Kalen was, in fact, outside my dorm in ten. 

However, he wasn't alone. 

Their shouting could've probably been heard from my room had I been listening hard enough.

"—the fuck do you think you're doing with her, anyway?"

"Haven't we already had this fight, Hart?  Just mind your own fucking business."

"I can't mind my own business when you're butting right into it everywhere I turn.  You're bad for her, Rush.  Your family destroyed hers, and you think you can just, what?  Waltz into her life and she can forget what your father did?"

They didn't spot me as I strode up to them quickly, just as Colby shoved two hands into Kalen's shoulders and the force of it hardly rocked him back on his heels. 

"Hey!  What are you doing?"

"Fighting for your honor, or wasn't that obvious?"

Rolling my eyes at his attempts at sarcasm, Colby turned to me with wide eyes and put his hands out in supplication. 

"Found him lurking outside the dorms on my way back to the house.  I was just asking him what he thought he was doing."

"What he's doing is waiting for me."

"At midnight?"

The judgmental gleam in his eye was hard to miss. 

"Yes, Colby, at midnight.  Is there a problem with that?"

Kalen crossed over to me and placed a hand around my waist, moving his body just the slightest bit in front of mine in a move that told Colby to back off, but not in so many words. 

"Gracie, you can't be serious.  Him?  After what his family put you through?"

"I don't see his father anywhere around here, do you?"

"Gracie, I'm just trying to look out for you, but if you don't want to listen, that's on you.  I did my best."

"I appreciate you wanting what's best for me Colby but you have to trust me to watch out for myself—I've been doing it for a hell of a lot longer than you have."

Colby held his arms out at his sides and sighed deeply, the sound full of exasperated irritation. 

"I won't say 'I told you so' when this goes up in flames, then.  Have a good night."

He stalked off and Kalen scoffed at the retreat, yanking me even further into his side. 

"That guy?  You had a thing for him?"

"Hush.  This thing between us isn't far enough along with us yet for you to be able to make fun of me for those things."

"Oh, so it's a thing now, is it?"

I couldn't stop the smile from splitting my face apart. 

"Maybe, if you quit while you're ahead."

"Well, I know of a good place we can go that's kind of like a date, but not so much that it scares you into calling off this 'thing' between us."

"Oh, please, go right ahead.  Take me away to this good place of yours."

God, he looked so good under the moonlight with a wide grin brightening up his quicksilver eyes and illuminating his soft skin outlined by shadows with an aura of hazy blues and greys. 

"You'll have to keep quiet about this place—it's a secret."

"Naturally."

His smile tipped up on the edges even further, his bright white teeth gleaming as we completely forgot about the fact that Colby had just tried to derail our night before it even started. 

Looking at Kalen, it was easy to forget Colby. 

It was even easier to forget the day I'd had, staring down at my mother's lifeless corpse. 

It was like hitting pause on my life and pressing play on a favorite tv show or opening up the pages to a good book right when the tension started to sizzle and burn across the page. 

He grabbed my hand in his and the touch had never felt more real—more right—than in that moment. 

Maybe it took me staring death in the face to realize what was right in front of me, what I could have if I only reached out to grab it. 

Maybe Kalen was the way I could take all the numbness of what had happened and turn it into that smoky, burning passion that he seemed to elicit from me the moment we stepped together. 

"So, this place we're going...does it involve lots of walking?"

He smirked, his side profile gleaming with strikes of lamplight rays and the floodlights of passing cars. 

We trekked across the campus, passing the quad and then the boys dorms until we made it to the parking lot of the office building. 

"Not much."

"Good.  I'm not as athletic as you."

"What, you don't get your steps in walking back and forth down the aisles in the library?"

"Hardly.  When I'm not sitting and reading, I'm laying down."

"Good thing I'm athletic enough for the both of us."

Kalen made a sharp left to where the tree line hugged the edge of the parking lot and the moment we stepped closer to the foliage my eyebrows went up into my hairline. 

"Have I told you I'm not very fond of the outdoors, either?"

His laugh bounced through the air before reaching my ears and he grabbed my hand tightly in his before leading me through a small clearing in between the trees where the grass wasn't so high. 

There was barely any light available once we were through the first clearing and there weren't any lampposts to be seen, just the light of the full moon on a cloudless night with a blanket of studded starts carpeting the sky.

We stepped out into a field of freshly shorn grass that extended far enough to a small pond in the distance, and my heart leapt into my throat after realizing that Kalen had brought a backpack with him and started pulling things out of it the moment we walked through a hole in a wooden fence. 

"This isn't technically property of the school, but the owner owns it, and no one builds on it either because they're planning on extending the campus to add a technical science building over here, but for right now they keep the property cleared and maintained and no one ever comes out here.  Except stargazers."

"Stargazers?"

"The astronomy club comes out here one every other week with their fancy telescopes and they get special permission to do it, but I don't think anyone will notice us out here tonight.  What do you think?"

Unrolling a thin blanket from his backpack, Kalen unfurled it out onto the ground as I sank to my knees beside it, testing the ground to make sure it wasn't still wet from the light rain the night before and was pleasantly surprised that the grass was plush and malleable instead of prickly and firm. 

Kalen laid his body along mine on the ground as I did the same, our arms at our sides nearly touching, his proximity nearly as dizzying as the wide array of glistening stars shining overhead. 

"Do you know any constellations?"

My words were breathless as I took in the heat coming off Kalen's body, more aware of him than I ever had been before in that moment. 

He brushed his hand alongside my pinky finger and I trembled as he slowly caressed up the side of my wrist to my arm, then back down again. 

"Not really, but I do come out here sometimes with the guys and drink.  They drive their trucks through a different entrance and we sit on the tailgate and just talk about life, what we would be doing without basketball, things like that."

"What would you be doing without basketball?"

The question made him tense, even though he was the one who brought it up. 

"Probably joining the family business like my dad always wanted, like he still thinks I'm planning to do after I graduate next year."

"But?"

"But, I'm planning on getting the fuck out of here by the end of this school year.  My goal is to be on a team in the NBA by next year.  I'm only planning on riding it out until championships, making sure I get my team there, and then I'm gone."

The sureness in his voice is enough to make my stomach clench with the fact that I haven't got a clue what I'm going to do in the future.

"What about you? What are you going to do after you graduate?"

"Well...nothing nearly as exciting as joining the NBA.  Probably start working in a museum somewhere, working on restoring old books and researching probably.  It will definitely have something to do with books, at least that much I know."

Kalen turned onto his side, observing me with that unflinching quality of his that has seemingly started to unnerve me. 

"You really love books that much?"

"It's not so much the books as it is that...knowledge is real, unchangeable.  Facts are facts, whether people want to question them or not.  It's tangible and set in stone.  Plus, the fact that I could potentially be one of the only few who get to see and touch history that others have forgotten is...sobering, I think.  Nothing in this life is guaranteed, so when we have the chance to make our mark, we do.  I like reading about the accounts of others who lived so long before me.  It makes life a little easier to swallow knowing how much worse off it could be, you know?"

"I'm starting to see that.  It's why I refuse to let my father push me into a job I know I'll hate.  I'd rather live life today how I want than regret the sun coming up when I'm forty."

"Exactly."

Kalen had moved so close to me while we spoke that the whites of his eyes were visible in what little light the moon gave to shine on him. 

His scent wrapped around me in a warm blanket of his pulsing heat and all I wanted was to sink my fingers into his hair and yank his head down to mine to feast on his mouth, but something stayed my hand. 

Maybe it was the rightness in the moment, or maybe it was the fact that he was just trying to comfort me and keep me company after the day I'd had, but I simply let my hand rest at my side where he'd gripped my fingers and stared at the stars with him. 

"That one kind of looks like it could be the Big Dipper."

"Really?  It's definitely the Little Dipper."

"I thought you said you had no idea about constellations?"

Kalen pulled me closer to his side as he wrapped a hand around my waist and I melted into him just the same. 

"I said I didn't know a lot about them, not that I was completely clueless."

"Okay, fine, then what's that one?"

"Clearly, that's a lion.  For...Taurus, I think?"

"Taurus is a Ram actually."

"Then it's a Leo.  Leo's are lions, right?"

I couldn't stop the full body laughter as he completely mis-identified at least half of the zodiacs and constellations, but it didn't keep me from going limp in his arms a half-hour later once we ran out of stars to name. 

I didn't even mind waking up at five in the morning as steamy dew sprinkled on our skin and he walked me back to my dorm with what was sure to be the worst bedhead in history.

He held onto me a little bit too tight after placing a chaste kiss on my lips as a goodbye, but I didn't mind that, either. 

***

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 :)