open.