One week. Seven days since my brief tussle with death, which came not long after my first brush with the Grim Reaper at the frozen pond.

I was right about everything being a complete and utter circus.

After I awoke in the early morning light that first night that I was coherent in the hospital with Lachlan curled up against my side, the nurses bombarded me with questions, tests and medication to help my pain levels, but the gash that accompanied my skin and hairline after being grazed by a bullet that almost killed me would take more than a few days and some pain meds before it started healing.

I had to flush the wound, washing around the stitches and apply an ointment every day as well as redressing the gash twice a day, not to mention the countless antibiotics and pain meds that I had to take in combination with the other upkeep.

My mom helped me with the ointment and flushing of my wound because even looking at it made me feel queasy. I was not good with blood.

"Hold still," she said, using a water bottle that she squeezed to spray the sterile liquid onto my head as I bent over the sink.

"Ow ow ow, it stings, hurry up!"

"I know I'm sorry, almost done, it's still leaking this fluid, its like its pu-"

"Ew, do not finish that word, I hate that word its so nasty!"

"What, Kat, you can't handle the word pus? What about m-"

"Lachlan, why are you even here if you're going to be saying disgusting words? Mom, can we kick him out?"

Lachlan stood from his spot on my bed and walked into the ensuite bathroom where I was currently out of commission while my mom helped me clean my stitches.

"Moist, pus, wet-"

"Lachlan!"

My mom laughed with Lachlan at my hatred for nasty words, but I stiffened as I felt Lachlan take over from my mom, leaving her shaking her head at the two of us while she left my room.

"You don't have to do that," I told him, hoping that he wouldn't see the monstrosity curled inside my hairline and be completely disgusted like I was the first time I'd seen it.

"But I want to," he told me, his voice deep and rich, the baritone soothing and calming me as he took the water bottle and continued flushing the water over my heated skin, the warmth from his body behind me both filling me with heat and sending chills cascading across my skin.

"Did you think about the plea bargain Luciana is taking?"

I braced my hands on the sink when the water trickled over a particularly stinging area, holding my breath so I didn't hiss in pain.

"Yes. I think it's a good idea, actually. That way, she won't be able to hurt anyone else, and she won't be a danger to herself either, and maybe I could come visit her, once I've come to terms with...everything."

"She'll be there the rest of her life, you know. And your parents made sure she had the best care possible in the best facility in the state. So even though what she did wasn't necessarily her fault because it was her illness that made her do it, at least she'll be paying for her actions and getting better, hopefully, at the same time."

I twisted my hands on themselves while he finished rinsing the water through my hair. This would have been so much easier if I could've just washed my hair like normal, but the gash was still so sensitive that hot water touching it would've sent me spiraling into a world of pain, so I took cold showers to wash my hair and hot baths afterwards, keeping my head far away from the steamy water.

I rinsed my scalp in between shower days, which was why every other day I had my mother help me but Lachlan had been increasingly more involved with my aftercare and his presence had done more than just comfort me, but helped me to patch together bits and pieces of what I remembered that night, helped me come to terms with things that I didn't want to face, and overall just...helped me heal.

"I just need to think about where I'm going to college, now, especially considering how well I did on the SAT's," I said to him, wringing my hands over and over again, knowing that he wanted to go to school as far away as he possibly could from New York and his father, but I was stuck in the state, what with a brand new father figure that had risked his life to save mine and also received a bit of a flesh wound from Luciana's tirade, although his leg wound had come from an officer who had fired at Luciana but Jessie had gotten in the way. Needless to say, the both of us were lucky to be alive.

Not only did I have Jessie to get to know, but I also had Luciana to think about, and when and if I ever wanted to visit her. I wanted to know why her side of the family had lied about how I'd been conceived, since it was obvious it wasn't through Jessie forcing her like they'd made it seem.

I still had so many questions, like why Jessie returned when he did, why he gave me to my parents instead of an adoption agency, what kind of business my father was really in, what kind of illness Luciana was plagued with, not to mention the questions regarding Lachlan's father and how he was ever going to climb out from underneath his evil thumb and his abusive ways towards not only him but both of his siblings.

Lachlan grabbed a towel from behind him on the shower door and I accepted it gratefully, wrapping it carefully around my head to soak up the excess water dripping down my back in painfully chilly droplets.

"About that, I was thinking NYU would be a good choice for you, since they have a really great creative arts program. I know you've been thinking of going for creative writing with all of the song writing you've been doing," he said and tears pricked behind my eyes at his words.

"How did you know about that?"

I had kept my love of music and songwriting close to the vest, jotting down lyrics in a song book that I had hidden in all of my books and notebooks for school.

"I was looking through your homework to see what all you needed to catch up on for school and I found them. They're really amazing, where did you learn to read sheet music like that? And to write it, like you can just hear the notes in your head?"

I blushed, though I didn't know if he could tell or not.

"You forget who my family is. Although I don't play as much as I used to, eleven years of intense piano lessons don't just magically disappear, plus the four years of violin which I didn't catch onto very well, then two years on the guitar which my parents didn't really enjoy listening to, and I was a regular music protege, although I never really stuck with any of it until going through everything. I guess before, I didn't really have a story to tell with music, although I connected with other songs, I just didn't know what I wanted to say before. Even before what happened with Luciana, I knew there were some things that music could help me work through especially during that time when I wasn't talking to everyone, and music was like my lifeline."

"Did you ever think of auditioning for Juilliard? Or the Manhattan School of Music?"

"Oh, I doubt I'd ever be good enough for any of those. I mean, my instructors were always harsh and honest with me. I wasn't exceptional, I was just...good."

He raised an eyebrow at me in question.

"Maybe they were hard on you, because you were exceptional, and they wanted you to be extraordinary?"

Lachlan's words caused me to question myself. Maybe I'd sit back down at the piano again, not just at the keyboard, and try my hand at being something greater than I'd ever tried to be. Maybe there was something there...

"And what about you? Where are you thinking of going? Hawaii? Alaska? As far away from New York and your father as you can get?"

He snorted in annoyance, taking my hand and leading me to the bed to sit on the edge with him. We hadn't crossed that proverbial line again, not since the night of the ball where we'd been intimate, twice. He was worried that he'd hurt me, but I just wanted him to grab me by the waist and push me underneath him and take me away into a world where I didn't have to think about anything but his lips on me and what his hands were doing to my body.

But he had kept his distance, sticking with only a few chaste kisses and hugs that had me almost squeezing the life out of him, if only to get that much closer to him.

"I have to stay in New York. I have to watch over the company, recording everything I can so that the day I turn eighteen I can take everything to the cops, FBI, somebody, and see what they can do about getting him thrown off the board. I just have to make sure to get dirt on Brandon, too, so that he can't be named as the new CEO after I get my dad taken off the board. The goal is to get my mom placed as interim CEO while we wait for me to finish my degrees in business so that when I turn twenty-five I'll have enough experience to take over the company full time."

"What kind of things are you recording?"

"Everything. I put my phone in my back pocket with the voice recording app on and make sure it catches every conversation we have. I logged into his computer a few weeks ago and took pictures of the logs of his transactions because something just didn't seem right when he allowed me to start billing invoices for the small purchases of office supplies that he has me buy. The accounting doesn't add up, it's like he's buying ten times the amount of supplies but the inventory shows that he only buys a regular amount. He's laundering the money, I just don't know to who, and I know it's more than just office supplies, but I can't prove it. Not yet, anyway."

I grabbed onto his hand while he grazed his knuckles back and forth on my skin.

"You're being careful though?"

"Always am," he smirked, and the thought of him lying, bloodied and beaten to a pulp, caused my heart to race in a wild panic.

"And you two haven't...been in a fight recently?"

"No. And I've checked with Blythe, he hasn't hit her either, not for months."

I let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding.

"Good. Maybe we'll both make it out of our messes in one piece, then," I said as his arm wrapped around my shoulders and tugged me into his side, his mouth coming down to rest on my neck on my good, non injured side.

"Don't jinx us, Kat. I'm not out of the woods yet."

I made a mental note to knock on some wood, then, because the universe always did have a way of screwing me, it was just a matter of how...and when.