Wow what a week since I last updated huh? I totally didn't graduate college and start a PhD program during that time, because that takes years!

All bullshit aside, I had the sudden urge to write this so I did! Thanks to everyone that kept hope in me updating and continue to enjoy this story. Meant a lot when I was Freshman in HS and it means a lot now.

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Shawn threw both our backpacks onto the couch when we entered the house. "Want anything to eat?" I asked, walking to the kitchen to grab a bag of chips.

Shawn turned to me and nodded. "Definitely."

I frowned. "And that is? And don't say—"

"You," he said with a grin.

"You already tried," I grumbled, rubbing my neck.

"Oh, babe," Shawn smiled, leaning against the back of the couch, "you really haven't."

"Gross," I muttered, shoving my head into a cupboard so I could avoid looking at him.

"Now then, what's this going to cost me?" Shawn asked.

I froze, pulling my head out to give him a frown. "What?"

He rolled his eyes and stood up from the sofa. "Come on, Jake. I know you wouldn't cave in this easily without some list of requirements."

Oh. I'd been so focused on avoiding getting abducted and... other things, that I hadn't thought about just how much I could get out of this arrangement. And it took Shawn to remind me of that? "Well—promising not to kidnap me or threaten to hurt my friends and family are the most important."

"Done," Shawn said. "But if a Bobby situation happens again, you're moving into my apartment until it cools down."

I narrowed me eyes. "As long as you don't lock me inside."

"I'll give your mom the address," he stated. Meaning, he was still willing to lock me inside.

I thought it over. "Okay," I said after a pause. I felt a bit uncomfortable that Shawn had transitioned into bargaining mode with no problem. I knew it would benefit me in the long run—but what a fucked way to start a relationship... which I had initiated. Like an idiot.

Well, saying that we were """dating""" was just a label anyways. It didn't have to mean anything. Just a title. Yup. Didn't scare me one bit.

"Good. What else?" he asked.

I bit my bottom lip. Okay, I hopefully had guaranteed the safety of both my mom and my friends, but was there anything else I had missed? Oh shit—there was. "Vegas counts as a friend—so you can't kill him," I stated.

Shawn's expression dropped into a scowl. "Last I checked, you weren't friends."

"Last I checked, we are."

Shawn glared at me for another moment before sighing. "Fine. But if he makes a move on you I'm punching his lights out," he spat.

I rolled my eyes. Las Vegas could do better than me, anyways. "When I say don't threaten to kill my friends and family, I mean ever again. One threat, and we're done for good."

Oh, Shawn did not look happy about that. He narrowed his eyes, "fine. But deal's off if you go to the cops."

I couldn't help but snort out a laugh. "We're way past that! And what would that do? You've made it clear that you have friends in high places."

The corner of Shawn's mouth pulled up into a smirk. "Well, I could still do without the attention. And you could too. Some of those assholes care a little too much about keeping me out of jail, and would kill you if they got wind that you snitched."

"Fucking great. Exactly what I need," I muttered.

Shawn ruffled my hair affectionately. "Okay, what else is there?"

"Good. Now, take the cameras out of my room."

Shawn gave me stern look. "No. Those are to keep you safe."

I groaned. "Are you kidding me? Those are to stalk me!"

"And keep you safe," he insisted.

"Take all but one out."

"Two. The one facing the desk and door, and the one facing the window."

"Fine," I sighed, throwing my hands up. It was something.

Shawn smiled. "Anything else?"

Shit, what else did I want? My brain scrambled to latch onto anything that I had missed. Abduction; check, friends and family; check, cameras; kind-of-check. Oh! "About the lying thing—"

"No," Shawn interjected.

I glared at him. "Why?" I snapped. "I'm done with tolerating all your hyper-manipulative bullshit. Saying that I can never lie to you is unrealistic and fucking psycho."

Shawn stood up from his spot leaning against the sofa and strode over to me. Fuck. I took a few defensive steps back, inadvertently backing myself against the wall. Shawn continued until he stood less than a foot away from me.

I crossed my arms and tried to stand straighter. "You know, you're just proving my point."

Shawn ignored me. "I can't have you keeping important shit from me. We both know you're reckless to a fault," he said pointedly.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "In other words, you're saying that you don't trust me."

Shawn scoffed. "Trust you to have self-preservation? Not in a million years."

I gaped at him. "When have I ever—" I trailed off as every time I had directly put myself in danger in only the past few months flashed in my mind. "Okay, fine. I've put myself in danger before. But so what? You're the one who got me involved in all of it."

Shawn threw his hands in the air. "Which means I have to do everything I can to protect you! And you don't make it fucking easy."

Yeah, I really didn't. "Look, what if I agree that I'll come to you first whenever I'm in danger?"

Shawn gave me a deadpan look. "When the hell have you ever done that before? And what makes you think I'll believe that you'll start now?"

He had a point—but things had changed. At least, they'd changed for me. I bit my lip and slumped back against the wall. "It's different now," I mumbled.

Shawn studied my face for a moment. "Different how?"

"Well, I trust you," I said after a moment of silence, opting to stare down at the carpet instead of look at him. "To an extent, at least. You care about me more than anyone should care about anyone. It's a huge red flag.

I chewed on my inner cheek to distract myself from the tingle of my growing blush. "But really, the root of it all is that I trust you with my life. Against my better judgment—I mean, you threatened to kidnap me and kill my family on a daily basis," I grumbled. "Also, we both have to admit that you've toned it down since you first started stalking me."

The more I spoke, the more I felt like hitting myself for saying anything at all. I winced. "Look— overall, I trust you as far as I can throw you. but I trust you with my life. More than anyone else. So, I'll come to you first if I ever think it's in danger."

Shawn and I stood for a few moments in silence, awestruck. I grunted in surprise when he yanked me into a sudden hug. He brought one hand to the back of my neck to gently pressed my face to his shoulder. "I love you. I love you so fucking much it hurts," he mumbled into my hair.

I scoffed. "Cliché line," I said, voice muffled by his shoulder.

He hugged me tighter. "If I thought you'd say yes, I'd get down on one knee right now."

"Please don't. I'm already regretting this enough as is."

"If I could kill every other person on earth aside from you and I, I'd do it in a heartbeat," he said, dead serious.

There was a long pause. "The fuck?" I finally said.

I felt Shawn's body shake with laughter. "Yeah, my bad." He pulled away and pressed our foreheads together to look me in the eye. "I love you."

I made a noise in acknowledgement.

"Now then," he said. He removed his hand from the back of my neck, but the one around my waist stayed put. "Time to discuss my end of the deal."

"There is no—"

"If you think I'm just gonna be satisfied with you saying we're dating and nothing else, you're kidding yourself."

I felt my shoulders droop against the wall behind me. Fuck!

"Don't worry babe, I won't ask for anything too major, just regular dating things," he crooned, brushing a thumb against my cheek.

"First, we're public."

I grimaced, but said nothing. I could just imagine the mortified looks on my friends faces now. Not to mention how happy my mother would be.

"You have to hold hands with me in public."

I slouched down against the fall.

"You need to cuddle with me once in a while."

I slouched more, starting to slide down.

"We need to go on actual dates."

I groaned, fully sliding into a seated position on the floor. Shawn followed.

"Kissing is a must."

Well, nothing new there.

"And you need to stay over at my place once in a while."

I sent him a weak glare. "What, so you can lock me in?"

He rolled his eyes. "No, so we can have movie nights or some shit."

"And so you can watch me sleep," I grumbled.

"Please, I've been doing that every night for months now," he scoffed.

I glared at him. That didn't make it better! "Fine. To all of it," I ground out. If that's what it took, it was worth keeping everyone safe and myself out of another bunker.

"Hey, I could have asked for more," Shawn said, standing up and offering a hand to me.

Begrudgingly, I took it. "So, what now?" I asked.

Shawn cocked his head. "Well, we both know I have a lot of ideas, but I don't think you'll go for most of them. One of the more PG ones being if I thought you'd say yes, I'd get down on one knee right now."

"Please don't."

"And if I could kill every other person on earth aside from you and I, I'd do it in a heartbeat," he said, dead serious.

"Okay, what the fuck," I said after a long pause.

Shawn began to laugh. "Yeah, my bad," he said before pulling away.

To get some relief and try to relax, I recommended that we put on a movie. But that just resulted in us arguing about what counted as 'dating and watching a movie cuddling', and what counted as 'trying to feel me up.' We settled on having our shoulders touching with Shawn holding my hand (hostage). Hopefully my tense muscles would relax over the course of the movie.

Halfway through the movie Speed (the less romantic the movie, the better), Shawn spoke.

"You know, you have pretty good timing," he said.

I turned to him with a frown. "Why?"

Shawn shrugged casually, not bothering to look away from the screen. His thumb rhythmically rubbed the back of my hand. "Well, I making plans to lock you up again."

My heart dropped into my stomach at the nonchalant admission. I suddenly felt a million times better about my rash decision to 'date' him. "When?" I demanded.

He just shrugged. "I dunno. The next time you did something stupid. So, pretty soon. I even bought a new place for it."

I gaped at him. How the fuck could he be so casual about this? Wait, I knew exactly why. I took a deep breath, and gave him the most patronizing smile I could plaster on my face, clapping him on the shoulder. He startled, turning to look at me in surprise.

"I know that it must be so hard to have less control over me, and that you must have a lot of feelings about it. But saying things just to make people scared of you so they listen to you isn't how to make people want to stay with you, Shawn. Next time, why don't we use our words instead of threatening people?"

Shawn blinked back at me in disbelief, then broke out laughing. "Fine, you got me," he chuckled. "Man, that used to work on you."

"You've overplayed it, asshole. Plus, you have serious control issues you need to work out."

Shawn snuggled up closer to me. "Look, it's that scene where they drive the bus."

"They drive the fucking bus for most of the movie," I muttered, but let it slide. I was getting way too passive in all of this.

When my mom came home with takeout, Shawn wasted no time in announcing that he and I were 'officially a couple.' I kicked him from under the table multiple times to get him to shut up, but he ignored it. My mother was ecstatic, and said that she saw it coming. I almost lost it listening to her gush over 'how cute' we were as a couple, and Shawn was all too eager to hop on that.

My friends had a different response. All of them were mortified at the news that I was dating my middle school bully. While Trudy and Matt quickly bought my story that he had profusely apologized for that and that it stemmed from his own insecurities (in other words, a bunch of bullshit), Trent and Celeste seemed more apprehensive. I knew that I would have to speak to each them about it later. Before long, I was back in my usually routine with them. Matt and Trudy picked fights with each other, with the rest of us weighing in with our opinions.

My biggest challenge? P.E. But what else was new? Most of the shitty things that happened to me during school had something to do with P.E.

I ran into Las Vegas before Shawn as everyone waited outside to do laps.. Already a bad start.

He held up a hand awkwardly. "Hi Ja—"

"Hey," I said quickly. "I agreed to date Shawn to give me more slack, so don't freak out if he's more obnoxious than usual."

Las Vegas closed his open hand quickly and frowned. "Are you okay?"

I glanced at him. "I'm not a missing person case, so I'm great," I said, glancing around the crowds of students for Shawn.

"You and me both," he sighed.

I paused. I felt bad about it, but I had briefly forgotten that Las Vegas had his own shit to deal with. "Uh, hey man, are you okay?"

He rubbed his arm absent mindedly. "Yeah. Nothing much has changed. But seriously, if you need—"

"Hey, Jakey," a familiar voice interrupted, tone ice cold. An arm landed across my shoulders possessively. He leaned down so that his head was level with mine. "Did I miss anything interesting?"

I placed my palm in the center Shawn face and pushed him back.

Las Vegas shifted uncomfortably, refusing to look Shawn in the face. "You know what, today is, uh, leg day! I'm gonna start running early. Congratulations on whatever the fuck is going on between you two. See ya."

And like that, he was off. I sighed in relief.

"So, what were you two talking about?" Shawn asked.

"I told him we were 'whatever the fuck is going on between us two'," I deadpanned, stifling a laugh.

"Dating," Shawn specified with a scowl.

"Yeah, that."

A whistle rang out across the blacktop. Shawn and I looked to the see P.E. teacher, a cigarette between her lips, wheel a wagon full of foam bats onto the blacktop.

"Hey y'all!" she took a puff of her cigarette before snuffing it out with the bottom of her high heal. "If you freaks liked dodge ball, you'll love this!" she gestured to the bats. "I call this game Whack a Kid. Rules are; there ain't any!" She began tossing bats around.

"The fuck?" I muttered.

"Oh, she's trying to get fired to get on unemployment," Shawn said. No clue how he knew that, but I was past questioning it.

"Yeah, I'm leaving," I said as I watched a guy get full-swing beat across the face.

"Good call Babe," Shawn said.

Shawn and I collected our things and began walking to the car. Thank god I was through with telling everyone in my life about the questionable decision I made to date Shawn. If I had to force one more smile or go through one more person giving me concerned looks, I was going to lose my shit. Well, at least it'd all gone better than I feared it would. But it was a bit unnerving how quickly everyone accepted it-- especially my mom.

Before I had a chance to reach for the car door handle, a hand took my shoulder and spun me around. Before I could so much as try to shove him, Shawn had his lips over mine. The kiss was short and way too hot and heavy.Before I could finish debating whether or not I should punch him, Shawn pulled away, resting his forehead against mine.

"I've got something to tell you," he said, blue eyes baring into mine.

Oof, that sentence never boded well for me. I swallowed. "What?"

Shawn sighed, "Bobby called me in for a job," he said with a sour look on his face. "I'll have to leave for two days."

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Thanks again SO MUCH for reading! When will I update again? Who knows! But this chapter is definitely a calm before the storm.