Sweat dripping down into my brow as the shrill shriek of the whistle blew, the familiar stomp of players leaving the court echoed in my ears but still I stood unmoving, hands perched on my knees in an attempt to calm my racing heart. 

"You good, Rush?"

"Yes, coach, just taking a breather."

"Well while you're doing that, mind if we have a little chat?"

Glancing up through sweaty eyelashes to my sixty-something coach with a heavily pronounced beer belly, I nodded my head and tried to keep myself from hyperventilating as the fatigue from practice hit in full force. 

"It's about Hart."

The groan was involuntary as I crouched down even further, placing my head between my knees as I did so, wondering how my day could get any worse. 

Well, there were a few ways it could get worse, but I wasn't thinking about that in front of my coach before getting a major dressing down that I knew had been coming since our lecture the previous night. 

"I'm worried about his behavior lately, yours too if I'm being honest, but his most of all.  You're team captain—I expect you to keep on top of this, not make things worse by beating the ever living hell out of him.  I'm having one of the boys sticking to his side like glue, keep an eye on him, but I need you to stay out of his way.  Need you to keep your head on straight and  stay away.  You got that?"

"Yes, coach.  All you gotta do is tell him to do the same, and we'll be good."

"You break that no tolerance policy one more time and I can't help you.  The dean almost got involved this time—you're lucky no one else heard about it outside campus.  You need to get your shit together this season otherwise we're not making it to playoffs, let alone Final Four.  You got me?"

"Yeah, yeah I got you."

"Good.  Now go shower up, you're burning my eyes with your stink."

But it was as I entered the locker room to find Hart perched on the bench in front of my locker with a smug, shit eating grin on his face. 

"Can I help you?"

I wouldn't be so forgiving if the asshole came between me and a date between Gracie again. 

He thought his face was fucked up now?  My right hand might've been bruised but my left was working just fine. 

"Yeah...nah, I just think it's cute, that's all."

The urge to make yet another pretty little cut or bruise on his already fucked up face was almost too tempting to resist, but still I held back, remembering what happened the last time I allowed him to get the better of my temper. 

Ignoring him and shouldering past to get to my locker, the entire locker room went silent as I kept my attention on my reflection in the mirror instead of the asshole desperately trying to gain it back behind me. 

"Oh yeah, and what's that?"

"That you think Gracie even wants you at all."

The tension in the locker room was electric as I turned and slammed the door shut, opting to head back to my room to get a shower instead of wasting another second in this shark tank. 

"Tell that to your girl who's already waiting on me."

Hart lunged but Calvin was already there holding him back, a freshman that had probably been assigned to keep him in line lining up to keep him from going any further than he already had. 

So much for staying the hell away from each other. 

I sent him and Calvin a two-fingered salute and strolled right back out the way I came, desperate for a shower and to start the process of making sure people would be calling Gracie my girl instead of his. 

***

"Hey Fran, have you seen my black bodysuit top thing?"

My best friend popped her head up from her computer so quickly it was a wonder she didn't suffer a concussion from the action. 

"Yes, it's in my drawer because you gave it to me after swearing you'd never wear something so revealing even if its the most modest neckline in my entire wardrobe.  Why?  What's going on? Are you going out to a party or something?  A date?  Oh my god what is going on—I never thought this day would happen—"

"Fran!  Please chill, it's...nothing like that.  I just wanted to get a little dressed up, it's not a big deal."

She raised one perfectly contoured eyebrow at me in suspicion. 

"Right."

She jumped up from her bed on her side of the room and went rummaging through her completely disorganized mess of a drawer where I wondered how she knew where anything could be but stayed silent until she procured the shirt I'd asked her for. 

"This what you were looking for?"

"Yes.  Thank you."

She held the shirt on the tips of her fingers tauntingly, whipping it back for her to hold out of my reach the moment I went to grab it, the fabric slipping through my fingertips from the small moment I was able to get ahold of it. 

"Are you seriously keeping my own top from me?"

"A top that I bought for you, you mean?  One that you gave right back to me almost as soon as you tried it on?  Tell me where you're wearing it, and I'll give it to you."

"You are such a—ugh.  Fine.  Kalen might've asked me out to that cafe on campus and I didn't really say yes, but I also didn't really say no, either.  Is that what you wanted to hear?"

Her face brightened exponentially at my confession. 

"Why yes, yes that is exactly what I was looking for.  Have fun, little lovebird."

Her eyes twinkled as she allowed me to finally grab the shirt, and I breathed a silent sigh of relief that at least one of the people closest to me wouldn't make such a fuss out of me wanting to see Kalen in a romantic way. 

Things wouldn't progress far than just a bit of fun, though.  They couldn't.  Not after what his father did to my family, not after my mother's affair effectively destroyed my father.

There was no way anyone else in my life would approve, most of all my father.  I was sure Kalen felt the same way about his family as well. 

He was clearly only chasing me for just that—the chase—and I was perfectly fine with that as the memory of his lips skimming across my own were any indication. 

My blood heated up at the memory of his touches on my skin and how easily he'd slung my body across his own in the car in the parking lot, the memory of getting lost in his kiss and in his touch. 

Fran shot me a sly smile and a wink as I slipped out the door, her approving gaze warming me as I contemplated Kalen's ministrations the entire walk to the cafe. 

I'd never experienced most things, so being able to have a second and third and fourth kiss was something that was invaluable as I could compare and contrast each one with the next. 

With Colby it was cold and disinterested on his part, something flat and yet also sparkling from sunlight and the atmosphere in which I'd chosen as the ambiance for my first kiss. 

With Kalen, however, there was nothing tentative, no hesitation, nothing but pure unbridled passion and desire tangled within our tongues as he took over my body and carved it into a mould of what he wanted and what I could be if I only let go to the impulse—the want. 

Because I wanted. 

I wanted more than I ever allowed myself to want before, always stuck behind the facade of the doting daughter who never wished for anything but herself. 

I wanted adventure and an escape from my reality that was threatening to suck me down under its horrifying depths of addiction and relapse and infidelity and betrayal and unrequited love and abandonment.

I wanted something I dared never give voice or thought to for the fear of being construed as selfish, but maybe it was time I reached out and grasped a little something for myself this time, just this once. 

I wanted, so therefore, I could take. 

I reached out and pulled open the cafe door as the scent of coffee beans and sugary pastries coaxed my senses to the forefront, my eyes automatically seeking him out in a corner booth by the window backlit by the pastels of the setting sun, its golden arc ensconcing him in a fiery halo as it descended past the horizon line. 

A dangerous smirk flitted onto his face as he spotted me across the room, his body blocking the picturesque sky behind him as he stood to his full height, and because I refused to apologize for what I wanted, my legs did not shake as I strode toward him. 

Let my father hate him and his family. 

Let Colby and everyone else tell me that he was bad for me, that he was just using me, that he would only break my heart in the end. 

Let the rest of the world look at us and see whatever they wanted to see because, for once, I did not care what anyone else thought. 

My mother wasn't worth pleasing, my father was in another treatment facility and had never been capable of taking care of me even before she left. 

Colby treated me like I was nothing but his property or some kind of back-up plan if his womanizing didn't play out. 

What did any of their opinions matter?

What did anyone's opinion matter, besides my own?

What did any of it just fucking matter anymore, anyway?  Who was around to tell me what to do?

Approaching his ever-white smile stretched across his devastatingly handsome features and trapped in his watercolor gaze, the alarm bells quieted and the tightness in my chest loosened. 

Toes curling in my shoes, we stood inches apart as he took me in with a searching gaze up and down, though I found myself gripped in his stare as his eyes finally locked back with mine. 

"Glad you came, Sweetheart.  Didn't feel like having to order one of everything and lug it over to the dorms for you."

An unbidden smile grew on my lips as I processed his words. 

"One of everything, really?  Drinks, too?  That would've been quite the trip."

"Eh.  It would've been worth it."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah.  You'd never skip out on a date from me after that ever again."

His eyes danced after each word, pulling me into a complicated rhythm I wasn't sure I could keep the tempo with. 

"And why's that?  Because I wouldn't want you making a scene with a thousand drinks and pastries in my hall?"

He leaned down close to my ear, a hand snaking around my waist until it rested lazily against my hip as he squeezed, my body throbbing and singing beneath his casually intimate touches. 

"Because then you'd know just how much I love giving.  I can be very...generous."

His breath tickled the shell of my ear as he spoke, the rumblings of his words sending shivers ricocheting through to my core as I clenched where I stood, gulping down the gasp that had threatened to escape at the innuendo he'd just suggested.

"Well that's...very good to know."

He laughed lightly at how flustered he was able to make me and leaned back but still didn't remove his hand from my hip—the hand that was burning a searing path to my skin through my shirt. 

Kalen looked at me like a starving man and I was one of those chocolate croissants on display in the pastry case at the front of the cafe—like I was nothing short of...mouthwatering. 

The effect it had on me was addictive, and, if nothing else, I knew I needed to be more than careful. 

Addiction ran in the family after all, and with eyes like those, I could easily find myself on a downhill spiral with no ladder back up, only Kalen as a lifeline. 

What do you do when the thing that you know will ultimately destroy you, is the one thing you can't help but want the most above all?

You sit in the seat they pull out for you at the table, you order your coffee and your food, and then you spend the rest of the hours that cafe is open staring into their eyes and discussing everything under the sun, including but not limited to: your extreme Type A personality, your distinct love for organization and color-coded study guides, and your closeted love for musicals. 

Kalen's favorite color was green—emerald green—the same deep, forest green the leaves turn after a good, drenching rain.  His favorite movie was Shawshank Redemption, his favorite artist was Hozier, and his deepest fear wasn't something normal like sharks or spiders, but cockroaches.  He was deathly afraid of cockroaches. 

All the while, his eyes never left mine as we talked and talked until our throats were hoarse and the coffee well had dripped dry and the dim, somber lights turned fluorescent and blinding, the rest of the tables already put up with chairs stacked atop them to get ready for the next day ahead. 

"I think they're kicking us out."

"I think you might be right."

He held my hand on the walk back to my dorm. 

It wasn't until we reached my building, however, that reality came crashing back down onto us, just like it always did. 

There was Fran and Colby outside my building, screaming at each other. 

And I could already make out some of what they were saying. 

"—can't tell her that!"

"And why not?  It's her family!  She deserves to know!"

"She—"

"Hey!"

It took me a moment to realize that they shout had come from me. 

My two best friends whipped their heads to look at me, guilt on their faces. 

"What's going on?"

"Gracie, it's your...well, actually—"

"My dad?"

Fran shook her head. 

"No, not really at least.  It's your mom this time."

She sighed into her hands, some invisible force of stress plaguing her and pulling her down. 

Instinctively, I pulled myself from the warm and comforting bubble that came from holding Kalen's hand and strode over to my best friend. 

"Hey, it's okay.  Whatever it is, it's okay.  It's not like anyone...died..."

Fran peeked up at me through her fingers, tears shimmering in her eyes. 

"Fran..."

"Gracie, I'm so sorry."

Colby started trying to explain but Fran cut him off. 

"We just got the call from our parents.  Apparently, they're still friends with some people that your mom knows...used to know...I don't know.  She overdosed, Gracie.  I'm so sorry."

"Oh."

Oh.

Oh...

So...someone really did die, then. 

Warm arms wrapped around me, but they weren't the right size.  They didn't smell right.  

I shrugged the too-heavy arms.  I couldn't breathe. 

Why couldn't I ever breathe? 

Why wouldn't this ever stop?

How could I make it—

The right arms wrapped around me, and I melted into them.  

These arms would make everything okay again, right? 

God, I hoped so. 

***

Author's Note:

What did you all think of this chapter?

What do you think will happen next?

What do you WANT to happen next?

Until next time my lovely readers,
Kristen :)