A/N: Okay, so I told myself I would not, under any circumstances, upload this story until I was finished with my other one, but...well I just needed to upload it. This story is...hard to explain. Not that it's uber complicated, I mean it has a good plot (in my point of view). I don't really know how to explain my connection with this story. I wrote it, obviously, and inspiration was drawn from so many random places that I can't even begin to list them. It's like, I have a plot all lined out in my head, but when it gets time to write everything down, I'm not sure how to do it. Has that ever happened to you? For some weird reason, though, I feel like I need to write this story. Like I have an obligation to do it, I have an obligation to these characters that I've created. Even though I still don't know them that well because I only have a few chapters written out (shoddily). Anyways, this A/N is too long as it is. So I'm going to end it by saying that I hope you enjoy this story. This first chapter might be a little confusing because it's kind of a prologue, but I'm going to list it as chapter one anyways.

Main Characters:

Aurora Monaco

Colin Remington

Rebecca Monaco

Matthew Monaco

Lacey Bruin

Brady Spencer

Luella Monaco

Robert Monaco

(lots and lots of Monacos, huh?)

Chapter One: You Were Not Meant For Me, I Know

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Bullshit. That’s right: bullshit. I have loved and I have lost and let me tell you, I wish I had never fallen in love in the first place. At least then I wouldn’t be suffering from a broken heart day in and day out. A broken family day in and day out. The distrustful eyes of my parents day in and day out. Nothing is worth that.

You see, I ran away for love. He was a singer. I shake my head even now as I think about it. I was so naïve, and that was only six months ago. How much I’ve grown up in the past year. It even scares me sometimes.

Brady was…he was everything a young girl dreams of. Tall, beautiful, funny…he was in a band. He wrote songs for me, and at night we would sit outside under the stars while he sang softly into my ear. It was nights like those that I felt I would melt with happiness. I loved him and he loved me and we would be together forever. The feel of his arms around me…I would be protected forever in those arms. That was something I never questioned. And that was my biggest mistake.

When you’re in love, logic never really seems to cross your mind. At least, it didn’t cross mine. My parents hated Brady, and in turn I hated them. Because they didn’t understand. God, that’s a laugh. I was eighteen years old – what the hell did I know about love? Well, I thought I knew a lot. But then again, who’s to say I was even thinking at all? And I hate myself for it.

I hate myself for thinking love was enough to live on. For thinking that Brady could give me everything that I wanted out of life. We were eighteen years old! What eighteen-year-old knows anything about what life is really like? Not a single one, that’s how many. How could I have been such an idiot? Why did I agree to run away with him?

I still remember the day he suggested it. We had been seeing each other behind my parents’ backs for about two months before they found out and threw a fit. You see, my parents are big on propriety. And a girl like me, according to them, was never to associate herself romantically with a boy like Brady. They forbade me to ever see him again, and I said I hated them before shutting myself up in my room and crying for hours. Looking back on it now, I realize what a little brat I was being. And that makes me angry. Then I think about how I agreed to run away with Brady, and that makes me even angrier.

We left that same night. Where would we go, how would we afford to live, how would we afford to eat? Those were all good questions. And how many of them do you think I ever asked? None. Those thoughts never crossed my mind. All that I thought about was Brady and how much I loved him. In my mind, as long as Brady was there, I would be okay. As long as Brady was there, everything would be okay. We would never encounter any problems in our lives because we had each other.

After pooling together his savings and the money I’d stolen from my parents, we bought plane tickets to San Francisco. Why San Francisco? That’s a good question. It’s another one that I never asked. Brady suggested it, and I agreed. In my eyes, Brady could do no wrong. He was perfect and I loved him for it. Sometimes I wonder what I would have done if he’d suggested I light my hair on fire and run around the airport throwing glitter at people. Would I have done that, too?

Upon arriving in California, we were still blissfully ignorant of everything. Ignorant to the fact that my parents were furious. I’d left them a note telling them not to worry, but what exactly did I expect their reaction to be? I never really considered it. God, what a ridiculous idea. What, were they just going to look at each other and say, “Oh look, Aurora’s run off with that boy we despise. No worries, I’m sure she’ll be just fine considering she has barely any money and he’s an idiot. Let’s go play croquet!” Well, I can’t tell you what I was expecting. The saying should be changed from ‘love is blind’ (which is also bullshit by the way, but more on that later) to ‘love makes you blind’ because I don’t remember a single rational thought crossing my mind when I ran away with Brady.

Our first month together was blissful, but that was probably mostly due to the fact that we had money. I lost my virginity to him in room 216 of the Cedar Motel. Lavish, I know. But to me it was. Everything having to do with Brady was…amazing, incredible. He was amazing. I loved him. Or at least I thought I did. But like I said before, what on earth does an eighteen-year-old know about love? Least of all an eighteen-year-old girl whose emotions go up and down like a fucking rollercoaster.

Two months in, Brady and I were short on cash. And when I say ‘short’, I really mean ‘broke’. But I didn’t see it that way. We were living the American dream, baby. He’d gotten a job at a guitar store where he could practice all day and make money. Though at seven dollars an hour, it really wasn’t that much money. And I worked at some fast food joint. Like I said before: lavish.

You may be wondering why my parents never called the police or sent out a search for me. I found myself wondering that once in awhile, more out of relief than anything. In the society my family is in, though, even the thought of their daughter running off with some musician is practically illegal. It would have been social suicide to tell anyone. My family told everyone that I was taking a year off before college and visiting a friend of theirs in Europe. I don’t know what they thought would happen to me, or if they even cared. So long as I wasn’t damaging their reputation, why should my well-being matter to them? I still ponder that same question today.

By the third month of my adventure with Brady, we began to fight. It scared me the first time it happened. We hadn’t fought in so long. That wasn’t supposed to happen. We were never supposed to fight. Life was supposed to be perfect. But it wasn’t. We barely had enough money to make rent. Brady would blow money on everything from spare guitar strings to alcohol, which he convinced bums to buy for him. I still loved him though. I don’t know why, but I did. I still loved him because I didn’t want to know what it would be like to not love him. Not being in love with Brady scared me. Just the thought of it made me apprehensive. If I didn’t have Brady, then I didn’t have anything. He was my life, and without him I would fall apart.

His perfection only began to wane in my eyes the day he hit me. We were fighting again. I don’t even remember what it was about. The only memory that sticks with me from that day is the sting as he slapped me across the cheek and the pain I felt afterwards. Not just the pain in my face, but the pain in my heart as he stormed out, shouting a string of curses at me over his shoulder. The tears came pretty quickly after that. My eyes became a waterfall letting out all of the tears that I had subconsciously been holding back for months.

I am not a weak person. I’m not. I know that I’m not. I stand up for myself and I’m not afraid to speak my mind. And I am certainly not the kind of girl that lets her boyfriend hit her. I still didn’t leave him after that, though. I swore to myself that if he hit me again, I would do something about it. Truly, I was making excuses for him. Admitting that he didn’t love me as much as I loved him, or that he didn’t love me at all seemed ludicrous. He couldn’t not love me. That was impossible. We ran away together because we loved each other. Granted, our fairytale had turned out a bit…dumpier than I would have liked, but it was still my fairytale and I refused to give up on it. The Cedar Motel was only a temporary castle. I would make this work. We would make this work.

Then it happened. The worst thing that could have happened. I came home from the late shift at work. Exhausted, all I wanted to do was collapse on the bed next to Brady. That would not happen though. I found Brady in the bedroom, but he wasn’t alone. My jaw dropped and I almost fell back in surprise. As I surveyed the scene, I could feel my heart slowly shattering inside my chest. It was slow at first, but quickened as the tears came. The worst part was that he didn’t even say anything. He just sat there with her and stared at me with a blank expression.

He didn’t love me. Brady didn’t love me. I loved him, but he didn’t love me. I gave up everything for him, for us, and he didn’t love me. That realization broke me. Running out of the hotel room, I never looked back. I don’t remember what my destination was. I don’t think I even had one. I just had to get away. Put as much distance between myself and Brady as was possible. That was when I gave up. I had to. Brady had taken everything from me. He took my dignity, my heart, and my innocence. At a young age, I learned what love truly was.

Love isn’t blissful. Love is a monster. That makes me wonder why there are so many people out there chasing it. Take my sister for example. She claims she’s in love even though she barely knows the boy. She says that sometimes you just know. Rebecca is a hopeless romantic. Romance…I had that once.

The call I had to make to my parents that night was the hardest thing I’d had to do in a long time. I wanted them to scream at me, tell me I was stupid, anything. But they didn’t. There was no yelling, no ‘I told you so’. God, why wouldn’t they get angry at me? Just a ‘Someone will meet you at the airport tomorrow.’ Then they hung up. I barely had enough money for a cab to the airport. Falling asleep, I was woken up by none other than Rebecca. She looked tired and haggard, but most of all she looked concerned. Tears filled my eyes as she enveloped me into a hug, telling me everything would be okay. “It’s okay now, Rory. I’m here. Shhh, don’t worry.”

I can’t even put into words how much I appreciated Rebecca at that moment. I clung to her for dear life and cried my eyes out. She was my lifeline. When we finally arrived home, all I wanted was for my parents to scream at me. That didn’t happen though. My father told me he hoped I’d learned my lesson. I’d been gone for over four months and not even a ‘how are you?’ My heart was broken and it seemed like they didn’t even care. If it weren’t for Rebecca and my brother, Matt, I swear I would have died. In the two months following, they were there for me. Unlike my parents who would have preferred to ignore the fact that I was existed. Thankfully, our house is enormous, so it wasn’t hard for me to avoid them at all costs.

Love was dead to me. Brady was dead to me. I hated him and I hated love, and I hated the world for being so damn cruel. But most of all, I hated myself. I was disgusted at myself. How could I have been so stupid? My parents informed me that they expected me to attend college next fall. So I had not ruined my life after all. But then again, some say a life without love is not a life at all. Contrary to what Ewan McGregor may say, I don’t think that a life without love is terrible. At least, I try not to think that.

So as for the saying ‘it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’…if I had never loved Brady, none of this would have happened. Yes, there was a time when our love was perfect, but the ramifications of that were not worth it. None of this is worth it.

Bitter? Yes, I am bitter, but who can blame me? I understand that I brought this all upon myself, and I’m not blaming anyone but myself. But now that I’ve loved and lost, I can’t help but wonder if that’s it. Do you just get one chance at love and then life just goes “Well, you failed at that one, sucker. Get in line to die alone.” That can’t be it, can it? Do I get another chance? Do I want another chance? Can I stand another chance? Love is so painful and so wonderful at the same time. It’s like that moment just before you go down that first vertical drop of a rollercoaster. That moment where your stomach is nothing but a mass of butterflies and you know that the drop is going to scare the hell out of you, but you can’t wait for it to come anyway because of that feeling. That feeling of free fall where you have no control. Love is that free fall. But all good things come to an end. That’s the way everything is. It’s inevitable. But the catch is how it ends. Does it end happily or not?

We can’t control that, though. We can’t control life and we most certainly can’t control love. So how are we supposed to make a happy ending out of something that we can’t control? God, it’s just not fair! I didn’t ask to fall in love in the first place, and now that it’s all fucked up, I might not get another shot at it? I don’t even know if I want another shot at it. For now, I’m content…well, maybe content isn’t the right word. I’m forced by everything and everyone around me to focus on what’s important now. I’m going to college in the fall, and while that’s a couple of months away, I’m going to be successful if it’s the last thing that I do. No more distractions. Yes, that’s my plan. The only problem with this logic is that no one took the time to inform Colin Remington.

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So? Let me know what you think. Drop a review, please. And I promise there is dialogue in this story! But like I said in my A/N, this is kind of a prologue.

-Ardy