With the dawn of a new day came the outside world infringing on what little peace we'd created for ourselves. 

Kalen had prepared me for this, of course. 

He'd tucked himself in behind me, his arm going around my front as he held me tightly to his chest while outlining the schedule for the rest of his week as we talked and talked and talked, terrified that this would be the last time we'd be able to do so for a long while. 

"Tomorrow I've got to be up early.  We've got our first practice back at five, so I'll have to be out of here thirty minutes before then.  I'll probably only get to see you in that class you TA unless you want to get lunch off campus?  Then dinner, but I'm not sure how we'll make it seem like we're not together if we're with each other all the time..."

"So, no more staying the night?"

I'd turned in his arms, pouting up at him at that latest admonition. 

He flicked my nose with his free hand before tugging me even closer, the warmth and safety of his embrace something I'd come to rely on, something I wasn't sure I could sleep without. 

How was I supposed to go back to my dorm room, sleeping in the same room with Franny after everything that had happened with us? 

It was obvious we had more than a few issues that we needed to work out, but that didn't make it feel even frostier than before. 

"No, no more sleepovers I'm afraid."

I responded by tucking my face into his neck and breathing in his scent—something not particularly clean or dirty, but something somewhere in the middle. 

It was cologne and soap from his shower earlier in the day mixed with a tinge of sweat and the salty tang of skin, but there was an element to it that somehow had my mouth absolutely watering.

"Tell me why we're doing this again?"

He groaned while placing a kiss on the top of my head. 

"You're not making this any easier, you know?  We have to do this because my father is apparently a homicidal maniac who thinks your mother stole something from him, and because he thinks you know where she hid what she took."

My heart skipped a beat then sped up double time in my chest. 

He wasn't wrong—my mother had stolen something from his father. 

And I knew exactly where it was. 

Kalen knew that, he just didn't know the full truth.

There was money with the USB that she'd stolen, and I'd never told him. 

Sitting up gingerly out of his hold, I placed some distance between us before looking back into his eyes. 

"What's wrong?"

"I...haven't been totally honest.  About the safety deposit box."

His eyebrows scrunched in confusion as the moon illuminated his figure in the soft glow of its light. 

This was either about to be the worst mistake I'd ever made, or not.  Either way, it still made guilt churn in my stomach at the thought of lying to him. 

"Okay, so you haven't been totally honest about the safety deposit box.  What, was there a severed hand in there or something?"

"No, not exactly.  There was just...a lot of money."

"Money?"

Something like relief flashed on his face and the knot in my chest loosened, if just the slightest bit. 

"Yeah."

"How much money?"

"I don't know...a lot.  Enough to send me to college for twenty years if I wanted."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

He was silent for a beat, two. 

Then—

"You didn't deposit it all at once, did you?  Because that could look suspicious if my dad was able to hire someone to look into your bank records."

"No...I've only deposited about three hundred of it in the few weeks I've known about it, to make it seem like someone is paying me that amount weekly in case he did go looking."

"Good, good.  That's really smart.  Well, you're keeping the rest in that deposit box, right?"

"Of course."

"Okay.  Well, as long as you don't do anything to change that up, you should be good.  Maybe take a different route to the bank every time you make deposits, too, in case he's got someone tailing you."

"Kalen?"

He finally looked back to me instead of the wall as if he were trying to parse out a particularly hard math problem in his mind. 

"Hm?"

"You...aren't mad?"

His eyebrows dipped over his navy eyes before reaching for me and yanking me back into him, a squeak coming out of my mouth as he did so.

My arms settled on his shoulders as my knees came down on either side of his hips, his eyes searching mine in the relentless dark of the night. 

"Why would I be mad?  That fucker deserved what he got, and if that was your mom stealing his money, then in my eyes it's your money now.  It's the fucking least he could do for you after the shit he's pulled with your family.  I am a little mad that you didn't tell me sooner, but I get why you didn't."

"You do?"

"Well, I mean I don't want to assume why you didn't tell me, but I kind of deserved you keeping some things to yourself after everything that went down between us.  I definitely could have handled things differently and I'll be trying to make that up to you for a long fucking time."

At his words, tears sprang to my eyes. 

He'd been so sincere, so forthcoming with his emotions.  

It was hard to fathom that this was the man I'd slapped upon first meeting. 

He kissed me until our lips were bruised and flush, then tucked me gently back into his side before the blaring of his alarm woke the both of us up at thirty minutes til five. 

The ghost of his lips brushed my own as I didn't have to be up until seven that morning when he left. 

And then the house came alive with footsteps and laughter, showers running and toilets flushing. 

It was impossible to go back to sleep with the metaphorical axe hanging over my head. 

So, when all the players had emptied from the house, I got ready for the day and packed all my things that I'd brought over for the week. 

It felt surreal—like leaving this little sanctuary of ours meant ending things between us, even if I knew that wasn't the case. 

It didn't stop the slight ache in my chest from hurting nonetheless.

Fuck his father.  

Fuck the fact that we had to keep things quiet between us because of him. 

Fuck this whole entire fucked up situation. 

Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I was just headed out into the hallway to leave at fifteen minutes after five when I slammed into a hard body rushing out the door, someone clearly having slept in. 

My eyes widened when I realized that it was Kalen's roommate, Calvin, and briefly remembered Kalen telling me that he usually slept with Nate unless they were off-again. 

According to the sex dazed look in his eyes and the fact that his bed hadn't been slept in since he returned last night, they were clearly on-again.

"Walk of shame for me, week of shame for you?"

His eyebrows danced on his forehead and I could only laugh as he tripped over his own feet struggling to put his sneakers on and spring down the hallway at the same time. 

"Who says it's shameful?"

His answering laugh echoed off the walls and I shook my head as I left the house, and the smile stayed on my face the entire walk back to the dorms. 

That smile fell, however, when upon entering my room I noticed that Franny was back. 

Back, and having a panic attack on her bed. 

I dropped my things and immediately went to her side as she hyperventilated, her head in her hands as she sobbed. 

She flinched when I reached out to grab her hands until she realized it was me, and then she flung her hands around my neck and rocked back and forth all while I rubbed the small of her back still kneeling in front of her. 

What had caused this?  She'd seemed fine—bitchy, but fine, when we'd spoken on the phone before Thanksgiving. 

So what had created such a drastic change in her so quickly. 

Pulling away from her, I caught her eye and then started trying out my tactics that I used for stopping panic attacks. 

"Franny, what's five things you can see?"

She must've realized what it was that I was doing because her sobs quieted and she tried to catch her breath before responding. 

"Y-your eyes...the floor...t-the curtains...your bed...y-your backpack."

"Good.  Now four things you can touch?"

She sniffled before answering. 

"The bedspread, my shoes, my clothes, and my skin."

"Perfect, you're doing perfect.  Now three things you can hear?"

"Um...the air conditioning...the fan, and m-me crying?"

She laughed a little at the last one, which was proof enough that this was working, but still I continued on.

"Two things you can smell?"

"Oh.  Um, your perfume?  And the air freshener."

"One thing you can taste?"

"Uh...my toothpaste from when I brushed my teeth this morning."

Her breaths had stopped their ragged pull into her lungs and she gave me a sheepish, watery smile while trying to regulate her breathing before tugging me into a hug. 

"Thanks, for that."

"No problem.  You know I'm a pro when it comes to panic attacks."

Unfortunately, she did know that.  All too well.

"Wanna talk about it?"

"Not really."

It wasn't like we were the best of friends lately, but that kind of stung. 

"Franny—"

"No, I'm sorry Gracie and—and thank you for helping me through that, but it's not like I can talk about my life and what I'm going through with you when you're practically a stranger to me."

Anger spiked through me but I tried to rein it in, especially because of the state that she was in. 

"I'm sorry we haven't been as close lately.  There's been a lot of shit that I've been dealing with, and—"

"Yeah well there's been a lot of shit that I've been dealing with, too, but you never even bothered to check up on me or ask me if I was fucking okay here recently, and then you basically abandoned me back home with my shit stain of a brother so, forgive me if I really don't want to talk about my sob story with you right about now."

"Franny...what happened with us?  What's happening right now?"

She looked at me incredulously, like she had already pinpointed the exact moment in which things had fundamentally changed between us. 

"You wanna know what happened?  You fell for my brother, lied about it—about a lot of things, actually—and then shut me out of your life when you started dating the captain of the basketball team that practically everyone on campus is in love with.  That's what happened, Gracie.  And meanwhile, I broke up with my girlfriend, got another one, and then she dumped me and the entire time you probably thought I was still with the same girl from the beginning of the year.  I bet you don't even remember the name of the first one."

"I..."

She wasn't wrong.  I didn't remember her name. 

"Yeah, exactly my point."

"Franny...I'm sorry if it feels like I neglected you.  I really wasn't trying to do that.  Things just got so crazy so fast with my family and then things with Kalen started spiraling and then that got complicated and—"

"And you never once talked to me about it, either.  If shit was so complicated, you'd think you'd tell your best friend about it, right?"

"How could I?  You were pushing me away, too, because you were mad about the whole Colby thing."

"Fine.  We both stopped talking to each other."

"Yeah, I guess we did."

An empty silence filled the room as we both processed what that meant for our friendship and if there was anything left to salvage of it after everything. 

"For what its worth, I'm sorry Franny.  I could've communicated with you better, but you could've, too.  This goes both ways, you know."

"Yeah.  Yeah, I know."

She bit the skin on her thumb before looking out the window away from me. 

I sighed and was about to stand up to move away before she grabbed me and pulled me into her in a crushing hug not dissimilar to the ones Kalen had given me over the past week. 

"I'm sorry, too."

We sat there like that, in each other's arms for what felt like forever but was something we'd both desperately needed for too long but were both too afraid to reach out and initiate. 

"Um, Gracie?"

"Yeah?"

"Why do you smell like a dude?"

I couldn't help it—I dissolved into a fit of laughter as she kept on holding me through it.

"Well...in the spirit of communication...I guess I have a lot to tell you."

***

Author's Note:

What did you 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 :)