Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Wolf. I only own my characters and plot. If you recognize it, I probably don't own it.

The Unexpected

Chapter Ten: Confessions of a Teenage Basket-Case

February 9, 2003
10:53 PM
Sunday

The air was cold and thick. The light from the street lamps lining the curb shined an ambient glow on the slick asphalt road. The side walks were slippery with dirty, slushy snow that had fallen weeks ago, but was yet to melt away. A pair of shivering hands curled tight, tucked inside the soft haven of a wind breaker.

"You shouldn't be here," a cold, unmerciful voice declared into the frigid night air.

"Yeah, well. There are a lot of things I shouldn't do."

"No. I mean, she doesn't want you here. It's been two years-"

"One year, eight months, and eleven days," he corrected fiercely, his emerald eyes shining in the dim light.

"Oh big whoop, you kept count. That doesn't change a damn thing. She don't want you here."

"Susan, just let me see her. I-I'm starting to finally get my life back on track. I'm a year clean and my therapist said that the perfect prize for being clean for so long is seeing Cara again. I miss her like you wouldn't believe." Susan rolled her tired eyes and folded her withered arms over her chest. She felt a whole spectrum of emotions seeing Zach again for the first time in over four months-since the last time he dragged his sorry ass to Beacon Hills in an effort to see Cara again-but the most prominent feeling was fury.

She was furious that he was clean, not for her, but for Cara.

She was furious that he was getting his life together, also not for her, but to get Cara back.

And she was furious that his prize for these achievements was not to see her, but to see Cara.

"I don't give a damn that you're clean and you're life is back on track or whatever the hell else you think you got going for you. Cara does not want you here. We are getting on with our lives perfectly well with out you in it. And I'd prefer to save her another heartbreak and keep it that way." They both became painfully aware of the wind whipping around them, and at that moment, Susan wished for nothing more than for it to carry Zach far, far away.

"I left so I could get clean for her. For you. Remember that promise we made? To not be like our parents? I was becoming that. I couldn't let Cara grow up with some dead-beat junkie for a father like I did. I needed to leave so I could give her the life she deserved. The life she still deserves. She needs her father, Susan. She needs me."

"Bullshit she needs you. She hasn't needed you in a long time. She doesn't even think about you anymore. All you are to her now is a memory, Zach. A painful, distant memory."

"No, Susan, that's what I am to you." Susan flinched at the accusation. "I'm her father and she needs her father."

"I can give her a father that's ten times as better as you ever were. We don't need you."

"Don't be her," Zach told her with the gentleness he used to have. Before things got complicated. Back when they were just two kids crazy in love, their family just beginning to bloom.

"Don't be who?"

"Don't be your mother. Bringing home men at all hours of the day and night to give her a father? That sounds like it comes straight out of the Loise Locke handbook for destroying childhoods." Susan shook her head. She knew it was awful. She knew she was becoming the exact woman she's been trying so desperately not to become as of late. But if it's a father that Cara needs, than so help her God, it's father she will get.

"Do not talk to me about my mother. I am not her."

"But you'll become her. Do you really want Cara to grow up the way you did?"

"Don't you dare make this about me! You're the one who left her! I stayed! I stay with her everyday. Even when things are hard and I just want to run, I don't! I make her breakfast every morning and I watch her get on the bus every day and I make sure she does her homework every night . Do not compare me to my mother. She was never there for me the way I'm there for Cara. I-I love Cara." It was difficult to say it. Susan and Cara don't exactly trade affections on a daily basis. But she does love her, deep down in her heart. She loves her very much. Just in a non-conventional way.

Zach winced as she yelled at him and realized that he was never going to get her to understand why he left. She was just far too screwed up.

"I love her, too." Susan shook her head, her lips curling in disgust.

"No, you think you love the six year old you left two years ago. You don't even know her anymore."

"I could! If you would just-"

"No," she snapped, itching for a Camel Light. "Period. I don't want to see you around here ever again, do you understand me?" Susan pointed a jagged finger at Zach before turning from him and walking slowly back towards the car that she had left running by the curb.

"She'll resent you for this someday, Suse! She'll find out why I never saw her again and she'll hate you for it!" He yelled at her with rushed words before she could get her twitchy driver door open.

"Kiss my ass, you piece of shit!" And with that, she slammed the door shut and peeled away from the curb and the father of her only child. For good, she hoped.

"Thanks for driving me home, Stiles." Cara's feet hit the pavement below her gently as she stepped out of Stiles' rumbling jeep. He nodded, tapping his fingertips absently on his steering wheel.

"No problem," he waved her off. "I'll be back in a little bit to pick you up for our, uh, group thing. Scott'll be with me." Cara leaned against the side of the jeep after she closed the door, talking to him through the ajar window.

"And where will you boys be whisking me off to this time, huh? Some underground werewolf club? Is Scott gonna use his werewolf powers to conjure a massive thunderstorm so we can play a rousing game of baseball?"

"He's a werewolf, not Thor," he chuckled. "And baseball is really more of a vampire thing."

"Oh, I didn't realize the supernatural community had such a strict social structure. My apologies."

"Yeah, well, vampires are snobs anyways." Cara and Stiles laughed for a moment before her chuckles slowly died and her smile dropped.

"There aren't really... They don't actually exist... Do they?"

"No," Stiles answered, sensing her question before she even asked it. "Well, I mean, not that I know of. I've never met one, if that's what you mean."

"Oh." It was silent for a moment as they looked at each other, each one taking in the other's features. "I should go."

"Yeah." She smiled and waved before turning around to walk up the steps of her house and through her front door. Cara let out a heavy breath and leaned against the door, grinning. She was starting to feel as if Stiles was grasping at her very heart, taking her over from the inside out. But before she could be too engulfed in her infectious thoughts, the ear-piercing, unmistakable sound of shattering glass made her jump nearly two full feet in the air. She squeaked and clutched her heart in surprise. Pushing off the door, she ran to the source of the clatter.

"I never wanted to see you here again! Have I not been clear about that for the past nine years? Leave. Now. Before Cara gets home and-"

Cara could not have walked into her home at a worse time. In the middle of the kitchen, her mother stood, still dressed to the nines, arguing with a man who struck her as vaguely familiar. Susan's face flushed with anger, arms shook with left over adrenaline, eyes wide with a crazed insanity that was unparalleled to any expression they had ever held before. Shards of the busted item-A plate, maybe?-lay forgotten on the floor below them. The man looked at Cara as if she was a relic lost to him for years and had suddenly turned up at the most unexpected time, at the most unexpected place.

"Cara?" His voice was soft, gentle. If he wasn't so struck by how beautifully she had grown up, nearly a grown woman by now, he would have run to her, hugging her tightly with out the intention of ever letting go again. "Is-Is that you?"

"Who the hell are you?" He would have chuckled at her audacious reply if he hadn't felt struck in the heart by her lack of knowledge of who he was. "What the hell is going on? Mom? What happened?"

"This man was just leaving," Susan seethed, shoving a piece of rebellious hair behind her ear.

"This man? Is that what I am to you now?" He was beyond affronted at the way she referred to him.

"Drop it. Leave." Susan gripped his thick arm in her dainty fingers, as if she was going to throw him out herself. He wrenched his arm out of her grasp, his eyes flying back to the small blonde standing a mere few feet from him after not seeing her for the past nine, nearly ten now, years. It was like running a marathon for a larger majority of your life, then finally reaching the finish line and not knowing what to do with yourself.

"I've been waiting ten years for this, Suse. I'm not going anywhere."

"Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?" Cara was not in the mood for anymore of this verbal tennis. She wanted answers and she wanted them now.

"It's me, Cara," he told her, grabbing her arms gently, desperately. "It's your dad."

The memories hit her all at once. She looked up into his glassy eyes and could remember looking into them as a little girl. She could remember his calloused hand holding hers, guiding her through a park or a store. She could picture herself looking up at him with big, green, doe eyes, and him smiling down at her with his own emerald ones. But, clouding those memories of happiness and love were the memories of loneliness and desperation. Cara thought back to when she sat alone in her room, crying, cursing God, asking him why he took her dad away, why he let him leave. She remembered hating him. Much like she does right now. She recalled all the times she wanted so desperately for her dad to come back and take her away, whisking her off to some fancy new place in an entirely new country.

And worst of all, she remembered the very last time she saw him.

"Daddy!" Cara cried in laughter, giggling uncontrollably as her father's wiggling fingers attacked her sides unmercifully. "Daddy, no! Ah! Stop!" He smiled wide at her, watching her words being swallowed up by the laughter bubbling from her tiny mouth.

"Say it and I'll stop," he told her simply.

"Okay, okay!" Zach stopped tickling her sides and neck and armpits at her sudden proclamation. His large hands held her arms softly, waiting to hear her say what she refused to utter only a few seconds ago. "I love you more than there are stars in the sky." His grin grew larger as he wrapped his little girl in his arms.

"That's right, pretty girl." Cara giggled again, pushing from his arms and running off to play with the toys scattered all around the living room. She didn't know it at the time, but they were saying goodbye.

Zach stood from kneeling on the floor between the kitchen and the couch, feeling the nagging in the back of his throat. He was sweating a little around his neck, his fingers were shaking minutely, making it hard to even focus. It was time, he decided, it was time to change. Cara also didn't know that her lovable, fun, caring daddy was fighting an internal battle of disastrous proportions inside the cold depths of his own head. His mind was practically made up, he was leaving. He didn't know for how long, and he didn't know exactly where he was going. But he was going.

Susan came in from having a smoke break outside, dropping her pink lighter into the bowl on top the dryer that was adjacent to the back door.

"Hey, babe?" Zach looked at her with large, sorrowful eyes. She knew, right then, what was about to happen.

"Yeah?" Susan tried to keep her voice steady, but she knew that it cracked at the end.

"I-I think I'm gonna run to the Gas-N-Sip and grab some smokes." She nodded without looking at him. She hoped he was telling the truth, but knew that he wasn't.

"Okay."

On his way out, he stopped at the front door to look back at his little girl. She had a toy horse in one hand and a tiny toy dog in the other, running them around the floor, playing. Her crazy blonde hair was laying on her shoulders and her legs were crossed Indian style underneath her. He debated just turning and walking out, not saying anything else. It sure would've been a hell of a lot easier. But, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't bring himself to do it.

"Cara," he called, feeling his voice catch in his throat. She looked up with an unmistakable grin on her tiny face. "I'm leaving, I'll be right back." The lie nearly burnt his tongue.

"Okay, daddy." He smiled sadly at her. She'll understand when she's older, he kept chanting silently in his head. He turned to sulk out the door, his eyes burning with emotions that he couldn't even begin to comprehend. But thudding feet stopped him from shutting the door behind him. "Wait! Daddy!" He stopped and turned back to his beautiful little girl.

"What is it, pretty girl? I gotta go."

Looking up at her despair stricken father, she said: " I love you more than there are stars in the sky."

Before he would let himself cry, he patted her head and turned to make the trek to the Beacon Hills Bus station, punctuating this chapter of his life with a definite slam of the front door behind him.

Cara closed her eyes for a moment. Why is he here? After all this time, why would he come back now? She didn't realize she had clenched her fists until she could feel the biting pinch of her nails digging into her palms. "I don't-I don't understand. Why-Why-" Her eyes slowly opened to see her father, this recognizably clean and shaven and almost successful looking man before her, looking at her like she was made of solid gold. "Why are you here?" Her eyes were no longer glazed over with memories, they were burning with passionate fury and betrayal. When he didn't answer her right away, she stomped up to him, pounded her tiny fists on his chest, screaming: "Why would you come here? Why are you doing this? What do you want?"

He grabbed her fists to keep her from hitting him anymore and answered gently, "I-I wanted to see you, Cara. I missed you."

"No! No, you don't get to say that. You don't get to miss me! You left me. You left us." She yanked her arms from his grasp and backed away from him, as if he wasn't real, as if he was some sort of sinister apparition sent to destroy her very being. For all she knew, that's what he was there to do. His eyes were full of emotion and burning anguish.

"I tried to come back, I did! I-I-"

"Shut up!" She screamed, loud enough to elicit worry in Susan, who was standing out of the way of the two. "Shut up, shut up! You piece of shit! I hate you!" Cara was a powder keg of pent up anger and aggression, and she was bursting at the seams. "I barely recognize you, you've changed so much since you left. You-You just get up, say you're going out and that you'll be right back. You leave me here with her, for all these years. That's bull shit!"

"Believe me when I say that it was not my intention to leave you behind. I thought-I thought I was helping you by leaving, by getting help." Cara's eye brows dropped low above her eyes in confusion and rage and she almost flung herself at him again, fists flying. But she kept her cool as much as she possibly could.

"You left us and you knew full and well that you were doing it. You weren't getting help. You were getting out."

"I was trying to do right by you! I was trying to leave before I ruined you like my parents ruined me. I was becoming a monster!" Cara hadn't the slightest clue of what he was even talking about, but couldn't let go of the violent soreness gripping her insides long enough to ask.

"I stayed up crying every night, asking God why I wasn't good enough for my daddy. Why my mom had to drive him away. Why he wouldn't come back and save me from her. I hated it here! I hate Steve, I hate this stupid fucking trailer, I hate this trailer park! I hate you!" Zach looked away shamefully, risking a wicked glance at Susan, who stood to the side, looking down at the broken glass littering the floor still. "I've hated you my whole life. But after a while, I stopped caring, because I knew you weren't coming back. I was done wasting my life hating you and using all my energy to think about all the ways I would tell you that when I finally did see you again. I don't care why you left. You-You didn't find the decency to tell me back then, I don't wanna hear it now." Zach felt like she had struck him in the gut with a jagged knife and twisted it with every venomous word she spat.

"She never told you, did she?" Cara almost told him to go fuck himself, and that no matter what he said it didn't matter because it wouldn't change the fact that he left her and her mom. But she couldn't push away the nagging curiosity in the back of her mind, wondering what all of this was even about.

"She never told me what?" Zach sighed, feeling the anxiety roll of Susan in rigid waves from behind him. He stepped closer to Cara, she stepped back.

"I was addicted to drugs, Cara. I was losing my mind, I was becoming a raging drug addict. I left so I could go to rehab. And I tried coming back every year until you were thirteen to see you, but her mother never let me so much as through the door."

It was eerily silent for a few moments, before the screaming started.

Trying to kill time before the dreaded group thing with Scott and Cara, Stiles was lumbering around the police station, hoping to catch a little bit of action to ease his anxious body. Weird how a possible bank robbery or home invasion would calm me rather than a soothing bath and a skin mag, he thought curiously to himself, amused. The police scanner behind the front desk murmured quietly with soft static. Nothing particularly exciting was happening. Some cops were seated at their desks filling out paper work, some were snacking on some food from the vending machine in the break room.

Then the phone rang, and Stiles hoped to God it was someone calling to inform them of a robbery in progress.

"Beacon Hills Police," Maria said into the phone, a dull tone in her tired voice. She nodded at whatever the voice said with a small hum. "We'll send someone over right away ma'am, thank you." She hung up, clearly it wasn't anything worth worrying about and it certainly wasn't anything that would make Stiles any less bored. "Jenner," she called out to the officers sitting that their desk. Michael Jenner was the youngest and newest deputy, usually sent out on the odd, boring jobs no one else wanted. He stood from his desk, mildly irritated.

"Yeah?"

"Domestic Dispute at the trailer park. Didn't sound serious but the old lady who called was all sorts of spooked. Said she heard glass breaking and yelling."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll head over and check it out. What's the lot number?" Maria scrunched her nose to remember what the frantic old lady had told her.

"Uh, 34." Stiles jumped up, practically knocking the chair over behind him and ran into his dad's office, eyes wide. Maria and Michael watched on in resigned amusement before Michael walked out to his cruiser to investigate the call.

"Dad!" Stiles burst through the door without knocking.

"What the hell, Stiles?" The Sheriff yelled, his heart beating out of his chest from the unexpected surprise. "What is this-"

"It's Cara," he cut in, breathing heavy, not exactly knowing what to do or say.

"What about her?" The Sheriff was more interested now, and didn't like the look on his son's face.

"There was a domestic dispute call, it was for her house-her trailer. A neighbor called it in, saying she heard glass shattering and yelling. I-I don't-she-"

"Calm down, calm down, let's go." Stiles nodded, turning and running out to his dad's own police cruiser, vaguely hearing him explain to Maria why he was leaving and why Stiles was acting like his hand just went through a wood chipper.

After they started towards the park, Stiles called Scott and cryptically told him that Cara was most likely in trouble and he needed to get his ass to her house right now, and then he gave him specific directions on how to get there from his house before hanging up. The car was apprehensively silent after that and when they finally pulled up to Cara's tiny, beaten down trailer, Michael was standing outside the house, impatiently tapping his foot as he knocked on the door. Stiles had never wished he had asked for Cara's number more than in that moment.

Once Stiles and the Sheriff got out of the car, they both heard the yelling. The rabid yelling coming from the inside of the trailer did nothing to quell Stiles panicked and rapid heart beat.

"This is the Police, open up!" Michael yelled before looking back at the Sheriff and Stiles, confused. "Sheriff? What are you-"

"Cara!" Stiles yelled, pushing past Michael to pound on the door. The commotion both on the inside of the trailer and outside had attracted a curious crowd on the street in front of the trailer. "Cara, it's Stiles!" He vaguely heard the words "stupid slut" and "fucking arrested" before the door was wrenched open by a crazy-eyed, middle aged woman dressed in a gown and pearls.

"What the hell do you people want?"

"Um, we're the police and we received a disturbance call. We're here to check it out," Jenner explained calmly, if not nervously.

"Where the hell is Cara?" Stiles asked the woman, his brows low on his eyes. Feet bounded up the steps behind them and he assumed it was Scott, he only relaxed a little.

"None of your damn business. Now, I'd thank you kindly if you'd all leave us the hell alone." She made to slam the door in their faces but the Sheriff's sturdy hand stopped it in it's tracks.

"I am the Sheriff of Beacon Hills and until you tell me where the girl is I will make it my damn business." Stiles puffed his chest and pointed at his father, nodding.

"Yeah. What he said." She let out an aggravated growl and turned from the door. Stiles chanced a peek inside, seeing so much glass on the floor that it looked like every dish they owned was thrown out of the cupboards. A few drops of blood were mingled with the glass, also, and his stomach nearly fell to his feet as he traded a look with Scott, and judging by his face, he smelt it too.

When they turned back, there was Cara, a wash cloth held to her palm, her face flushed-the left side of it specifically crimson-her forehead slick with sweat, and her chest rising and falling quickly, rapidly. Her wide, green, wet doe eyes washed over all of them before settling on Stiles.

"Stiles?" She asked. "What are you doing here? Why are the cops here?" Her eyes flitted from Stiles to Scott and back to Stiles again. Instead of answering her, he reached for her hand with his own.

"Why are you bleeding? What happened?" She gently took back her hand and held it to her chest, eyeing the Sheriff and the Deputy once more before looking back into Stiles' maple eyes.

"Why are they here?" She insisted, looking back into her trailer apprehensively.

"Cara," Stiles said firmly. He was done with this. This had gone too far and he would not let Cara out of this one without an explanation. He had thoroughly had it with her evasive maneuvers. He was going to get answers. "A neighbor called and said there was a domestic dispute." Cara nodded, holding her bleeding palm a little bit tighter. She looked up at the Sheriff.

"Thank you for rushing down here, but everything's fine. Just a little disagreement, that's all." Scott nodding at her hand, knowing how petrified she was of blood, knowing that part of her shakiness was probably just due to the fact that she had an open wound.

"Then what's that?" Cara looked down at her hand, seeing a small red patch seeping through the cloth. Her stomach churned uncomfortably.

"I dropped a plate and it broke," she explained, "I cut myself trying to clean it up." Scott could of smelt her lie from a mile away.

"Why were you guys yelling?" The Sheriff pushed, clearly not buying her shit-story just as much as the rest of them.

"It was my mom's favorite plate. She was so mad that I broke it that she threw all the other plates that came in the set, yelling about how without that plate the whole thing is useless. My mother's a freaking nut." The Sheriff shifted on his feet and rested a hand on his belt uneasily.

"Can you ask your mother to step out here again, please?"

After Zach told Cara that Susan had stopped him from seeing here for all those years, she went absolutely feral. Cara practically threw her dad to the side and got right up in Susan's face to scream at her with all her might. Telling her how useless she was, how she was trash, and that if it were up to Cara she would rather her be the one who left and not her dad. Susan, unlike Zach, did not calmly take the verbal beating with strong shoulders. She shoved Cara back a few feet and got in her face right back. Susan told her how much she wished she would have left like she wanted to all those years ago and that the apple didn't fall far from the tree, in the sense that Cara was trash too.

Zach tried pulling Susan away, he tried yelling over them to stop, he even tried throwing another plate on the ground to grab their attention. But instead of it making them calmer, it only fueled their rage.

And until that fateful day, Susan had never raised a hand to Cara. She had never more than given her a spanking for being bad since she was seven years old.

"No wonder he left you! You're an old, crusty bitch who doesn't love anyone but herself!" The crack of Susan's left hand colliding with Cara's pale cheek was so loud it nearly made Zach fall to his knees from the sheer force of it. Cara was thrown to the ground and her hand landed on a piece of glass, lodging itself into her palm. Zach rushed to her, screaming and cursing at Susan for what she did. He helped a frozen Cara to her feet while Susan threw every glass dish they owned onto the linoleum floor in her endless fit of madness. Zach carefully picked out the glass and found a wash cloth to hold to Cara's hand to stop the bleeding, telling Susan that she would regret every laying a hand on their daughter.

That's when the banging started.

"This is the Police, open up!" They heard. Panic rushed through Susan and she turned to Cara, telling her:

"You stupid slut, you better not get me fucking arrested." Cara tried to stop her shaking hands while Susan answered the door. Zach held her shoulders lightly under his rough fingers and only released her when Susan came back, grumbling about some stupid teenage boy who wanted to see Cara.

While the Sheriff spoke to Susan in hushed, furious tones next to his car on the curb, Stiles and Scott were standing in front of Cara in the shade of the tree that divided her yard the neighbor's. Her head was lowered shamefully, and her hand were still shaking as she held the cloth to her clotted palm, listening to them berate her.

"We are always so worried about you, Cara. I ask you again and again about what's going on with you and you've yet to tell me what really happened in there. I-I was so freaking worried that I dragged my dad down here, I called Scott down here, I practically put my own foot on the gas when my dad wasn't driving fast enough. I thought you were dead or something!" Scott was nodding along beside him, not sure if he should jump in with his own concerns or if Stiles' scolding was enough.

Cara looked up, her eyes hard and her jaw set. "Have I ever told you anything about my family?"

She didn't ask in a way that was harsh or rude, she was genuinely unsure if she had ever shared a single detail with her two relatively new friends. They shook their heads and she sighed.

"My dad left me and my mom when I was six." Just getting those words to pass her throat was a struggle and she nearly choked on them on their way up. Scott eye's softened, understanding her loss. "I never knew why and I hated him for it. After he left, my mom became a cold-hearted bitch. Which made me hate him even more, because he left me here with her all alone. After a few years, she met Steve and brought him into our home. Another few years and they were married, still are." Cara breathed deep. "Them two are the laziest, most neglectful people who have ever walked this planet and I don't want you to feel sorry for me." Stiles' and Scott's faces were already set in pitiful expressions and they made Cara want to throw herself off the nearest cliff. Stiles opened his mouth to speak, but Cara cut him off before he could get a word out.

"Let me finish," she instructed. They nodded. "I can handle my own with them. I have since I was little and I will until I leave. I don't need you worrying about me and I don't need you checking up on me. I don't want you to treat me any differently." The two boys nodded reluctantly.

"What happened tonight?" Stiles asked softly, looking down at her wrapped hand and back up to her painfully red cheek. She sighed once more.

"My dad came back." Stiles looked at the blonde man talking to the police, his eyes hard and murderous.

"He did that to you?" Scott asked, gesturing to her bruised face. Cara frantically shook her head.

"No, no. He didn't do anything wrong." They gave her unappeased looks, as if they didn't believe her. Which they didn't. "He shows up out of the blue, right? Ranting about how he was addicted to drugs when he left and that he was leaving us to get help. I thought it was a total crock of shit at first. But then he tells me that he'd been trying to see me every year until I turned 13. That my mom's the one who wouldn't let him see me."

"And you believed him?" Cara looked at Scott, unoffended.

"I believe a stranger over my mother any day."

"So that's why you guys were fighting? Because your dad outed your mom's secret? Is she the one who hit you?" Cara nodded carefully, chancing a glance at her mom. Susan was still shaking with adrenaline and her hair was beginning to frizz out as she talked to Stiles' dad.

"But what was all that glass? Why did it look like a tornado tore through your china cabinet?" Stiles was not letting up on the questions now that he finally got Cara to open up. No way was he ever gonna let her clam up again.

"I don't really know, one plate was broken before the fight and my mom broke all the others in a fit of rage after she slapped me. It's all kinda blurry afterwards."

Stiles stepped forward and tested his luck by wrapping her in an awkward hug. It was warm and comforting and Cara wished only to cling onto him for a few more seconds before he released her, letting Scott hug her for a few seconds also.

Scott felt like he was stepping on eggshells when he asked her if she needed anything. But to his surprise, she calmly replied, "Yes, actually. Can I borrow your phone?" He reached into his pocket and handed it over to her.

"Why?"

"I have friend who I really need to see right now."

A/N

YIKES IT'S BEEN LIKE THREE MONTHS SINCE I UPDATED I'M TRASH NO NEED TO TELL ME I ALREADY KNOW.
Work has been killing me and school is as sucky as ever. But I took every free moment I had to chip away at this eventful chapter. But now it's here finally and I just hope that I won't take as long to update again.
Who knows, maybe I've finally found a rhythm and I can write for this story and my upcoming one happily and contently.
And also, I have no idea how police stations work but I figured that people in Beacon Hills who know what's up just call the station directly and skip the 911 operater. Who needs a middle man, anyways, am I right?
Special thank you's to AnimeLoveer-DarkKnight321, MsRose91, Guest, CurbItKirby(especially you bc you made me cry), winchesterxgirl, Fabooreader, lolsmileyface6, and Just-keep-dreaming004 for all the lovely reviews. I've never had to thank that many people and while I would like to think it's because of the story it's probably because it took so long to update.
Love to the 82 people who have faved and the 117 people who have followed, you guys make my world go 'round.
And now, I'm off to bury myself in the wonderful world of Teen Wolf to prepare for the next few chapters.
(My ten year old brother just told someone to go fuck themselves on his X-Box live game so my mind is all discombobulated. Please forgive me for this lame author's note)

blahicantthinkofaname xoxo