Kalen was a frozen entity by the door to his room. 

Colby was an undeterred bystander, and me?

I was fuming, a volatile rage coursing through me as my father's sharp intake of breath reverberated through the speaker of the phone at my ear. 

"What's wrong?  Cat got your tongue?"

"So, he finally told you?  Finally got you in on it as well to sell out your family?"

My father's words were shaking on the other end of the line, like he was genuinely terrified of the answer. 

"What are you talking about?"

"Gracie, give me the phone."

Kalen's face was a storm that rivaled the lightning in his eyes.

"No, no I don't think I will.  I think I'm going to hear it from my father what you've been talking about.  Go on, dad.  Tell me.  What the hell is going on here?"

"You weren't supposed to be involved in this," Kalen started from the door as he tried to put his entire body in the room but Colby put up a hand, blocking him entirely. 

"And what the fuck are you even doing here?  This has nothing to do with you!"

My heart thundered in my ears as raindrops cascaded down my cheeks and my father began speaking again. 

"I don't know what he's told you, but you can't trust him, especially not his father.  They're snakes, the both of them, only in it for the money.  I told them I had no idea where she'd hidden it, and if I did I obviously wouldn't be living the way I am!  They didn't believe me, and they're gonna send me to prison if I don't get them the money, the money that I don't even have!"

"What money?"

My brain was short-circuiting as nothing made sense, as Kalen tried to push Colby out of the way to get to me...

As my entire body still throbbed with the soreness of what I'd done with Kalen the night before like some kind of sick reminder that my traitorous body wouldn't let me forget. 

"The money she took from them!  The necklace he gave her, the USB with files on it from their company, five hundred thousand dollars, maybe more?  I don't know--but that family is nothing but criminals and liars and thieves, and you'd best stay the hell away from them, Gracie, do you understand me?"

Looking back at the pale cast that had covered Kalen's face, I suddenly realized just how right my father might've been. 

"Block this number, dad.  Block this number and his father's and never speak to either of them again.  I'll call you when this is handled."

"But Gracie, I--"

"Do it.  I told you--I'll handle this from now on."

And then my finger was hitting the screen on the phone, effectively ending the call and any other protests my father might've put up. 

"Colby, get out."

"Wha--Gracie, I was just--"

"I said, get out.  I need to speak with Kalen, and I don't need you hear for it, either."

"You can't just kick me out!"

"Is this your fucking room?  No, I didn't think so.  And neither of us want you here right now.  So, kindly, get the fuck out."

Kalen seemed to shiver as the dominance dripped from my words, but there was something inside of me that had ripped apart at seeing my father's name on Kalen's phone--at learning about the deceit he'd turned on me not even hours after taking my virginity. 

I might've been strong, but there was only so much I could take, and this seemed to be my fucking breaking point. 

I didn't want to have an audience for when I finally exploded, least of all in front of Colby, who was already on my list of people to discontinue from my life, especially after our last conversation. 

"Fine.  But don't come crawling back to me when you're thrown out by him after what he's done this time."

"Trust me--I won't."

And then he slammed the door, and it was Kalen standing in the doorway to his room while I sat on his bed, in his shirt, with his cologne lingering on my skin and his love bites adorning my neck. 

He took a few steps forward, quickly, but my sharp intake of breath had him halting at the last few feet beside me. 

He was breathing so hard through his nostrils that I was worried he might hyperventilate. 

"You have two minutes to explain yourself before I walk out that door, and that's generous for me.  Start talking."

I tossed his phone at him and he caught it with his quick reflexes, his eyes widening at this side of me that I'd never shown him. 

It was the side of me reserved for my father's trips off the wagon and into the dirt--every time I'd have to go get him out of the drunk tank at the jail or scoop him off a barstool with the help of the owner of the establishment he'd chosen to frequent that night an hour after last call as dawn crept past the horizon. 

It was the persona that I used when my mother tried to come back into my life, times that were few and far between, when I'd finally had enough of her manipulations and scheming and sent her packing to wherever she'd come crawling to me from. 

Never had I regretted sending her away more than I had the most previous time. 

Never had I regretted giving away her necklace either, until looking at Kalen and seeing the guilt written on his features clear as day. 

"And if you tell me it's 'not what I think' I'm leaving."

He took a deep, shuddering breath, almost like it would be painful for him to start explaining what the hell was going on, but that was nothing compared to the splintering cracks and fissures already forming in my heart from what I was terrified would come out of his mouth. 

"It started when I found out who you were, and it only got worse when my father found out we were talking."

Oh, fuck.  

There was actual dread in his eyes, but he kept going, even as my stomach twisted and cramped up with every word out of his mouth. 

"I didn't tell him that your mom had given you her necklace, and for a while he just wanted me to get closer to you to get it back, but then he was against the idea of us talking or getting close to one another at all.  He wanted me to stay as far away from you as possible, but then I let it slip that you gave me the necklace back, and that I'd...that I'd put it at my mother's grave where it belonged.  I buried it in a metal box at the head of her grave, but when I went to visit it again, it was gone.  He'd taken it.  Then, he started to get obsessed."

"Obsessed?  With what?"

"With you, your mom.  Your dad.  He kept saying there was something he'd given to your mom that she never gave back, that it was his and that he deserved it, not you and your family.  He told me..."

"Told you what, Kalen?"

He looked up at me then, ghosts and secrets and lies swimming in his cloudy, rainwater eyes that I'd drowned in the night before. 

They'd never stop pulling me under their depths. 

"He told me to get closer to you, to ask you about your father, and if he'd come into any money after your mother's death.  He was so sure she would've left it to you in her will."

"She didn't have a will.  She had outstanding debts after her death that went to her fiancé and his family.  She didn't leave a single thing to me."

"My father doesn't think she left you nothing.  He thinks she gave the information she stole from his company to you and your father, and that the money she took she hid in some account away from you until you either turned eighteen or she died."

"What the...what the fuck, Kalen?  You couldn't have mentioned any of this to me?  What else is there?"

"I--"

"And don't fucking lie to me, Kalen.  What.  Else?"

He sighed, hanging his head, like he couldn't physically look me in the eye with what he had to say next. 

"He wanted me to search through your things, to try and see if she gave them to you.  He told me if I didn't look, if I didn't figure it out, then he'd cut me off.  He told me if I found it, that he wouldn't make me work at the company when I graduated.  That he'd find me a manager, an agent, that he'd support my decision for the NBA.  That he'd find me lucrative brand deals, get my name out there.  One little favor for my dream, Gracie, I couldn't give that up!"

He finally met my eyes then, and what he saw in my own made him recoil, flinching back at the ice I'd injected into my veins. 

"No, you just decided to sell me out, lie to me and take advantage of me to get what you want.  You're all the fucking same.  I should've known you wouldn't be any different than him."

Standing up to find my clothes, he grabbed me around the elbow but I shoved him back and he relented, catching himself on the bed while I yanked my pants on and searched for my phone. 

Everything else would come later, but right now I just had to put one foot in front of the other and get the fuck out of there. 

"I wasn't going to hurt you, Gracie!  It was just to get back what your mother took from my father!"

"YOU LIED TO ME!"

My chest heaving, my head pounding and my heart racing, his eyes widened as if seeing what he'd truly done for the first time in black and white before him. 

Instead of the shame I expected to see on his face, though, his features only hardened as his eyes turned cold and merciless. 

"You're a big girl, Gracie.  You've handled worse.  This was my one shot to get what I wanted from my father, from a man who's done nothing but kept me under his thumb my entire fucking life.  I was going to take what he gave and throw it back in his fucking face, and finally get what I wanted this time.  Finally show him that he was wrong about me this whole time.  Take his resources and then bury him underneath them.  This was my one chance--"

"And it just didn't matter who got hurt along the way, then, did it?  Huh, is that it?"

When he didn't respond I only shook my head and tore his shirt off my body, uncaring of my nudity, and threw it in his fucking face. 

I quickly found the rest of my clothes, threw them on in a daze, and was almost to the door when he stopped me. 

He slammed the door closed just as I'd pried it open by a single inch. 

"Let me go, Kalen."

"I can't let you do that, Gracie.  Not yet."

I turned and faced his blazing eyes, no longer a rainstorm or navy clouds. 

Instead, they were an inferno of hatred and everything I never wanted to see again. 

"Let.  Me.  Go."

"Where's the money, Gracie?"

His entire face had shut down, like he'd accepted defeat and this was his last attempt at getting back what he thought was rightfully his. 

I shook my head and laughed bitterly. 

Then, I gathered up enough saliva in my mouth, reared my head back, and spit squarely in his fucking face.

His jaw cocked to the side, fire burning through those eyes that had devoured me the night before. 

Wiping the spit off his face, he shot me a gruesome smile. 

"This isn't over, sweetheart."

"That's funny, because it sure as hell sounds like it is to me."

He didn't stop me as I shoved him as hard as I could and turned to leave, only glancing back over my shoulder once more to find the man that he'd been the first time we'd met, when he'd called me nothing but jail bait and a ball chaser. 

I wished I would've only listened to my instincts back when I'd first slapped him in the face for what he'd said and never gotten tangled up with him in the first place. 

There were a lot of things I regretted, actually, but for the first time, I didn't regret walking away from him. 

***

Author's Note:

What did you think of this chapter?

What do you think will happen next?

What do you want to happen next?

Who's ready for a PLOT TWIST?!

What's been your fav plot twist of this story so far?

Until next time my lovely readers,
Kristen :)