Hey guys!

So I know that I have taken soooooo long to update this story... I am truly sorry about that.

I have posted a new story that I will try to update once a week... might space it out a little more to give me some writing space.

This is PART ONE of Chapter 39! I'm stuck with the other half of this chapter but this chapter and chapter 40 are my last chapters to this story! Might add in an epilogue... I'm not too sure yet.

This year had sucked so bad but things are slowly looking up.

You guys and your love and support for this story has kept me going! I love looking back and reading the reviews, they help me when I'm in the dark depths of writer's block. So I thank you all very much for that.

Again, I am very sorry that this chapter is short... I just haven't updated since April and even then that was just to let you guys know why I have been MIA. So please enjoy PART ONE of Chapter 39!

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Chapter

Thirty Nine
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The second part of winter break soon started and Serena was looking forward to spending the holidays with her friends and family. Her parents didn't force her to go the gala this year, partially because of what had happened last year but her grounding was still the main reason why they didn't force her. Things were back to normal with her and the girls, and she and Darien were officially back together though they still had a lot of things that they needed to work on, but for the mean time she was happy.

Her relationship with her parents was still a bit weird but they were trying, now, to spend more time with Serena and her brothers. Serena had noticed that Sammy was keeping his distance from everyone because of the tension and also because everyone was keeping him in the dark about everything. Andrew still wasn't talking to her and it was slowly killing her not having her older brother to talk to anymore. She knew she needed to fix things before he left to go back to school after break ends.

Kenji and Ikuko had agreed for Serena to have the girls over to keep her company the night of the gala but that meant that Darien had to go in her place, though he mainly wanted to go so he could hang out with Andrew and make sure that he was okay.

Serena had been trying to come up with the courage to talk to Andrew and now that there was finally no one around, and the rest of her family was too busy getting ready for the evening, it was the perfect time to try to apologize to her brother. She stood in front of the closed bedroom door for about five minutes until she finally felt ready to knock on the door.

"Come in!" she heard from the other side of the door with a long strain of curses followed after.

"Hey Drew" Serena said shyly as she entered her brother's room and looked at him sadly as she watched him try to tie his bow tie but was having a lot of difficultly from the cast on his arm.

"What do you want?" Andrew's frustration as evident and Serena could tell that she was causing him more stress.

"Can I help?"

"You know how to tie a bow tie?" Andrew asked sarcastically as he rolled his eyes, the ice clear in his voice.

"Sort of" Serena said with a shrug.

"Fine, knock yourself out" Andrew said as he gave up on trying to tie it himself and let the end hang around his neck. Serena slowly walked up to her brother and went to work trying to tie the bow tie.

"How the hell does dad do it? He makes it seem so easy" Serena said after 20 minutes of trying to figure out how to tie the damn thing and even tried some YouTube tutorials.

Andrew chuckled, "You know he wears a clip on right?"

"Are you kidding me? I give up, a regular tie I know how to tie but a bow tie is like if it were made from the devil himself" Serena said as she gave up on the bow tie and sat on Andrew's bed. Andrew laughed at his sister's words and sat next to her, there was a long awkward silence between the two but it helped that Andrew wasn't trying to kick her out. "How's your arm doing?" Serena finally asked. Andrew's concussion had healed and he had gotten his stitches out the other day, leaving a scar on over his eye that cut through the end of his brow.

"The pain is gradually going away but it itches like hell" Andrew replied, still not looking at her.

Serena stared down at the cream colored cast that was decorated by their friends with their get well wishes in different colored permanent marker. The sleeve of his dark green dress shirt was rolled up to his elbow because it was too tight to keep around the cast. The guilt began to eat away at her more, "Andrew… I'm so sorry. I know you were trying to help… I shouldn't have pushed you."

No tears were threatening to fall but the guilt was clear in her voice. Andrew knew that Serena was being sincere, he knew that this was eating away at her and he, too, felt guilty for not being there for her when he was gone.

"I'm not mad at you, Sere. I've been worried about you and when Mina told us she thought you were doing drugs… and then I caught you smoking in your room… we both acted the way anyone else would've in that situation, but we got lucky that nothing bad happened. I forgive you Serena and I'm just glad that you're doing better." The tears came when Andrew wrapped his arm around her shoulders and hugged her tightly.

"Andrew I was selfish… all I wanted to do was forget about Darien and so I pushed everyone away… I almost pushed you away for good. How can you forgive me?" Serena asked when the tears subsided.

"Because you are my little sister and my job is to protect you no matter what. I love you Sere and I'm always going to be here for you. Just please promise me that if you ever go through anything like that again, please talk to me."

"I love you too Drew and I promise that I will" Serena promised as she hugged her brother tightly.

"So are you guys on speaking terms again?" Sammy said as he stood in the doorway to Andrew's room. Sammy rushed over to his siblings and hugged them tightly after they told him 'yes'. He was happy to have his family back to how it was before all of the weird craziness happened.

"Uh did I miss something?" Darien asked as he entered Andrew's room and raised a brow as he looked at the three siblings. He was dressed in his suit for the evening, looking handsome as ever making Serena's breath catch in her throat. He wore black slacks with a dark red long sleeve button down shirt tucked in and a black tie around his neck.

"Nothing much, we just talked it out" Andrew didn't want to go into details with Sammy around, he had promised his parents that they would explain everything when he was older.

"I'll tell you what happened…" Sammy said as he stood up and looked at everyone seriously, "I got my family back" he said with a soft smile and Serena got up and hugged her little brother.

"Okay now go finish getting ready. I'm sure mom and dad want to leave soon since Darien's here" Serena said as she shooed Sammy out of the room and he didn't protest, "Speaking of which," Serena continued talking as she turned her attention to the two other guys in the room, "Darien do you know how to tie a bow tie?"

"Yeah why?" Darien asked as he looked at Serena quizzically and when she slightly nodded her head toward Andrew, he understood and quickly went to work.

As Darien was helping Andrew, Serena took her que to leave and went to hide out in her room until her friends came over. She was sitting at her desk, working on a project in her sketch book, when there was a knock on her door.

"Come in!" Serena said as she continued to work on her sketch, thinking that it was her mother letting her know that they were leaving.

"Hey Buns" Darien said as he entered her room.

Serena put the colored pencil in her hand down and turned around to face him, "Hey, so are you guys getting ready to leave?"

"Yeah but I also came to ask if you're sure you didn't want to go?" Serena could see the hope in his eyes and she felt bad.

"Yeah… I'm pretty sure I'm banned after last year… so I'm gonna have to pass." She answered with a nervous laugh as she rubbed the back of her neck.

"Yeah, you're probably right" Darien said as he remembered how drunk she had gotten last year. "What are you working on?" he asked as he tried to look over her shoulder at her sketch book. He knew Serena liked to doodle and he knew that she took art classes at school but he had never seen her completed work. Actually he had never seen her work.

Serena blushed and quickly closed her sketch book, "Nothing" she said quickly and then looked down embarrassed, "It's not finished yet and I don't want anyone to see it… it's not even that good"

"I'll be the judge of that" Darien said as he quickly grabbed the book before Serena could hide it.

"Hey! Darien give it back!" she said tried to get it back but Darien's height gave him an advantage as he held it out of reach as he looked through the drawings.

Most of the pages were little anime doodlings of Serena and her friends and there were some doodles of Sailor V. It was clear that this was the sketch book Serena had since she started drawing as the first couple of drawings weren't as good as the ones that were further in. She was really good at drawing flowers and animals but her portraits of their friends were amazing. Darien smiled when he saw some drawings of himself within the book.

By now Serena had given up on trying to get her sketch book back and she nervously chewed on her thumb nail as she watched Darien look through the book.

"Serena these are amazing" Darien said in awe as he kept looking through the book, clearly he hadn't seen her newer additions since the school year had started. Her heart stopped when she saw his expression changed, she knew he was now at the part she was dreading and she couldn't look at him anymore.

Darien's brows drew in as he looked through the series of broken dolls and bleeding roses. The sketches were beautifully detailed but it was clear that someone would have to be going through something rough to create such art. He flipped through the pages to get to the picture she was currently working on. It was a picture of a girl, she was smiling but only half of her face looked like the smile was genuine as the smile reached her eye, whereas the other half of her face was cracked and broken, a tear fell from the eye, the make-up was smudged and the smile looked forced. The happy side was colored with blue eyes, rosy cheeks, pink lips and blonde hair. The broken side was in black and white, the hair colored black.

"Serena" Darien didn't know what to say, the drawing was beautiful but it made him feel guilty for causing her so much pain.

"My teacher loved the broken doll idea I had going, she wanted me to use it in my portfolio. I don't feel like that anymore Darien," Serena said but still refused to look back up at him.

Darien closed the sketch book and placed it down on the desk. He then pulled her close and hugged her tightly, "I'm so sorry Buns"

"Hey, I'm over it. Things are better now—we're better now. I couldn't ask for anything else," Serena said as she put her hand on his cheek and looked into his blue eyes. The couple smiled and then kissed.

"So when will it be done?" Darien asked once the kiss was finished.

"It still needs a lot of work. It's my long term project for the school year. I'm planning on making it a water color and when it's done it'll be on a large canvas." Serena explained as she began to put her pencils away. "There's going to be an art show at the end of the school year, but I think it's before you get out of school." Serena said sadly as she turned back to face him.

Darien smiled softly as he pulled her back into his arms, "We'll have to video chat the night of the show then" Darien leaned in to kiss her but Serena pushed back a bit.

"You should get going before you're late" Serena said as she began to lightly push Darien out of her room.

"We probably won't stay long. I'm planning on leaving when Drew says he's had enough"

"Great, so I'll be expecting you in an hour or two! Now go so you can brag to everyone about how school is," Serena said as she kept trying to push him out of her room but Darien stood his ground and wouldn't budge.

"What makes you think I'm gonna do that?"

"Darien, this is you we're talking about. You love to brag about your accomplishments especially when it comes to school and your future career." Serena said as she gave up trying to get him out of her room.

Darien thought about it and had to agree with her, "Yeah you're right, but maybe I should start bragging about you"

Serena blushed and then shrugged, "There's really nothing to brag about, but get out of here before you're really late!"

"Okay, okay I'm going" Darien caved and gave her a quick kiss before he left her room and joined the rest of her family downstairs as they prepared to leave for the evening.

Serena leaned against her closed bedroom door and couldn't help the giggles that erupted from her. Things were finally better for her and she couldn't be happier. She heard the front door close and cars starting outside as her family and Darien left for the party.

"Speaking of parties, the guys should be here soon… shit" Serena said as she rushed out of her room and downstairs to get the basement ready for the little party that she was having with the girls.