The headstone was covered in old flowers, the dead leaves perfuming the air with the stench of floral rot as I clenched the necklace in my palm hard enough for it to slice into the thickness of my skin. 

"Hey, mom.  I brought something for you."

It took more than long enough for me to realize that this was what I needed to do with the necklace that Gracie had basically ripped from her neck to give to me. 

The memory from the day before was enough to keep me distracted during not one but two practices, and when coach had yelled at me for about the thirtieth time, I figured enough was enough and it was time to put to rest what had been crawling around in my head since laying eyes on the pendant that had been burning a hole in my pocket since I'd finally gotten my hands on it again. 

"I'm guessing dad gave it to her and then she gave it to her daughter, so I haven't had it all this time.  I know it was always your favorite."

The only response I received was a light breeze ruffling the hair across my forehead.

Kneeling down to swipe the dead leaves from the top of the headstone, I caught the grooves of her name etched in stone with my calloused fingertips.

Faye Rush, Beloved Mother.

That was it—because certainly it couldn't proclaim "Cherished Wife" considering how well and truly her husband had fucked that one up.

"I know you can't hear me, but sometimes its easier coming here than keeping it all in my head.  Anyway, I figured you'd want this back, at least."

Unthreading the pendant from my hand, red marks gouged where I'd been clasping it so tightly, too tightly.

Digging into the earth to create a hole big enough to bury it, the necklace was dropped unceremoniously into the ground where it should've been twelve years earlier resting with Faye Rush—beloved mother, avid painter, amazing storyteller, stubborn fighter of cancer until the bitter end, even when her own husband didn't believe in her.

"Maybe this will make it better, maybe not."

And so there I sat, a bundle of white roses I bought and threaded around with sapphire blue ribbon placed precariously atop the grey marble headstone while I kneeled and tried to make that sharp pain in my chest ease just the smallest bit, if not for myself then for my mother who would've never wanted me to act the way I had towards that girl—Gracie. 

That girl who'd gotten under my skin so efficiently upon just setting eyes upon her as she toyed with my mother's jewelry around her neck like she was entitled to it. 

And she'd given it away so easily, like it was some worthless piece of trash instead of something absolutely priceless that I'd have killed to get back in the aftermath of her cancer diagnosis and treatment and subsequent demise. 

Her haunted eyes kept flashing in the back of my mind as I tried to keep a cool, level head, but the entire time I spoke to my mom's headstone, I knew one thing was for certain—if she got in my way again, it wasn't going to be pretty. 

***

"Do you know what's going on with my brother lately?"

Glancing up from my book and computer, fingers floating over the cursor, Franny's eyes were pinning me to the spot with a peculiar glint to her blue eyes. 

Her hair was pleated in two tight braids spanning either side of her head, forest green ribbons tucked in between the strands of her dyed-black hair, and the entire look had taken at least thirty minutes to complete, my hands still cramping because of braiding it for her. 

"No.  Why?  What's he acting like?"

Franny rolled her eyes, grabbing her phone and showing it to me. 

"Look—he broke up with his girlfriend and he's posting with another girl before I even had time to meet the first one!  He wasn't like this back home, was he?"

Color flooded my cheeks as I grabbed up my open highlighter and capped it, shutting my laptop while bookmarking my place in my book assigned for my Women in Literature class. 

"Franny—there's no way you didn't know.  Colby's always been kind of a player, especially at home.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised he's still doing the same thing."

Even if I had wished that he'd suddenly change because of me...God, I wished someone would've slapped some kind of sense into me. 

I should've known better, honestly. 

Colby wasn't ever going to change, least of all for me. 

I just wished it didn't have to hurt so much pining after someone who's scent I'd clung to in long-winded hugs, chasing it by stealing his hoodies whenever I could get away with it—someone who's eyes I could've gotten lost in if not for the fact that everyone else would've seen right through me if I let my gaze wander into his. 

"I knew he had a bunch of girlfriends in school back home, but I didn't ever see him dropping them like flies within a week of getting them.  Honestly, maybe I need to talk to him.  He shouldn't be giving girls false hope like this only to drop them in a few days, that's just wrong.  I mean, what if he led someone like you on, and it really hurt them?"

"What do you mean, someone like me?"

Franny's arm stopped halfway to her mouth, her melting ice cream from the dining hall 24-hour soft serve machine dripping in a chocolate and vanilla mix back down into the cup she'd just scooped it out from. 

Her eyes wide, the rest of the conversations from the late-nighters in the dining hall ceased to exist. 

A buzzing cacophony of deafening disbelief roared in my ears as her mouth fell open as if suddenly realizing what she'd said wrong. 

"I didn't mean anything by it, really, Gracie.  I just meant...you know.  Someone who's sweet and kind and doesn't deserve to be led on."

Her words were nice but there was a slip in her tone and waver in her voice that told me she didn't necessarily believe what she was saying. 

"Right.  Sure."

Flipping open the lid to my computer again, Franny huffed into her ice cream and finished it in record time. 

I was just finishing up a final draft of my first essay of the semester on one of my favorite female novelists, Katherine Anne Porter, when the sliding doors of the dining hall became crowded as what seemed like half of the entire basketball team sidled in, each and every player reaching up to grab the lip between the door and the ceiling as if to prove that they could just because of how tall they were. 

Unbidden, my eyes drifted to the man in the center of all the chaos, a dark, brooding expression on his face as if spending time with his teammates was some sort of burden. 

Memories crawling back to that moment in which he'd looked upon me with such vehemence and anger in his eyes towards the necklace I'd been given so long ago, it was all I could do to keep the tears pricking in the corners of my eyes from falling. 

Numb like a tingling, asleep appendage, I'd stood there in a daze while I unclasped the thing from my neck like its metal chain was enough to burn the skin off my fingers as I pressed it into his hand, but then, he'd pressed back. 

Pressed back so hard I still had an indention on my palm the next day not unlike the mark I'd still have internally from giving it away so easily, from finally letting go of that extra weight and baggage my mother had never intended to fully repair. 

The loss of not only a possible relationship with my mother, but Colby as well, was enough to have me throwing myself into my work like never before. 

There wasn't a moment I was without my textbooks, my laptop, my notebooks and my favorite pens. 

If Franny noticed my strange behavior over the past three days after I returned to the dorms that night feigning that I was fine, she didn't let on. 

Maybe it would've been easier if I'd told her everything—how my mother sat there like a callously cruel figment of the past I'd drudged up just to spite my happiness in real time, or maybe it wouldn't matter if I didn't say a thing at all.

Looking at Colby now, though, waving at everyone in the dining hall with that overtly cruel captain of his in the middle like a ring-leader, I suddenly found myself wavering like the tremble in Franny's voice as she'd tried to deny the fact that she thought I was breakable in these moments. 

That damnable grin of Colby's found its way over to our table and he wordlessly extracted himself from his teammates, their eyes following him as he went. 

I wasn't much of a basketball fan, but I knew his position was important, considering how much their mom and dad went on about it during family dinners. 

I was a permanent fixture in their household after my mother left, and considering the fact that my dad was so often gone for work at his two jobs that he'd had to take on after she abandoned us, I became more of my best friend's parent's kid than my own father's. 

Which made my world-ending, mind-bending crush on Colby just a tad bit more complicated than I'd intended for it to be. 

At first it was just supposed to be some stupid crush that I'd get over in a month when the next new boyband came out and then I could fantasize about them instead, but with Colby...

With Colby it was like he was the sun and he was blinding me from seeing anything else when he was in my periphery. 

Except now a shadow loomed behind him, dark and ominous and menacing in his orbit. 

His name was Kalen Rush, and he was, for some reason, obsessed with my mother's necklace. 

Morbid explanations ran through my head in a razor sharp, quick fashion—maybe he was some secret love child of my mother's, and that was how he remembered the necklace. 

Maybe it was some cheap, mass-produced pendant necklace and his own mom had the same one and he thought I'd stolen it somehow. 

Whatever the reason, he was blocking out the sun as Colby strode towards us, a dark grimace on his face as he watched him make his way to us. 

"Fran, Gracie.  Lovely evening we're having here, wouldn't you say?"

Franny threw a piece of folded up straw paper trash at his face in response. 

"Weirdo."

Colby winked at his sister as he took the seat to my right at our two-person square table, pulling up a chair and sitting on it backwards as he switched his baseball cap over to wear it backwards. 

My mouth definitely did not water at the sight, not even as his biceps flexed in full view as they were on display in his short-sleeved black t-shirt. 

Averting my eyes from his frame, I caught the tail end of their conversation after ogling the low slung grey sweatpants on his hips, the black band of his briefs peeking through over the top of his pants. 

"—Gracie here."

"Sorry, what?"

"Colby wants help with his homework, like always.  Anyway, I'd love to stay and chat about all this with you, but I don't think I'll have any braincells left after trying to watch Colby add two and two together.  I have a date anyway."

"A date?  With who?"

Franny only gave her brother a grin like a cheshire cat and threw one braid over her shoulder with a saucy wink in my direction. 

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

And then she was gone in a flurry of cinnamon and vanilla perfume, air-kisses blown our way and I was left with Colby, alone. 

"So, she said you needed help with some work?  For what class?"

He didn't speak after my question, only stared me down with some kind of unnerving, all-knowing look in his eyes.

"What?"

"You know what, Gracie.  Don't play dumb—it's not a good look for someone so smart."

"Okay, now I'm really confused.  Did you just call me smart?  Is hell frozen over?"

He rolled his eyes before scooting his chair closer to mine, bracing his arms on the table in a way that put those muscles on full display. 

I might've been vaguely aware of someone shooting daggers in our direction, but for the moment, the sun was shining too bright for me to not stare directly into his light. 

"What's that supposed to mean?  I've always said you're smart."

Not when it comes to you. 

"Right—the million times you called me stupid back home just don't count all of a sudden?"

"No, they don't count because I was always teasing.  Anyway, I just wanted to ask you how you're doing after everything.  You know."

Oh.  So this was a pity check-in, then. 

"I'm fine."

Said stiffly and unconvincingly.  Ugh.

His blue eyes narrowed as a waft of his cologne washed over me and I tried with all my might not to crumble beneath the weight of my desire for him as it clouded everything up around us. 

"You're not."

"I am.  And unless you actually need help with work or something, I have an essay to edit, so if you don't mind—"

"I don't want to pull the 'I told you so' card, but I will if I have to Gracie.  What the fuck made you decide to meet with her?  You had to know that—"

"No, I didn't know, Colby.  And I don't know what made me want to meet her—maybe it was just some fucked up way to see if she'd still be exactly the same as she's always been, maybe not.  It doesn't matter anymore, I'm officially done."

He quirked one eyebrow up, shifting the ball-cap on his forehead as he did so.

"Done?  Like you were two years ago when you were talking to her for two months without any of us knowing, and we had to get you a different phone and block her number because of it?  You're a lot of things, Gracie, but a quitter isn't one of them.  You can't quit anything, even if it's bad for you—not even people.  It's just not in you, but I'm telling you now—you have permission to quit this one.  Give her up.  She's not worth—"

"I know she's not worth it, Colby, she made that perfectly clear when she told me in no uncertain terms that she didn't give one shit about me, just the image I'd give her with yet another family that she's marrying into only to destroy sometime later on down the road.  You don't have to lecture me on her anymore.  I'm. Done."

Voice catching on the last sentence, Colby's hand shot out to cover mine where it had been laying against my notebook, and the warmth encompassing his skin was enough to catch my breath for an entirely different reason. 

"I don't want the way this semester started to affect the rest.  I just met someone new, and she's really great.  She's incredible, actually, and—"

He stopped talking after I yanked my hands out of his, refusing to meet his eyes again as a strained silence fell over the table. 

"Gracie, look.  I'm sorry about what you walked in on when you first got here.  Is it still bothering you?  I mean—wait.  Don't tell me you're..."

He trailed off, that brain of his working in overdrive as I fiddled with a highlighter in front of me, wishing that the ominous black cloud in the dining hall would fall over our conversation, just to save me from the humiliation of pathetic proportions from what Colby would say next. 

"You know it was just a one-time thing, right?  You didn't think I'd be waiting on you, right?  I mean, you're practically my sister, like Franny."

"I know, Colby.  I'm just—I'm just not up to hearing about how happy you are right now, no matter how much of how shitty of a person that makes me sound.  I'm happy for you, I am, but right now I'm just trying to keep my head down and distract myself as much as I can until I'm over this thing with my mom."

"Oh.  Oh, okay.  Yeah, I guess that makes sense.  And it doesn't make you sound like a shitty person, Gracie.  We all get in that kind of slump sometimes."

I still didn't look up to catch his eye, worried he'd see the truth written all over my face, although I wasn't sure if he fully believed my lie, either. 

I didn't want to hear about his happiness, that was true, but the reason for why I didn't want to hear about it was completely different from the reason I'd just given him. 

"Anyway, you'll get through this, I know you will, and me and Franny are always here to help you if you need it.  Listen, I gotta go, we're watching game tapes tonight after we eat and it looks like most of the guys already got their food to go.  You'll be okay here by yourself, right?"

Glancing around at the rapidly emptying dining hall, I realized how late it actually was. 

"Yeah, I might pack it up here for the night and go study in the library instead, actually."

"Okay.  Don't work yourself too hard."

"Too late.  I already took an internship at the museum and a TA position."

"Fuck, Gracie.  Just—slow down, would you?  Don't want you having a repeat of senior year, do we?"

Memories of spending a week in the hospital for a stress ulcer flashed through my head and I quickly shook my head no, though the rate at which things were going, I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened here again, much to my dismay.

"Alright well, take it easy.  I'll see you later."

"Bye."

He didn't hesitate in ruffling the hair on my head as he left, also much to my dismay. 

As my eyes fixed back onto normalcy now that the sun had finally made its disappearance, my gaze was drawn to that gloomy dark cloud lurking in the corners, finding the watchful glare of Kalen Rush on me as I stared right back, some kind of cutting challenge in my eyes. 

I wondered what he'd done with the necklace I'd handed over to him willingly in a confrontation of such strange proportions. 

He broke the stare just as a flush of chills appeared at the base of my skull and turned and left and just like that, my sky had cleared and I could finally take a full inhale without choking on the weight of atmospheric bodies in my periphery. 

I had a feeling, however, that it wouldn't be long before Kalen Rush muddied up my skies once again.  The only question was when.

***

Author's Note:

Hello my lovely readers!

What did you think of this chapter?

What do you think will happen next?

What do you WANT to happen next?

Thoughts on Colby and Gracie's relationship?

Thoughts on Kalen and how he and Gracie will collide in the coming chapters?

Until next time my lovely readers,
Kristen :)