Dean hugged her to him tightly as she pulled away from the kiss and buried her face in his shoulder.  He didn’t know what to say, as he didn’t take John’s physical anger badly, anymore.  He kinda just took it.  But for her, he never wanted that.  No one should ever have laid a hand on her.  This was Mika Chambers.  She was the most non-confrontational, kind person he had ever met in his entire life, and for someone to hurt her over nothing?

He stroked her hair gently, letting her cry and get things out of her system, asking questions he didn’t have the answer for, “Shhh.  I know.  He takes it out on you because he’s a coward.  There is nothing…[i]nothing[/i] you could do that will ever make it okay for someone to put their hands on you like that.”

As he finished trying to answer the question that bothered him the most, she continued and his heart hurt for not knowing about all of this.  How had he missed the signs, if they were there?  It could have been because the only person he had noticed her dad being aggressive toward was himself, when the man would threaten him.  But if he had known about this?

He sighed at her asking him not to leave her alone, which wasn’t something he was planning to do.  From the second she invited him over, he had planned to stay until at least they left for school the next morning, if not just hide in her closet until she could run away.

“I’m not going anywhere…”, he whispered against her ear, kissing her neck just below, “I shouldn’t have let you go back there.  I could have taken him, if he had just been man enough to fight me…but I’m sorry I didn’t stop him.”

He let his own floodgates open a little.  Seeing like this broke pieces off his soul, little by little, and made him feel as if he was having a heart attack from the sheer gut wrenching pain.  He also didn’t know how to deal with people who were upset.  His method was typically to pat them on the back, and tell them they were okay.  However, he wanted to fix every problem in her life, even the big ones.

“What do you need me to do?”, he asked, still petting her hair as he hugged her.