You were sick of it. Sick of the shit.

Nothing was going right in your life. Your parents were mad at you again, you’d failed three tests, your boyfriend of five months had broken up with you, and college wasn’t going as well as you’d hoped.

Jameson Hawthorne was the only calm in that hurricane.

You’d met him while in Tokyo, when he was visiting for fun and you were visiting for a break. And he’d become your closest friend in the world. But you lived in almost opposite sides of that world — you lived in Australia for your studies, he lived in the US. You didn’t see each other often. But, who the hell was he kidding? He was a Hawthorne. He was Jameson Winchester Hawthorne, the third grandson of a multi-billionaire with more than one private jets. He could go anywhere. So he was sitting on the floor, leaning against the couch of your small apartment in Melbourne while you were making coffee in the adjoining kitchen, pretending you weren’t one wrong word away from breaking down in sobs right then and there.

Jameson could see that you weren’t okay. He could see that you’d been trying and trying and trying to hold it in, but you were starting to break.

Whatever Jameson felt about you, he had to be your friend first.

Next thing he knew, you were full-on breaking down, crying in his arms. He knew it was bad. He didn’t know it was this bad.

Did he know how to comfort a crying girl? Hell no. But he would try, for you.

“Shh,” he whispers, tightening his grip around you. “It’s okay.”

His usual arrogant and smirky demeanour was nowhere to be found. All there was was your friend, Jameson, who cared about you. And you, who needed to be cared for.