Rocky

Partially unedited! Consider yourselves warned.

~*~*~

"Oh, come on, Dan!" Samuel spat at me as he knocked his padded fists together aggressively. He stood over me, his eyes narrowed as he waited for me to get up off the canvas. "Stop being a pussy!"

I recoiled slightly as I heard that word drip from his lips, mainly because I hated the word but also because I understood the meaning behind it. It had nothing to do with the sparring session that we were having- not that it could be deemed a 'sparring' session any longer now that we've gone full mode into boxing- but it had more to do with what we'd been talking about seconds before his fist weighed down against my jaw.

Sophie.

"You know," Samuel continued, hopping from one foot to another. He was itching for a full blown fight for one reason or another and he was doing everything possible to get me riled up for it. Little did he know that he was going the right way about it the longer he spoke about Sophie. "She's a gorgeous girl. Long, slender legs that would look pretty good wrapped around my waist. Stunning blue eyes that I could stare into for days on end. And that pretty little mouth of hers... I bet she knows what she's doing there."

I saw red then. Springing back up onto my feet, I lunged forwards, anger clouding my vision as I lashed out at my brother. My fists rained down on him with precision, connecting with his jaw several times, before a short uppercut made Samuel spin where he stood. I heard him grunt as I threw the last punch, throwing himself against the ropes so that he didn't fall over.

"Don't talk about her like that!" I warned him, pointing a gloved hand in his face. Taking a step back to put some much needed distance between us, I took in jagged breaths, trying to regain my long lost composure. We'd been at the gym for over an hour and so far, all we'd done is fight- both physically and verbally. Ever since we stepped inside the boxing ring, Samuel has been taunting me about Sophie and I finally had enough. "What the hell is the matter with you?"

"Me?" Samuel scoffed, taking off one of his gloves so that he could wipe the blood from his split lip. Brushing his sweat soaked hair from his face, he shook his head at me and sighed. "What the hell is the matter with you? Sophie Delaney is fucking perfect, you idiot, and somehow, you still managed to screw it all up!"

"She doesn't love me back!" I yelled at him. As soon as the words passed my lips, I heard a small giggle from the ringside bench. Turning my attention there, I see Nola's shoulders shaking as her lips break out into a wide smile, while Elias is stifling his own laughter. This past week, Nola and Elias have been hanging out a lot- Elias had even started to leave work early so he could pick Nola up from school- but from what I could gather, those two are trouble together. "Nola, you shouldn't laugh when people swear in front of you. And Samuel?" I turn back to my brother, levelling a scornful look upon him. "Don't swear in front of children."

"But I was laughing at you," Nola said from behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see her bright blue eyes shining under the lights in the gym, while her blonde hair was like a golden crown around her face. She wore a pink and blue spotted dress, a pair of white Converse shoes on her feet. She looked like her mother a lot, but her personality was definitely Elias' contribution to the gene pool. "Sophie does love you. You should have seen her on Saturday, Uncle Dan. She was really upset but tried hard to hide it under her smiles."

That was the thing about Sophie Clément- she's good at hiding things. I thought that I was able to see passed that, and maybe for a brief while, I could. She had let her guard down around me, allowed me to glimpse the real her, but I could never be sure if it was the real her that I saw. I think, because of all the hurt she's been through, she's built up all these walls and she's gotten lost in the maze of them all.

I though that I had broken through. We were getting along perfectly and our feelings were mutual- her last day in London was proof of that. Why else would she have kissed me? True, the kiss was feather light but it was still a kiss. She gave me the impression that we could, maybe one day, be something more than what we were. Being friends with Sophie is nice, but being her other half would have been magical.

We were Danphie. She was my missing piece and I had hoped to be hers. We were a combination because without the other, we couldn't exist.

For months, the feelings intensified and solidified. I thought that this was it- I had found her. The One. She didn't care about my name, my inheritance, my family's heirlooms. Sophie cared for me, and that was something that I valued above everything else. It was that sense of loyalty that I'd never experienced before and it drew me closer to her.

Dangerously close, to the point that it would have consumed me. I would have gladly let it happen too- I would have allowed Sophie to become the centre of my whole being because that's what being in love with her felt like. She was the sun and I revolved around her. I never put her on a pedestal, though. At times, I felt like I could have, but she was real in the ways that none of my previous girlfriends had ever been.

It's like what Samuel has been saying throughout this boxing session- Sophie is the real deal. My brother was quoting words that my grandmother had been whispering in his ear, stating that Sophie had only ever been interested in me. Whenever I laughed, she laughed. Whenever I smiled, she smiled, Whenever I moved, she moved. We were in tune; complimentary to each other. Equals.

I cared nothing for her family name, just as she cared nothing for mine. We had started out as just Sophie and Jesus' brother, as she used to like to call me, back in the day. We were two strangers with nothing in common. From there, our friendship grew and soon enough the friendship turned into something else. It had evolved, going from being strangers to friends, to something more than that, all the while being equal.

We had a balance. She was quirky, I was uptight. She had that fun element to her, while I tended to be a bore that played it safe. She was unpredictable, and I was comfortable in my ways. Yin and Yang, we balanced each other out.

Complementing. Equal. Balanced.

Until, we weren't so balanced any more.

I had been under the illusion that our feelings were mutual. I was falling in love with her, and she was falling in love with me. We'd never said as much in words before, but it lingered in the words of our conversations. I'd longed to tell her how I felt, but the words never passed my lips. Instead, our daily farewells became a stand in for the sentiment I couldn't say aloud. Later, alligator. In a while, crocodile. The dangerously close, Love you, bye. They were all my way of telling Sophie that I loved her, without saying those words exactly. Some days, I felt like when she said the words back, she was reciprocating, and I couldn't help but smile at the thought.

It sounds stupid, I know. It hardly makes sense to me, but that's one side effect of being in love- you're nonsensical. Everything that you thought made sense, no longer does and you have to tear up the rulebook because being in love has no rules. Anything goes. Including having your own unique way of hiding meaning in words that are meaningless to others.

I sigh as I feel the beginnings of a tension headache forming above my left eye. Taking off my gloves and throwing them on the canvas, I step closer to the edge of the ring and lower myself to sit, letting my legs dangle over the edge, while looping my arms around the lower rope. Samuel came to sit at my side, his gloves discarded somewhere behind us.

"Sorry about your lip," I tell him, wincing at how deep the cut looks.

My renewed relationship with Samuel was something that I owed to Sophie. In fact, Elias and Nola's bond was also something that we had Sophie to thank for. She was one of those people that liked to bring others together, making others happy, but denying herself the same feeling.

As I said, Sophie Clément likes to push people away, but I thought that I'd been the one to finally get through to her. That night, listening to her answer phone message, I felt my heart swelled when she said, 'I love you.' Finally, she was allowing me in to her life and for the briefest period of time, it felt so damned good.

Then, as that happens with most good things, it had to come crashing down at our feet.

It had been my fault. I know that. I'd pushed her to say the words again when I shouldn't have. I was forcing Sophie to feel something that she clearly didn't want to feel and the more I pushed her to admit it, the more I felt like I was forcing this upon us. I knew I felt it. I've been in love with Sophie for a while now; it's been so gradual that I don't think I could pinpoint that moment of realisation. Some dates- as I like to think of our meeting up as- stood out more than other, as did some conversations, but I think what solidified my love for Sophie was the say we visited my grandmother that first time.

Sophie had been so nervous, it was cute to see. I'd driven us to Wiltshire, all the while filtering Sophie's questions and trying to quell her fears of meeting my grandmother. She was genuinely concerned about wanting Grandmother to like her, and her nerves were adorable. As we neared The House- as I call it- Sophie was frantic. Her cool demeanour was long gone and in its place was this wreck of a person whose palms were sweating and leg twitching. I'd reached over to hold her hand and she looked up at me with those blue eyes, a slow, soft smile forming on her lips. It was that look- pure- that I remember the most about Sophie. Whenever I dream of her, I recall her as she was that day.

I was in love with her before I even knew that I had fallen. I wanted her to love me back so much, that I didn't stop to think about Sophie. I wanted to hear those words, at whatever cost. I would have given anything to hear them from her lips again. Well, almost anything. I wasn't prepared to lose her for it, but that's exactly what happened, regardless.

I'd lost Sophie. I'd pushed too far and when I caught myself, I knew that I'd been unfair in my pursuit of her. I'd convinced myself that it had been a slip of the tongue from her and she did nothing to alleviate those concerns. If anything, Sophie had confirmed what I'd expected- she didn't love me.

So, I put a stop to it. I pulled away. Call it self-preservation, or if you're anything like my brother, call it being a 'fucking pussy of epic proportions.'  Either way, I'd taken the cowards way out. It was selfish, that much I know. I don't need daily reminders from Samuel, Elias, Nola, my grandmother... Hugo, even, to tell me how much of a mess I had created for myself. But, I had convinced myself that I was doing the right thing.

The right thing for who, I'm not sure. It certainly didn't feel like the right thing for me, and ever since that night, two weeks ago, it hasn't felt like the right thing for Sophie either.

She thinks I'm oblivious to the undertones of her words, but I'm not. The first few days after, I could hear the sadness in her voice, the rejection seeping into her words. Her voice was hollow, all emotions gone. It was heartbreaking to hear her because I knew- I was the one that had caused it. Sophie was sad, and I was the cause of her pain. Then, of course, came her sniping at me. Taking shots that were carefully crafted to sting me. Sophie's a genius, like that, for her words were like sharp knives piercing my heart.

I deserved it though. I deserved everything she threw at me, and possible a million more besides.

I had been so stupid!

She became distant, getting Hugo to answer her phone, giving short answers to anything I asked, she didn't even let me call her Soph any more. She used to love me calling her by that name. Things had shifted, and not in the good sense. There was more distance than ever between us, and it killed me. She wanted to hate me, she'd said. She tried hard to, but she couldn't.

She was broken, like a cracked mirror, and it was all my doing. I thought I was in the right, pushing her away, but I wasn't. Not in the least. It killed me when we spoke on the phone, and especially when she started hanging out with that Brogan guy. I Googled him once, and I didn't like him. He was exactly the type of guy someone like Sophie would go for- athletic, good looking, dare I say famous. I was instantly jealous, although I had no right to be.

"Hey, I've been meaning to ask you something," Elias looked at me, a quizzical look written on his face. He leaned back in his chair, draping an arm around Nola and hugging her to his side protectively. "What's going on with you and this Carla woman?"

I frowned. "Carla?" I shook my head in confusion, trying to figure out where I'd heard that name before. Ah. "I think you mean Clara. What has Sophie been saying?"

Could it be possible that Sophie was jealous of Clara? I thought about it for a moment, concluding that, yes, it was possible for her to be jealous.

Remember how I said that Sophie and I hide meaning in words in our conversations, well, Sophie had taken to being straight in conveying her meanings whenever we spoke. When I compared her to Five Hundred Days of Summer, she was adamant that she had never rejected me. She would say that I should never assume things, because I could get my assumptions wrong. She made comments like,'I didn't think I had a choice. Whatever you say, goes.'

Could it be that I had gotten it all wrong from the start?

Even Jasmine, Sophie's assistant in New York, was getting involved. She told me that I'd ripped out Sophie's heart. The only way I could have done that is if Sophie had feelings for me in the first place. But that wasn't possible...

'You thought that I don't love you.'

Those words from Thursday morning reverberated around in my head. She thought that I had missed them, seeing as she'd tried to hide them between other important information, but they were the only words that had mattered to me.

She loved me.

"Sophie was just curious," Elias answered my question. For a second, it threw me off because I was still thinking about Sophie's words to me, but when I gathered my senses, I shot Elias a frown and shook my head. He rolled his eyes in response. "We talk on the phone sometimes."

"You talk on the phone? Sometimes?" I asked, anger seeping into my words.

"Well," Elias shifted uncomfortable in his seat. He looked down at Nola, whose eyes were fluttering shut as a yawn escaped her lips. Elias Shifted her so that she was now cradled on his lap, her head resting in the crook of his neck. "Sophie phones most afternoons so she can talk to Nola, but sometimes we might end up having a brief conversation, too."

"If it's any consolation," Samuel said, a smirk playing on his lips. "She calls me sometimes, too."

I blink. "She calls you?" I seethe at my brother. I feel my fists curling involuntarily and my anger bubbles inside me. "Why the hell would she be calling you?"

"You know," Samuel shrugs. "Stuff."

Stuff? What the hell is going on with Sophie and all this stuff? She's been elusive about it all since last weekend and I know it's something to do with my grandmother and I'm being kept out of the loop about it all.

"Someone, please tell me what the hell is going on!" I snap, closing my eyes tightly as I try to calm myself down. Sighing heavily, my shoulders slump forward in defeat, and I rub my hands down my face wearily. "Please, can someone just be honest with me."

When I open my eyes, I see Elias and Samuel looking at each other challengingly. I can sense that neither really want to be the one to explain the situation, but it's my brother than eventually nods. Elias lets out a sigh of relief before he reaches down and gives his daughter a kiss on the crown of her head.

"Ok, so," Samuel begins, moving away from me so that there's at least five feet of space between where I sit and where he sits. "Well, I feel like, in order to explain this whole thing, we need to get one thing straight." I nod. "Sophie is in love with you. Now, before you start to interrupt me, like I know you want to, hear me out."

"Fine."

"It's the little things," Samuel says, by way of explanation. "Like I said to you before, it's the way she looks at you, smiles at you, hangs off your every word. It's the way that, whenever you two are together, no one else matters. I've seen you with other women before, Dan, but I've never seen them be so attentive to you the way Sophie is. When you brought Arabella home that first time, she hardly paid you any attention. She was too focused on making an impression on Gran.

"No wonder Gran hated the woman," Samuel said, scoffing at how my grandmother never really took to my ex-girlfriend. "Sure, Arabella had all the credentials that would make her a good society wife, but do you honestly believe that Gran would allow you to marry a woman that never really, truly loved you?"

I shook my head. "Probably not."

"The correct answer is, 'never,'" my brother said, shaking is head at me. "Gran hates our mother because she never really loved Dad. I mean, that woman- as much as I love her because she's my mother- she was nothing but a social climber when she married into the family. The title, that's all she cared about. Gran hated that because she made Dad miserable. Is it any wonder that they both started to have affairs? Dad craved the love he never received from his wife and our mother? Sometimes, I don't think she even loves us, and we're her children."

I'd never heard my brother speak like this about our parents before, and I couldn't help but note the way he couldn't say the word, 'Mum.' Our mother, that woman, her. But never, Mum. His words were bitter as he spoke about her, especially when he believed that she didn't love us. Granted, she wasn't the best mother in the world, but I never thought that she didn't love us- she just had her own way of showing that side of her.

"Gran wouldn't let that happen again," Samuel continues, a warmth in his words that hadn't been there before. Even his stormy green eyes had softened. "She loves you too much to see you repeat the mistakes of our parents. Now, have you ever wondered why Gran loves Sophie so much? THey've only ever met face to face a handful of times, and yet, Gran adores that girl like she's already part of the family. It's because," Samuel paused briefly to look at me. "Gran knows that Sophie loves you, and that you love her. You should have seen Gran on Saturday after she left Sophie alone up in the attic. She was beside herself and calling you every name under the sun!"

I winced.

"For about three minutes," my brother laughed heartily. "You weren't the golden child any more. She was gearing up to send Baxterley to London so that he could kill you on her behalf. It was pretty funny! You fucked up," Samuel practically sang. "Which, by the way, you have. Royally fucked up, as well. You had this amazing woman who looked at you like you were all the best things in this world and you threw it away. And no one understand why! So, why?! Why the hell did you do that?"

I sigh. "Because I thought she didn't love me."

"Did you even give her a chance to set you straight?" Elias asked quietly, making sure not to wake Nola up from her afternoon sleep. When I didn't reply immediately, he scoffed. "Of course you didn't. No, because you're Daniel Whitaker, lawyer extraordinaire. You think you're right, ergo you are right. Well, sometimes, you are so wrong."

"So wrong," Samuel agreed, repeating Elias' words. "You shouldn't assume things about Sophie. She comes across as this woman that's confident, but from what Charlotte tells me-"

"Jesus, you've been talking to her sisters, too?" I ask, slightly annoyed that my brother has intruded in Sophie's life like this.

"Very nice girl," Samuel notes about Charlotte. "As is Jasmine. Very nice girl."

"Samuel!" Elias warns him.

My brother holds his hands up in defeat. "Right, getting back to Sophie. She's not what she seems to be. She's easily hurt, Charlotte said, and that's why she doesn't let people get too close to her. But you? Man, she fell for you hard in like, what? Four months? And you repay her by shitting all over her feelings? Well, fuck you, man. You're my brother and I love you but I'm Team Sophie on this one."

I sat in silence, watching as Elias nods along to Samuel's words, a crushing feeling inside my chest. "I know she loves me," I say eventually. "I've suspected for the past two weeks but I know now that she does. God, you should have seen her face when I told her I wanted to just be friends. I've never seen someone look so hurt before. You think heartbreak is silent, and maybe it is, but it was visible on her face. The light in her eyes died."

Elias was the first to break the silence. "It's not too late, though. I mean," he said, a hopeful look on his face. "You have time to fix this."

"What if I can't?" I say, my voice breaking. "What if it's like Sophie said? Our relationship is a broken mirror. You can piece it back together, but you can still see the cracks."

"Get a new mirror," Samuel says, like it's that easy. I give him a flat look and shake my head regretfully. "Just hear me out, ok? Start fresh. Don't try to fix something that's clearly broken, instead move on and try to build something new. Something better. With Sophie, obviously. Not Clara, because Evie called to warn me that there was a new mountaineer on the scene, so I suggest you steer clear of her."

"Mountaineer?" Elias asked, clearly unfamiliar with the term.

"It's a code," I explain. "Women who want to marry up, but way up. They're not social climbers, but mountaineers, instead. You know, like Vanity Fair."

"The magazine?" Elias scoffs.

"Like the novel," Samuel says, wrinkling his nose at Elias' ignorance. "William Makepeace Thakeray? Never mind. All I'm saying is, Dan, you and Sophie need to get your heads together and work things out otherwise you're going to let the woman of your dreams walk out of your life."

~*~*~

I open up the computer and wait.

Sophie said that if we were to Skype tonight, then she'd be the one to call me.

I hope she calls.

I recall my brother's words from earlier; Sophie and I had to find a way of making this work. Somehow.

The screen of my phone flashes as I sit staring at the blank computer screen. My eyes cast over to my phone and I see Sophie's ID flash on the screen. Lunging for the handset, I swipe the green dot across the screen to accept her call.

"Hello?" I hear her voice come down the line. "Daniel, are you there?"

I nod. Then I laugh. "Yeah, I'm here."

"What's so funny?" Sophie sounds confused as she speaks.

"I nodded my head to answer you, but we're on the phone," I say, hearing her laugh on the other side. It was nice to hear the sound. It wasn't the same laughter as before my royal fuck up, but I would have to take it. "So, I take it we're not going to Skype tonight?"

"Actually," Sophie said slowly. "That's why I'm calling first. Are you home? Can we Skype?"

"I'm waiting by my laptop in anticipation," I tell her.

She laughs again. "In that case, I'll hang up and put the call through. See you soon, baboon."

The line goes dead, and seconds later, the computer screen flashes with Sophie's picture. Immediately, I accept the incoming call, and soon enough Sophie's face fills the screen. She looks different to how I remember her. Her hair is a few inches shorter and is a lighter brown. Her face is bare of make up and she's wearing thick, black-rimmed glasses. Her clothes aren't the tailored style that she usually favours, instead she's wearing a loose fitting jersey that drowns her figure.

In the background, I spot a few people moving around. One of them is a man, and he's shirtless. When he turns to speak to someone, I recognise his face as that of Brogan Greyson, the hockey player that I Googled when I found out that Sophie and he were hanging out. He said something to one of the women crowding around him and they laughed, making Sophie look over her shoulder to see what all the fuss was about.

"Jesus Christ, Brogan," Sophie said to him. "Put a shirt on!"

"Can't," he says, looking at her pointedly. "You're wearing my shirt."

Sophie looked down at the material that covered her, before she sighed and looked into the camera at me. "Two seconds."

I watched as Sophie walked towards the group of people behind her, picking up a shirt from the floor. In one fail move, Sophie pulled Brogan's shirt off her body and threw it his way. She was stood, exposed in her black bra and a pair of cut off denim shorts, for everyone to see. I noted how Brogan seemed unaffected by what he was seeing, simply shaking his head as he pulled on his shirt. Sophie pulled on her own t-shirt and tied her hair up into a messy ponytail as she made her way back towards the computer. She retook her seat from before and smiled down the camera at me, although it was a strained smile.

"Sorry about that," she says. "We're at my mother's New York studio getting ready for Monday and it's all really crazy here. Hey, what happened to your face?"

I pointed at the bruise forming under my left eye. "Oh, this? Samuel punched me."

"I hope you punched him back," she said, looking slightly furious that my brother had hit me.

"We were boxing, so of course I hit him back," I tell her, a slight laugh in my voice. We sat staring at each other, her blue eyes on mine. Her features were guarded, not that I could blame her. I sigh, rubbing my eyes with the heel of my hands. "Sophie, can we talk?"

She shakes her head. "No. If we're going to talk about us, then no. Not yet. I'd rather we were face to face to do that. In person,  I mean, because we're face to face now, but it's not the same."

"Ok," I say, a hint of dejectedness in my voice. "So, why did you want to Skype if we're not talking about us?"

Sophie sat up straighter at this point, a genuine smile on her face. "Well," she says excitedly. "You know how I've been in and out of meeting this week, with lawyer and everything?"

"Because of stuff," I say, nodding. "Yeah."

"I've set up a charitable foundation!" Sophie excitedly tells me. Her announcement makes the others in the room turn to look at her, sending Sophie their congratulations before moving back to what they were doing. "Actually, it's something that Connie and I have been putting together. It's called the Courtenay Foundation."

I frowned. "What?"

"You know how I went to Connie's last weekend?" Sophie says down the camera. "She asked me what we could do with all the gowns and other clothes she has in the attic at the house, and I told her that it would be a shame to let them all fall into the wrong hands. There are items up in that attic that are very valuable in the fashion world and we can't leave them linger in the attic, unseen. So," she stops to take a breath. "I've been working with a team of people to try and figure out a way of preserving the items. Connie was adamant that the clothes be shown, so I contacted a few museums in France, New York and London, and a lot of them are keen to showcase the clothes and the jewels. With that in mind, Connie asked that I set up a Foundation for her, where she could patron some up and coming designers. And I did."

I blinked as the announcement settled in my mind. This is the stuff that Sophie and my grandmother had been plotting all week? "So," I say, trying to gather my bearings. "Does this mean that my grandmother is dying, or isn't dying?"

Honestly, I'm so confused right now. Why would my grandmother go to so much trouble of getting all this up and running unless she wanted to leave something in her honour after she died? Is this her last hurrah before she pops her clogs and dies?

"Technically, we're all dying," Sophie says, her lips twitching into a smile. "But, no, Connie is perfectly fine. It's something she's been thinking about for a while but she didn't know how to go about it all. She asked that I go visit her so that I could see what she was hiding away, and when I told her that they were of great historical value in my world, she asked that I get the ball rolling. I know a lot of the right people, so I've got everything in place."

I nod. "Why are you telling me all this now? You could have told me sooner, you know."

Sophie bites down on her lip, trying to phrase her next words carefully. "Connie made me promise," she tell me. She shift in her chair, pulling the laptop closer to her. Lowering her voice conspiratorially, she says, "Here's the thing. To be a charitable foundation, we need a Board of Trustees."

"I know the legalities," I tell her. "Still doesn't explain why it's been this huge secret."

"I'm getting to that," she snaps shortly. "God, you're so frustrating. We need five members on the board. Guess who gets to be one of them?"

It didn't take a genius to work that out. "You. Obviously."

"Actually, I'm not," Sophie informs me. "You are."

I baulk. "Me? Why?"

"Why do you think?" Sophie shakes her head in amusement. "You're a Courtenay."

I sit back in my seat and fold my arms across my chest. "What about you?"

"What about me?" Sophie narrows her eyes at me.

"Why aren't you on the Board of Trustees?"

She shrugs. "Because I'm not one of you. You see, the Board of Trustees will be Connie, you and Samuel," Sophie announces. I had to wonder if Samuel had been in on this from the beginning, and if he was, why hadn't he told me anything about it? Sophie snaps her fingers in front of the screen, pulling my attention back to her. "As I was saying, you, Samuel, Connie. And then we have Philip Grey, who is the lawyer representing the Courtenay Foundation. You can't be a part of the legal side of it because you're on the board as a family member. You can't do both."

"But that's only four names," I tell Sophie as a matter of fact. "Who's the fifth member?"

At this, Sophie winces. "Um, well... that's kind the thing. The fifth board member is-"

"C'est moi!" I hear a stern voice utter in French. My blood runs cold as I see Camille Clément's face fill the screen. She looks downright furious to see me, a frown line on her forehead as her cold stare meets mine through the screen. "Bonjour, Daniel. Je dirais que c'est un plaisir de vous revoir. Mais, il est pas. Con."

Camille's face disappears from the screen and suddenly I'm faced with Sophie's mortified face. She opens her mouth to speak- probably apologise for her mother's outburst- but she wisely closes it and says nothing.

"You'r mother just called me a dickhead, didn't she?" I ask Sophie, hoping that the French lessons Hugo had given me hadn't let me down. Sophie nods. "Thought so."

"Daniel-"

"It's fine, I deserved it," I tell her, holding up my hands in surrender. "I know I deserved it, and I'm sorry. For everything that I've done to you these past two weeks, I'm so fucking sorry, Soph. I can't even begin to tell you how much I regret it because I do. I regret it all."

I was met with silence on the other side, followed by a small voice that said, "I know."

I saw Sophie wipe away a tear from her cheek, a choked out laugh following. "Don't cry, Soph."

"I'm trying not to," she tells me, a sad smile on her lips. She dabs a tissue under her eyes, blowing out some air as she tries to compose herself. "I'm sorry, too."

"For what?" I demand. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"I did," she says regretfully.

Suddenly, my mind goes to places that it shouldn't ever go to. I think of all the things that Sophie could be sorry for, but it always comes back to the one scenario that's my worst nightmare. If she tells me that there's something going on with Brogan, I'll never forgive myself. I had practically pushed her into his arms, and I'd only have myself to blame for Sophie ending up with someone else. My heart races at the idea that she's with him, and I wait with bated breath to hear the next words from her lips.

"I gave up too easily," she says. Her eyes lift to connect with mine. "I should have fought harder."

"Sophie-"

"I have to go," she cuts me off. Someone yells in the background, making Sophie jump. "My mother's insisting that I go and try the dress on again. They needed to pull the hem up slightly. Honestly," Sophie laughs nervously. "You'd think, after all this time, they'd know my measurements, but apparently not."

I nod, although I'm not satisfied with how this conversation in ending. I wanted to hear more of why she didn't fight hard enough. I needed to know why she gave up so easily. I needed answers, as I'm sure she needed them from me, too.

But her mind was set.

"Talk tomorrow, ok?" Sophie asks. I nod. A silence passes. "In a while, crocodile."

"Later, alligator."

I wonder if she knew the true meaning behind those words?

~*~*~

A/N

Well... did it answer most of your questions about Daniel?

Are there any more that need answering? Comment here, so I can add them to the June 3rd chapter! I don't want to leave anything unclear when it comes to these two!

Has Samuel redeemed himself?!

Thoughts? Complaints? Requests?

The title of the chapter is a reference to Rocky, the boxer from the films, but it also works because Daniel and Sophie are a little on a rocky patch at the moment.

Sarah, xx

p.s. Yeah, I know. An early update! Miracles do happen!

Time stamped- 11:15 am GMT April 30th, 2016.