Here's the second part of Loved, I hope you like it x That one is longer because it started to get away from me but it was fun writing :) Please continue to read and review xx

Jess knows that Sam has never had a mother, or indeed anything like one. She can tell by the look of his face when she drags him home for Christmas, almost a year after they've been together. He's met her family before, but this is the first family occasion and she knows that he hasn't had many of those either, and worries about how he'll react.

But on the surface he seems fine.

Only Jess knows him well enough to see the wonder in his eyes when her mother sets out dinner, at the smiles and paper hats and the tree. To her the tree looks even more lopsided than ever and possibly smaller, though that's probably only because she's grown. Sam is looking at it like he's never seen one before, and maybe he hasn't.

She knows then that he's never had a proper Christmas either.

For that, she makes sure that she fulfills every Christmas tradition, especially one's including mistletoe.

He doesn't get on with his dad, which is obvious. It's in the things that he doesn't say, the lengths he goes to avoid the subjects. It's also in the stuff he screams, when he thinks he's alone and she's supposed to be long gone. It's the 'leave now and don't bother to come back' that she hears through the wall, trying to stop herself from imagining a parent saying that to their child.

It's in the stiffness of his back and the early mornings that speak of training and a drill sergeant rather than a father.

She wonders if he was parented at all.

Jess learns that Dean is the name of his older brother, spoken of rarely, but with the reverence only afforded to his mother. Dean was who had brought him up, who had made sure he'd had a childhood, been happy, gone to school. He had been the one to encourage Sam and to push him to his limits.

Jess knew that Sam would not be who he was without his brother, it was obvious in the little snippets of information that escaped him every so often ad that she was lucky enough to hear. She saw the look on his face, holding a photo of two teenage boys, and knew that he missed his brother.

Why they couldn't just call each other she didn't know.

Men were so stupid sometimes.

But still, she wasn't going to interfere. She couldn't bear to hear that they had parted like Sam and his father. She couldn't deal with that. Family was not supposed to abandon each other.

She knew that as well.

Sam was surprisingly good at cooking. He said it was something he'd learnt since coming to college, having never had the opportunity to before. He'd grown up in motels, on the road, and most meals came rom whatever dinner was nearest, ready meals, or anything with beans.

It didn't exactly leave much room for learning to cook gourmet food.

But since coming to college he'd found a whole host of things he enjoyed doing and for most he was good at them.

Jess always made Sam cook, having gotten him to cooperate by promising to clean up after. Whenever she'd tried to wash the dishes alone he'd joined her at the sink to help and no amount of protesting could get him to sit back down.

To be fair, she didn't really want him to. What kind of man voluntarily helped with the cleaning, even after being explicitly told otherwise?

He was clearly much too good for her. And the best boyfriend she'd ever had.

They say you learn something new everyday.

Today it was that maybe her luck with boys didn't always suck.

Sam's own lack of family didn't seem to impede his ability to deal with hers, in spite of his awkwardness. At that first Christmas he had been used as a judge for a fashion contest her two youngest cousins were holding with their new clothes and he had been a great sport, even finding some music for them to strut down the 'catwalk' to. Jess had stood in the doorway for a minute, watching all of them laughing, with the son of a relative perched on her hip before making her way over and dropping the baby into his lap. Sam's arms instantly curled around the baby, stopping him from falling, and a large grin spread across his face.

He'd be a great dad.

No, he will be.

For once Jess finds something she is better at than Sam. And it's playing poker. He tells her that Dean was the one that was good at that, though he can get by, better than most. She doesn't want to know how or where he learnt some of the tricks he uses. Jess teaches him a few of her own tricks and in return he teaches her how to play pool well and how to play it to win. The two did not always coincide.

Sometimes playing it to win meant the long-game, the losses.

But you always came out on top in the end. It reminds her of life.

(She doesn't want to know where he learnt to play pool either.)

He's going to propose to her, her friend says having spied Sam in a jewellery store, particularly interested in engagement rings.

Jess squeals internally and pretends that everything's normal when he arrives home.

She knows she's going to say yes.

Now he just needs to get round to asking her.

She might be waiting a while though, if he's anything like her own father when he needs to get round to doing something.

Dean likes to break into other people's houses and steal stuff from their fridges and Sam seems far too okay with his long-lost brother appearing in their house in the middle of the night without a key. The security issue genuinely seems not to concern him.

Instead the two talk, in private, because Jess isn't stupid and knows there are things her boyfriend cannot tell her, things that she cannot know. But she can tell by the tightening around Sam's eyes that it is something to do with their father, and they're talking about possibly missing his interview (well, Dean is. Sam seems to be keeping the big picture in mind).

That day she learns that Sam will follow his brother to the ends of the Earth.

Brady tells her that she knows nothing of Sam, with eyes black as the night and pinning her to a wall. He speaks of demons and monsters lurking in the dark and she'd think he was mad, only she can't move and there is a terrible truth in his eyes. He speaks of defences written into the foundations of the house and salt lines as barricades and knows that may be true. Maybe she knows nothing real about the love of her life except the feeling of his skin under her fingers, the truth etched into it with a map of scars that span it's surface.

Maybe it's all lies.

But, as she slides up across the ceiling, feeling the pain slide across her stomach and the blood pooling below, she knows one thing for certain, other than the fact she is dying.

She hears the door open, sees Sam throw himself down onto their bed, and knows that she doesn't have long left.

When her eyes meet Sam's she knows she is loved.