Never Judge

Alexi watched as Jen\'s expression remained calm, he was expecting a more violent reaction from her. 

"Aren\'t you surprised?" Alexi asked as he placed a hand on her cheek.

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"I heard rumors." Jen said with a shrug.

"Rumors?" Alexi asked. His first love was a tightly kept secret, not everyone knew that he had held someone so closely to his heart in the past.

"Selina told me." Jen explained.

"She had no right." Alexi said angrily.

"It\'s not her fault. She needed a shoulder to cry on and we were kind of together at that time. It was back when we were living in New York." Jen said with a shrug.

"Don\'t listen to what that snake has to say." Alexi told Jen. "I\'ll tell you the true story." Alexi said in a calmer tone.

"Okay, I\'ll always believe whatever you say." Jen said with a nod as she placed her hand on Alexi\'s.

"Do you know about the Carpio family?" Alexi asked.

"Yes. They are the 2nd richest family in the country after the Reyeses. They own Regis Inc. and all of its subsidiaries." Jen said with a nod.

"Everyone knows Calathea Carpio, the gem of the Carpio family, but she wasn\'t always an only child." Alexi explained with a frown.

"How could a secret as big as that be kept from the public?" Jen asked with a confused look.

"The public doesn\'t know about Cedric, so it\'s only natural that there are a few other big secrets that have remained hidden." Alexis said with a shrug.

"So who was this other child?" Jen asked.

"I thought Selina told you?" Alexi asked. "Anyway, the eldest daughter of the Carpio family was Ilya Carpio. She was smart and beautiful, and she was my first love." Alexi paused and watched Jen\'s reaction closely, he could tell she was thinking, but what she was thinking was a mystery to him.

"What happened to her?" Jen asked after a few moments of silence.

"She passed away when we were fifteen." Alexi said with a sigh. "We fell in love early and we promised each other that when we turned twenty we would get engaged."

"Why did she die?" Jen asked with a shaky voice.

"Leukemia." Alexi said with a frown. "At first we thought she would be able to defeat it, I mean her family was extremely wealthy and she had the best doctors. At the time the Carpios and the Reyeses had a good relationship and Calathea hadn\'t gone head on with my sister for Eric\'s heart. Everything was peaceful and happy, we were hopeful for Ilya. I would head over everyday after school to spend time with her. I would only go home to sleep. One day, things suddenly changed, she became sick and her organs began to fail. I begged my parents to let me take a leave from school to be with her, mom and dad refused. Then I asked if we could get married, we weren\'t minors anyway, but both her parents and my parents rejected the idea."

Jen placed her hand on Alexi\'s and held it tightly. Alexi looked up and smiled at Jen, he was thankful to have a woman that understood what he needed.

"I had just come from school and I was telling her how my day went when she suddenly had a seizure." Alexi said as his voice trembled, the events had happened over a decade ago and yet they were still quite fresh in his memory. He remembered the stench of disinfectants and the beeping of the machines, he recalled how he frantically pressed the button that called the nurses. When they didn\'t come as fast as he needed he ran out and called for help, the nurses and doctors were already running towards him when he stepped out. "She died in my arms." Alexi finally said.

"Is shy why -?" Jen said as she hesitated to ask.

"I turned to relationships and sex to forget, I thought that the physical sensation could help me get over what I was going through. I had so much pent up rage and pain that Ray brought me along to his gang to beat people up." Alexi explained as he recalled how useless his actions were, he couldn\'t get over the heartbreak it took years before he could finally be himself again, even then he thought he met someone that could make his heart beat again, but she refused him. Although he wasn\'t about to tell Jen that the person that managed to make his heart beat again was the woman she loved long ago. "It took awhile for me to realize that sex wasn\'t going to heal me or get rid of the pain I felt after loosing Ilya. Eventually I figured it out and I recovered, but that physical sensation became a part of my life that I couldn\'t just drop."

"Alexi." Jen said as she slowly caressed his hand. For some reason Alexi wasn\'t happy with her actions, they had been physical for years now and it seemed that Jen hadn\'t known that he didn\'t like being treated this way. But he pushed the thought away and ignored his doubts, he loved Jen. He was willing to go against his family for her, he even fought his friend for her,

"I didn\'t bring you here to propose." Alexi said with a smile as he withdrew his hand. "I brought you here to open up, to let you in on a part of myself that very few know about. I hope that you can do the same. I know your first love broke your heart, but I\'m not her." Alexi said as he placed a hand on her cheek. 

Jen smiled at him, but didn\'t say a word. Alexi was nervous, he had just told her his darkest secret in the hopes that she would open up to him.

"I promised, I will try Alexi." Jen said as he carried a solemn look on her face. "You know how bad I\'ve been hurt. I followed Selina for years, I left my dream school for her, I went wherever she did. She knew how I felt about her and yet she still played with my feelings. It\'s not easy to trust after that." Jen said as she looked down.

"I am not Selina, Jen. I will never hurt you." Alexi promised as he pressed his lips on Jen\'s and held her tightly against him.