Ever since she died, a small part of me had always known he was the cause of it. 

Cancer, they'd said.  

Sure, she might've been sick, but one day she was there in treatment, smiling at me as her pale skin gained some of its color back and then the next she was gone, like someone had taken that slowly building flame and extinguished it in its wake. 

All that was left of her was the plumes of smoke left in her wake that trailed after me, following me to her funeral, to her memorial, to her gravesite...

I'd always known my father would remarry, but never had I imagined it would've happened so soon.

Pretty soon, it became a fading memory with the smell of smoke lingering in its wake, her perfume clinging to the shreds and scraps of photographs and little knick knacks she'd given me until there was nothing but the quick cut of the realization that I couldn't call up her smile unless looking at a picture or hear her laugh the way I used to be able to do. 

My father was good at distracting, though. 

Distract, deflect, defense.

It wasn't enough that I had basketball to hold me up, no. 

He forced me through prep classes in school, demanding perfection. 

Business focused, every single course was chosen strategically to help me pick up the reins of his business after graduation, but I had no plans of ever succumbing to what he wanted. 

In the end, I was really in it only for the long game: revenge. 

Revenge for the physical and emotional abuse.

Revenge for cheating on my mother with countless women all while she was actively dying in the hospital with cancer. 

A deep set of rage had filled me since childhood and had never found an outlet aside from basketball, something that, if I didn't have it, I was sure my life would've crumbled around me already. 

It was so easy for me to lose myself in Gracie and forget.

It was too easy. 

She was dangerous, someone too sweet and beautiful. 

She was the only thing that could make me forget, for even a second, the festering hate inside of me for the man who helped to create me. 

My life was eat, sleep, breathe basketball for that very reason--because anything else and there would've been no way for me to achieve the status that I had. 

The only way out from under his thumb was through basketball, and if using him to make that happen was what I had to do in order to make that happen, then I would damn sure use his own methods against him and lie to his face with a smile plastered on mine. 

It was easy to lie to a snake when he'd already bitten me. 

The best revenge against him would be to let his only heir refuse to take up his place in the company he built from the ground up, forcing him to either relinquish his assets later down the road when he was too old to manage anything anymore, or to pass the reins onto someone not in the family. 

Sure, his new wife had a son, but he hadn't even gone to college, let alone know anything about business, which was a good thing in my eyes. 

Thunder boomed overhead, the foundations of the house shaking as I laced up my trainers.

Throwing my hoodie on, I made my way to the gym across campus just as it started drizzling, the rest of the students darting under awnings or rushing to pull compact umbrellas from their bags, but I didn't mind the rain. 

If anything, the rich, earthy scents of rainwater hitting the soil and hot pavement were tangible mixtures of memories of summer rainstorms from my childhood and dancing in the rain with my mother before everything went downhill with her health, when she fainted in a ball gown at a gala for my father's new charity backed by his company. 

My feet hit the pavement just as the steam started to rise from it, hissing as the clouds opened and a deluge poured through the campus. 

Charcoal skies rumbled with thunder as lightning arced across the sky in tune to the staccato rhythm of my heartbeat against my ribcage. 

Lightning struck the ground nearby, and then there she was. 

Hiding from the rain in an alcove between buildings, her backpack death-gripped in her hands as she anxiously surveyed the grounds. 

Everything in me was screaming to go to her, to pull her close back to me and tell her I didn't mean any of it, that it was all fake and that I was only saying those things to her.

But she wouldn't look at me the way she had yesterday morning ever again. 

I didn't stop looking at her even as I passed her, even as her eyes caught mine, and held. 

Even as I slowed in my walk in the middle of the pouring rain just to catch another glimpse of her, like it might be my last. 

Just as I was taking that last step that would take me out of her eye-line, though, she took a step forward. 

Then another. 

And then she was saying my name. 

"Kalen."

Was it the rain or the howling wind that made me imagine it? 

Without thinking, I swept her back into that little alcove between buildings where she'd been hiding and then she was pressed up against a pillar, her backpack long forgotten on the ground, steam and rain rising up all around us until there was a wall of fog and storms shrouding us in darkness away from the prying eyes from the rest of the world. 

Why was she looking at me like that?

Why wasn't she pushing me away?

She should've been pushing me away, it's what I would've done if I was in her position. 

Her face was upturned in supplication towards mine, little droplets of water from the ends of my hair dripping onto her forehead and beading up on her nose until it dripped off and landed on the bow of her plush, pink lips that I'd only just had between my teeth until I decided to let her go, to push her away and to ruin it all. 

So why was I standing there, allowing her to put herself in the line of fire yet again?

What were we both doing there?

"I need to talk to you."

Her voice was honeyed warmth that seeped through the deep chill set in my bones from the wind and rain. 

She was wringing her hands in front of her as barely an inch separated our bodies and I wanted nothing more than to grab them in mine and pull them to me, to pull her entire body to me, but I didn't have that right. 

My goal was to stay away from her and keep her out of this as much as I possibly could, but she was making that so incredibly hard with the way her perfume clung to her skin and changed from flowery to something soft and sugary with the way it mixed with the rain on her neck. 

She was more than intoxicating, and if my father knew the extent of my feelings towards her, there was no telling what he would do. 

Especially if my suspicions were correct in that there was something extremely damaging on the information that her mother stole from him. 

If there was one thing my father was known for, it was how brutal he was when he was cornered. 

I still had the scars to show for it when I decided to show up to a basketball game instead of an SAT prep course he'd already paid for. 

"What's wrong?"

Gracie stared up at me with eyes of liquid amber and I was nothing but the rain puddling at my feet for her. 

I'd do anything to keep her safe from my father, to keep him from getting his clutches in her. 

It might not have been today, or the next day, but he'd have found a way to figure out what we were to each other. 

He always found out. 

Gracie shook her head, her honey-brown curls dancing with coils in the humidity from the rain as they cascaded down her back. 

"Not here--it's something I have to show you, actually.  Something...something that I found."

Something like fear shone in her bright eyes as lightning bounced off the clouds in the sky and reflected back to me in her irises. 

"Yeah, yeah whatever you need.  Where?"

"The library, an hour after they close.  I have a keycard that will get us in, just meet me here."

"Gracie, what's going on?"

She wrung her hands together again, but this time I did grip them with my own.

"You can tell me."

She ripped them from my grip before I could even get another breath down. 

"This is hard enough as it is.  Just listen to me here and meet me when I said, then I'll answer all your questions, okay?"

The anger that I'd been expecting the entire time had finally reared its head, and for that I was almost glad. 

I couldn't handle this sweet, concerned version of her when I was supposed to be trying to make her stay away, but I clearly wasn't doing too good of a job considering the fact that I was about to break my own rules and go and meet her again.

"Fine.  Here, at ten, an hour after the library closes.  I'll be here."

"You'd better.  Or I can't guarantee what will happen next."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

That haunted look from the night she found out her mother had died made a reappearance in her eyes, and she backed away numbly without responding. 

"Just show up.  I'll explain everything then."

And then she was gone, and I was left with more questions than answers, and a longing for a girl I could never let myself have again.

***

Author's Note:

What did you think of this chapter?

We are officially in the second half of this book where things are going to ramp up in action, drama and romance!!

What do you think about this chapter?

What do you think will happen next?

What do you WANT to happen next?!

Until next time my lovely readers,
Kristen :)