Colby had a split lip and a dangerous look in his eye the next time I saw him. 

I was just on my way to drop off some materials I'd printed off for Mr. Rhodes before the class that I was to be helping him with, and the look in my best friend's brother's eyes was enough to stop me in my tracks and clutch the papers tightly to my chest in an attempt to shield myself from the oncoming onslaught that I knew was going to be sent careening my way. 

"We need to talk."

There was a smattering of bruises collecting themselves alongside his right cheekbone, and his eyes were both looking swollen and discolored. 

His fists weren't in any better shape when I glanced down at them to find them clenched by his side. 

"Sure.  What do you want to talk about?"

Feigning nonchalance had usually always worked for me in the past. 

It didn't work in that moment with Colby, however. 

No, his nostrils flared as I pictured steam escaping from them in his anger, red seeping from his eyes as he stared me down and stalked towards me, backing me up into the wall behind me. 

"I think you already know what happened yesterday, Gracie."

The venom in his voice threw me, and then I realized that I was cowering back and letting him railroad me—allowing him to intimidate me and back me up into a corner like a scared little girl. 

"Yeah, I do.  I know you were trying to tell me what to do, and then you got pissed when I made my own decisions.  Then you picked a fight with someone twice your size.  It doesn't look like it went very well, either."

He slammed one of his hands by my head to the wall and I flinched back on instinct but the burning flare in my eyes never simmered, never died down. 

This was Colby—he could act like a Grade-A asshole, but he wouldn't actually do anything to hurt me—physically.  

Emotionally?  He'd already destroyed the gateway bridge to my heart and I'd affixed a permanently closed sign to its entrance.  He wasn't getting in through his old methods anymore. 

"You went with him, after everything we've told you about him, and you still left with him!  After what his family did to yours, he doesn't care about you Gracie.  If anything, he just wants to hurt you by stringing you along for some reason. You need to wake up—he doesn't like you."

Maybe it would've hurt less if he'd slapped me. 

"Oh, so there's no way he could like me then, is there?  Because you decided so, it's the truth?  Did he not like me when his tongue was down my throat yesterday?"

Colby's face paled so drastically it was as if someone had doused him in white paint. 

"What the fuck, Gracie.  That's not funny."

"No, what's not funny is you standing there trying to criticize me for doing what I want with my life instead of coming to you to ask your opinion on everything I decide to do.  You don't control my life—you're not my father, my brother, my keeper—you're my best friend's brother.  That's all you are to me right now after how you've been acting."

"We're—we're family, Gracie.  We grew up together, you practically lived at my house!  I've watched over you your whole life!  Why do you think none of those assholes ever bothered you in school?"

"What are you talking about?"

A cold chill shivered down my back at the sight of guilt on his face. 

"Anyone who showed any interest in you were scared away is all I'll say.  I knew what they talked about in the locker room, and I knew Franny wasn't interested but you didn't know any better.  I had to make sure they didn't hurt you."

"I—Colby, I'm not some naive little girl that doesn't know how the world works and how men think, trust me, I've had my fair share of negative experiences when it comes to men that you didn't 'save' me from.  You might've been trying to protect me in some weird, overbearing way, but all it did was isolate me from people I could've actually liked.  What makes you think I wanted your overprotective bullshit act anyway?  Because I definitely don't need it now."

"I was only trying to look out for you the way your dad couldn't!  Why do you think I'm always on your ass whenever you try to message your mom again or get so caught up in school and work you forget to sleep or even eat?  No one else is doing a good enough job watching over you so I needed to step up."

"I don't know who told you that you needed to take care of me, but it wasn't me.  I don't need anyone to take care of me, Colby.  I'm perfectly fine on my own, and you inserting yourself in things that have nothing to do with you is only making things worse between us!"

There were a few people straggling along to class that stopped in the hallway to gape at Colby's six-foot-something frame hulking over my much smaller stature but we didn't stop in our tirade to pay them any attention, despite the curious stares we were drawing with our spectacle.

"You think this has nothing to do with me?  I get it—you needed to find someone to make me jealous because I didn't wait for you and you walked in on it, but you didn't have to go after the one guy who has literally been torturing me on the team since I got here!"

The brakes screeched to a halt in my head as I took in Colby's defensive stance, the angry breaths coming out in pants, his injuries...and then I began to wonder if he'd gotten a concussion from Kalen during their fight. 

"I'm sorry—make you jealous?  What the fuck are you even talking about?  If this was about making you jealous Colby, I could've just found some random guy to make out with a party.  What happened before you left for school was the product of a stupid little crush, and you know what—it was pretty damn easy to get over."

"Oh yeah?  We'll see if you can get over this."

His face was descending close to mine and for a few micro moments, all I could picture was the blue of his eyes, the scent of his cologne mixed with the spearmint of his gum. 

My field of vision was crowded out by the heat of his body over mine, his arms on either side of my head. 

But just as soon as the insanity began, it ended just as quickly, and my heart began quickening for an entirely different reason than Colby surely wanted.

Instead of butterflies, an entire fleet of needle-tipped hummingbirds pierced my stomach and I flinched back from Colby's grasp so sharply that the papers in my hands went flying, as did my newly free hand as it went sailing through the air to land against that particularly tender spot on his right cheekbone, directly where one of Kalen's punches had to have found purchase against his skin. 

The astonishment on his face was jarring enough, but it was the betrayal reflected back to me in his eyes that soured the manic, shocked laughter that had tried to bubble up inside of me. 

"What the fuck, Gracie?"

"You can't do that!  You can't just insult me and treat me like a child and then try to kiss me in the same breath, Colby—it doesn't work like that!  Why would you think I would want that?"

He opened his mouth just as my phone began letting out its screeching alarm, a sure enough sign from the universe that this conversation was over, and would be getting nowhere further if we kept going as it was, and I was not willing to continue it with a crowd of onlookers. 

"Just—just leave me alone.  I'm serious.  Unless it has to do with Franny or family or something, I don't want to hear it."

I broke away from him to slide down to the ground and grasp at the papers scattered all along the ground and didn't have to look up through the haze of unshed tears in my eyes that he'd left, along with the rest of the people watching that were pretending not to. 

The tears weren't for Colby—they were for the girl that used to wish that Colby would push her up against a wall and kiss her senseless. 

They were for the girl that wished for the day that Colby would come to his senses and sweep her up into his arms and finally tell her that he loved her the same way she loved him. 

But that Colby wasn't controlling and overbearing and manipulative. 

That Colby in that girl's dreams was emotionally intelligent enough to realize that he was always unavailable for a reason, and would work to correct his own problems. 

That Colby wouldn't have finally realized his mistake after it was too late. 

And that Gracie wouldn't have let him walk away with a stinging handprint the same shade as the bruise the guy she was interested in had given to him the day before. 

I let myself wonder as I collected the papers from the ground what the old Gracie would've thought of her future self falling for the charms of Kalen—the very person who would be considered completely off-limits, for more than a few reasons, not the least of which being the relationship his father had with my mother. 

I wondered what my father would say if he knew. 

And then I wondered why I even cared in the first place—he surely didn't care what I thought about his relapses, about his inability to take care of me which was so blatantly obvious that Colby had taken it upon himself to take over a role that was never given to him in the first place. 

A pair of black shoes came into my line of vision just as the tears cleared from my eyes and were standing on the last sheet of paper I'd yet to collect but, for some reason, I knew exactly who owned that pair of shoes without having to look up. 

"You know, I thought it would've taken me a little longer to get you on my knees for me, but I'm not complaining."

The scoff from low in my throat didn't even have to be forced, especially not as I noticed a black shoe-print rubbing off on the pristine paper that I'd sprinted to the copy room for.

"Can you move your foot, please?"

My voice came out like ice, and Kalen didn't say anything in response as I kept my eyes firmly locked on the paper. 

I knew that I would crack too soon if I gave him my eyes, if I looked into his own and let my guard down. 

He wouldn't be getting off that easy. 

He slowly edged his foot off the paper, but before I could fully grab it and place it in my pile, he was crouched down beside me in a flash, his hand encircled over my wrist to keep me in place. 

"Gracie," he started, his voice dripping with charm and appeal, but I steeled myself and locked my eyes on where his hand was on my own. 

"Kalen," I mimicked back in the same tone and intensity as he'd said my name, but there was a mocking lilt to my voice that his had lacked, and he stiffened as he realized the mood that I was in. 

I'd had enough of men after the stunt that Colby had pulled. 

"I didn't get to apologize for last night.  I don't know if you heard, but I was taken back to my coach's office, and he confiscated my phone so I couldn't call to tell you I couldn't pick you up."

"Oh, really?  Wonder how that happened."

"Hart was talking about you, that's what happened."

"So, Colby was talking about you, and you didn't like it?  That's it?  That's a shitty reason for a fight."

"It's not if you knew what he was saying about you."

My teeth ground together at his insinuation. 

"I've got a pretty good guess at what it was."

"Gracie—look at me, come on."

I did then, if only to satisfy my curiosity at the damage done to him, and it wasn't pretty. 

His nose was red and swollen, a purple bruise blossoming on the side of it. 

That was it—no other injuries that I could see marring his beautiful face.  

His eyes were still the calm of salt water, his face an almost completely unmarked expanse of smooth skin and sharp angles. 

"Who threw the first punch?"

A wolfish grin lit up his eyes at my question. 

"It was self-defense."

Rolling my eyes, I stood to my full height which was still about a foot shorter than him after he did the same and suddenly I was right back where I started with a man looming over me while I was backed into a corner, but this time I wasn't exactly sure if I hated it or not. 

Class had surely already started and Mr. Rhodes was most likely floundering waiting for me to boot up his computer system that he still hadn't learned and to turn on the projector that he was clueless about. 

Not to mention the thirty different personal emails he'd ask me to help him with, along with grading the online assignments from the previous week.  

The longer Kalen stood there trapping me in his gaze, however, all of those menial tasks fell to the wayside as his eyes ate me up in their depths, chewing me up and savoring me all the same. 

"What are you even doing?  Fighting Colby over something he said about me, trying to take me out on a date, what is this?  Some...weird experiment to see if you'll want the daughter since your dad wanted my mom?"

Kalen crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall on the opposite side of the narrow hallway, his head cocking to the side as he scrutinized me, his eyes tracking me from the top to the bottom as if sizing me up for dinner. 

"Well for one, I'd have fought Hart whether or not your name came up—he brought up my mother.  And secondly, I don't know what I'm doing here.  I was kind of hoping you'd help me figure that one out on the way.  So, rain check from last night?  I can be at your dorm tonight at seven."

He stalked closer, large hands going around my hips as he reached me, my back pressing up against the wall gently as he leaned his head down close to the shell of my ear. 

"Go out with me, Gracie."

Swallowing thickly, I checked my watch to find that, yes, I was already twenty minutes late to class, and I couldn't find myself saying 'no' to Kalen outright. 

What the fuck was wrong with me that I couldn't just say no?

"You'll have to do better than that."

"Better than this?"

My papers were pressed so close to my chest I was sure my heart was going to beat right through them. 

His scent was clogging up my senses, filling them with that drugging expensive cologne and citrus clover that always seemed to cling to him wherever he went. 

His nose trailed a path from my ear to my neck eliciting chills all along my body as he followed the same curve as he went back up on the other side, but just as his lips ghosted over the swell of my own, he pulled back. 

"—minutes late!"

Oh, so that was why he'd pulled away. 

Mr. Rhodes had slammed his door open and stormed out into the hallway to find out what was taking so long. 

"S-sorry Mr. Rhodes, I just dropped the papers for today and—"

"And I was helping her pick them up."

Cutting my eyes sharply at Kalen, he only stepped back far enough so that I could breathe without his intoxicating presence muddying everything up and then we were shuffling into the classroom, his hand a hot beacon on the middle of my back while Colby's eyes tracked us from his seat in the very front of the room. 

"I'll show you how much better I can get if you meet me at that cafe on campus at seven."

And then Kalen was breaking away and taking his own seat, opposite of Colby. 

They glared at each other while I helped Mr. Rhodes set the classroom up. 

My heartbeat never calmed as, throughout the entire rest of the class, Kalen's eyes never left mine once. 

***

Author's Note:

What did you think of this chapter?

What do you think is going to happen next?

What are Kalen's motives?  I don't even think he knows at this point!

Until next time my lovely readers,
Kristen :)