Chapter 18

Jason's PoV

I'm Jason Dawfield. Number one playboy. Baddest badass. Cliché right?

Now let's talk about how I got this reputation. You see, I was pretty normal before, like I had a good reputation, I wouldn't smoke nor would I fuck girls left, right and center as entertainment.

It all started when I was in sophomore year of high school; It was then that I realised I had fallen in love with my friend, my father's business partner's daughter, Yrene Jones. She was about four years younger than me and I didn't want to seem like a pedophile, it all seemed wrong in every aspect.

It began when I started to feel an overwhelming need to protect her and so I would beat up any bully she'd encounter or anyone who tried to harm her; I don't remember when exactly I fell for her but it happened somewhere along the way, maybe it was the effect her touch had on me, the warmth that bloomed through me every time our skins connected even if for a small time, or how her eyes glowed with animalistic excitement when she was eager for something.

I had been unsure of my feelings for her at first and knew she held no such fantasies for me, well obviously except for her micro girlhood crush but that was different.

Therefore, I started to distance myself from her but I'd always admire her from afar, many a times I would sleep hating myself for getting a scholarly promotion and skipping the eighth grade because that only meant less time with her because it also meant going to high school much earlier. So all in all I doubt that it happened in sophomore year at all, it had happened even before I knew what love was.

However, you see even at this point I hadn't completely transformed into a 'bad boy' boy, that happened when Nick Campbell came into our lives or more like her life.

I saw her desire grow for him by the passing minute with my own eyes and the love she held for him would have been evident even to a blind person; it killed me inside slowly.

She would walk all the way over from her side of the Stonecatle Junior High wing only to see him and talk to him.

The way she'd talk to him for hours on text and sitting on the lower roof of the school with him by her side, she had the love fever and it was bad.

Even though I knew Nick had a girlfriend I was still beyond mad at him for feeling something for Yrene, my Yrene, although I hadn't told her about my feelings yet. And because she seemed to be falling for him further and further by the passing second I realised that she wouldn't give a flying fuck about my feelings anyways.

And so the transition from mediocre boy to bad boy was ought to complete. I started going to the gym more often and obtained an attractive body, I had girls drooling over me, dying for my attention, the same attention I wanted from Yrene but couldn't get.

Next thing I knew I had a different girl hanging from my arm at every party and a different one in bed later. I lost myself in cigarettes and weed, you needed marijuana I knew where to find it, although I steered clear of such hardcore drugs to a certain extent.

I'd spend hours in the music room playing my guitar in order to forget the love I had so boldly felt in my veins whenever I saw her and the pangs of hurt I felt at her distant attitude because of Nick but I couldn't blame her for that because I too had become distant. I had cowered away from the extent of my feelings for her; I had been scared of refusal; I had been scared of myself and so I had not told her.

Soon enough I began to forgot about her, or at least I thought I did; alcohol and weed were my relief. The rest of the two years of high school passed by like this, no change, and I still remained the best of friends with her two brothers.

I was so convinced that she was becoming distant, that she had become distant already, that I didn't notice when she actually became distant; when she lost the spark in her eyes, the glow in her skin, she slimed down and became pale, hollow and sunken.

Her otherwise idiotic laugh lost its joviality and took the similarity of a forced reaction. I didn't notice how she barely came to family gatherings and dinners anymore; I had been so lost and focused on my relationship with the school cheerleader whose name I would forget ever so often because I'd be cheating on her with other girls and she on me.

But when I found out, when I saw what had become of her and realised it was because of Nick, yesterday, I swore an oath to beat him black and blue for doing whatever he did to her.

That aside, I had even gone off to college, distanced myself from her, thinking that would help.

Little did I know.

For my feelings for her re-surfaced when I saw her at her brother and my sister's wedding. That was when I realised nothing could ever stop me from loving her and I needed her to know this.

But how?