Unresolved

Prologue

11 years ago

Verochka Keatings was sitting on her usual table in the cafeteria when her best friend came running towards her, panting as though she had just finished a marathon. 

"Are you okay, Katie?" She asked politely ignoring the looks her friends around the table were giving her.

"Jaxtyn and Demyan are at each others throats!" Verochka abandoned her lunch and immediately left after her friend.

Not again, she thought. She briefly cursed the two in her head. Demyan, her brother, and Jaxtyn were both seniors in her high school. They often got into arguments that she was the topic of. Her brother claimed that Jaxtyn was the wrong man for his sister and while Verochka found herself conflicted she never thought ill of Jaxtyn. Sure, he was a little rough around the edges but that was because he had a difficult childhood and a problematic father. 

Verochka met Jaxtyn in the weirdest of circumstances, he was ditching school and she had been in his path. After that things just fell into place. He brought out a side of her she had never seen and she made him smile. Jaxtyn Shields was a lot of things and impulsive was one of them.

Verochka had begged him countless times, asking him to drop the rebel-without-a-cause act but Jaxtyn was too far gone, too broken to be built back together; at-least that's what he believed.

Both her brothers hated him. She was the youngest of three siblings. Her oldest brother, Kodiak, was six years her senior but he too was privy to every detail of her relationship with Jaxtyn and was extremely vocal about his dislike. She always considered Demyan to be her best friend, they were very close till he came to know of the good for nothing man that started to follow his sister around like an angry puppy.

It wasn't like Verochka was deaf to her brothers claims, she heard them even tried to keep her distance from him but it was harder than she had anticipated. At first, she pushed him away then she realised she needed him too. 

The crowd was going crazy, circle around the two boys throwing punches at each other with harsh words being exchanged between them. She reached just in time to see her brother receive a hard blow to the face, the sound of bone crunching still clear amidst the screams. Demyan growled, holding on to his nose that bled profusely. 

Verochka rushed to her brothers side, looking up at Jaxtyn whose face held zero remorse, rather he stared at her in disgust and clear rage. He was about to punch him again when two people held him back. He held her gaze briefly but the warmth in his brown eyes were gone, replaced with cold hatred. It sent unpleasant shivers down her back. She felt the tall wall building between them, the love she treasured was reaching a heartbreaking end. 

"Let me go!" He sneered, shrugging off the two boys who held him. Verochka was crouching beside her brother, trying to help him stand. She looked up to her boyfriend again and this time he held her stare.

"We are over." He spat at her, and the words were enough to plunge a knife in her heart but his expression, the malice coming off in waves, broke her completely. Before she could ask him why, what her fault was. The school nurse and Principal had arrived and amidst the chaos the boy that had changed her life vanished.

She pushed her pain aside for the time and rode beside her brother to the ER. She wanted to ask so many questions but the way Demyan groaned in pain she swallowed them all. She knew it wasn't one of those fights her brothers had, it was real and it had broken Jaxtyn. Little did she know that she wouldn't see him the next day, or week, or year. Little did she know that she had lost him. 

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Verochka- Ver-raw- sh-ka

Jaxtyn- Jay-x-tin

Demyan- Dem-yaan