Amethyst

Tears

Amy wondered what had been happening to Jake since they saw him earlier. There was something in his aura, like a darkness she could not pin. She had noticed it earlier but it was only when he excused himself that she decided there was something going on inside his head. Although he had carried himself with his usual self-confidence and magnetic presence, the air of successful men who had overcame obstacles on his path to success with grit, determination and coldness.

She knew that kind of presence was only earned during the years after Palawan. They were both just kids before and he was broken, having been the first to be called by the authorities when his parents died and having been kidnapped when he was just five years of age and lived the dangerous dark streets of Milan until he was found by his father when he was already thirteen.

He was a quiet brooding young man when Rafe accepted Lando's offer to share a boat with his siblings as they toured the islands of Palawan. She had went out of her own shell to draw him out, asked silly things about photography as he was also carrying his own camera and made nonsense talks. For the first day and a half, he would only reply a direct question and would get out of his way to avoid her. But she was a determined young girl on a mission - to befriend that elusive grumpy but hurting man.

She was proud of herself when he begun to make comments even without her incessant questions. And she could skip with joy when he made an attempt to criticize her, telling her he was going deaf with her ramblings. That was a big leap from his silence and frustrating politeness. And when he learned she blamed herself for the accident which befell Sally, he extracted a promise from her to stop blaming herself. But she made a deal only in exchange of him stopping to blame himself on the accident and death of his parents.

She could still feel the first touch of his fingers on the side of her lips. That was when she discovered what chemistry was all about.

That night on their second day together, she experienced her first kiss and taste of what passion is. She had already forgotten what had prompted the kiss, she must have baited him too far. But he had grabbed her and gave her a hard, demanding, tongue-invading type of kiss. Which she had returned with the same passion, her body responding to his demands even if she did not know about it yet. This happened on the shore not far from the bar they came from with Sally, Rafe, karen and Lando.

The 3rd day, he gave her his ring and asked her to wait for him. That night, she learned something of his past. He did not give details, only that he had lived as a runner of a drug syndicate in Milan when he was kidnapped by a local child kidnapping syndicate connected with international counterpart. He did not elaborate but she could feel the pain he tried to mask.

The 4th night, she had given herself to him. The turning point of her life.

He definitely changed during the years they were apart. There's darkness in him just buried behind those tigers eyes. Although he presented a front of a successful businessman, she could see the demons he fights beneath those eyes. He had the look of Rafe when he came back for Sally, when he told her about kids with guns financed by filthy rich kids with nothing to do. Rafe had just came from a mission where he led a team to extract Saddam Hussein, where all his men died except him who barely made it alive. She didn't know what Rafe had seen in her sixteen-year old self that he divulged a highly classified information to her.

And Jake had the look of Noel when the latter thought she could not see his own demons. Although Noel has yet to spill his secrets and despite him knowing everything about her, she had not become his confidante.

But she just knew there was something added to this darkness from the time they gazed at each other on her bed to the time he had returned from his run. She could feel tension creeping to him at sudden intervals during that time he was looking over her shoulder. By the way he would flex his fingers as if he was deliberately forcing them to relax. By the way he would get closer to her as if he needed to feel her warmth or he needed to wrap her around his arms and hold on for his life.