"What are you doing here?"

I looked at my mother in fear. It had completely slipped my mind that she hated Parker. I mean, I understand why she would, he's an asshole.

But, since she caught him here, that means my ass is in trouble too. "He came over to study. I told you that remember."

"You said you're friend named Scottie was coming over, you never said anything about a Knight stepping foot in our house," she spat in disgust.

"I didn't know he was coming over either. He's friends with Scottie and he also needed some help with his math homework. It's not like I could've predicted this," I tried to explain to her.

She had a thick skull and was very stubborn, so I knew convincing her to let him stay would take a lot more work.

"You could've not let him in. It's not that hard to just shut the door."

"Shutting the door in his face would've been rude, especially since his friend was there. I would've embarrassed myself."

"That's still no excuse. If he doesn't leave our house in the next 5 minutes, you are grounded for a month and I am cancelling your party."

"Is everything okay?"

Standing at the top of the stairs was Scottie with his bag in his hand. Parker responded to his friend before I could. "Everything's fine. But my mother just texted me saying I need to come home now."

"Oh, okay. I guess I can take you home." He turned to me. "Blaze, I'm sorry but it looks like we have to leave earlier than planned. We can continue this another day."

We said our goodbyes and they left.

The moment the door shut, I turned back to my mother. "Why did you do that?" I shouted. "You had no excuse. I don't care if we both don't like him. You just made us look like fools in front of my friend. Why do you even hate him that much anyways?"

"Because he's a Knight," she scoffed.

"Is that supposed to mean something to me? It's not like he's ever done anything to you" I shouted. I was trying hard not to raise my voice at my mother, but I was angry right now. Yes, I hated him because he was an arrogant asshole who was always competing with me for everything, but that does not mean he deserves the hate my mother is throwing at him.

He's never done anything to her. And she was embarrassing me in front of my friends.

"I guess it's time I told you what happened all those years ago. Come, sit and I'll explain." She patted the seat next to her. Confused and a little scared, I sat down.

"It all started 40 years ago when your father and I first came to America. Our parents were friends and decided to come to this country together to start a business. Shortly after we got here, my father met Parker Knight's grandfather, Alex Knight."

"They became friends and Alex helped your grandfathers with their business. They were doing fine for a couple years, but then Alex betrayed them. He thought they were unfit to run a business, so behind there backs, he got himself appointed CEO and fired your grandfathers."

"Ever since that day, our families have hated each other. We were new to this country and they took advantage of us and stole our money. We were left with nothing, and for a couple of years we actually went back to Sweden, but eventually we came back. And when we came back we found out that Alex had turned it into a multi-million dollar business."

"All the Knights are greedy and selfish and don't care who they walk over to get to the top."

"Wow," I gasped.

I knew there had to be a reason why my mother seemed to hate Parker, but I never expected it to be something like that. His grandparents essentially robbed mine of the new life they were trying to start.

I wonder if they are still running the business to this day. I understand now why my mother was so mad when she saw him. Their family ruined our families lives.

"It makes sense why you would hate the Knight's. What they did to our family was horrible and unforgivable. But at the end of the day, I still go to school with Parker, I'm friends with his best friend, and we are working on a school project together. It's going to be hard to avoid him."

She let out a long sigh and rubbed her face. "I know. All I'm asking is that you don't bring him home for now. Work on your projects at the library or something. He's a Knight and you never know what they could be planning."

I laughed a little. She had no idea. I promised her that he wouldn't come over again and that I would only talk to him if it was for school.

Of course, that's going to be almost impossible. I may hate the guy, but completely cutting him off like that is too much, even for me.

After our talk, my mother made some dinner for herself since I already ate.

While she was cooking I went upstairs and took a shower, which was a pain because I had to make sure not to get my stitches wet. When the water ran cold, I turned off the shower and got out.

My pajamas were sitting on my bed, so I walked back to my room and got changed.

A notification lit up my phone that was charging on my nightstand.

DF: So did you get in trouble with your mom?

Me: No, but she told me why she doesn't like you.

DF: Why is that? Does she think I'm going to get you pregnant or something?

I rolled my eyes at his assumption. I wouldn't be caught dead pregnant with his baby, even if he was the last man on earth.

Me: What?! Ew, no.

Me: Basically your grandfather stole my grandfathers' company and that led to generations of hatred.

The three little dots that told me he was typing appeared and disappeared many times before he eventually left me on seen. I guess he didn't know what to say.

Maybe his family had told him a different version of the story, a version where we are the bad guys.

I didn't think too hard on it because I was exhausted from the last couple hours. Instead, I just scrolled through social media and went on YouTube for a little bit until I eventually fell asleep.

---

The next 2 weeks flew by faster (and slower) than I could imagine. My party was tomorrow and I had been preparing for it the last couple of days.

Since I hadn't been at school during this time I had plenty of time to plan stuff. Some of the activities for my party got lost in all the confusion of moving the date of the party. It wasn't that hard to find everything, though.

Other than that the only things I've been doing is catching up on my school work Sophia and Stephen would bring me every day, cleaning and reorganizing my room, and texting my friends.

Over the course of these 2 weeks, I'd gotten a little closer with Scottie, which was a plus. He'd been over here twice since the incident and each time I had managed to help him get a little better at math.

He was still struggling, but he caught on quicker than before. At this rate, he might have an A by the end of the semester.

Parker on the other hand I haven't talked to in a week. He texted me about the project and when we could work on it next but I told him I'm not allowed to leave the house for a couple more days.

I did tell him that we could work on the project today after school, because I'm getting my stitches out this afternoon.

I think he was a little relieved to here that because now he doesn't have to tiptop around me anymore and he doesn't have to feel guilty which, by the way, shocks me.

This sounds rude, but I never thought he would be capable of feeling an emotion other than anger or arrogance (if that even counts).

Glancing at my clock, I saw that it was almost 2 so I rushed downstairs to eat some lunch before my mom took me to get my stitches out.

Her work let her get off early so she could take me, even though I swore to her I could drive myself. My car had already been fixed days ago.

Still, she insisted on driving me there.

I made myself a pb&j sandwich and shovelled it in my mouth. Crumbs fell out of my mouth as I ran outside to my mom's car.

She had gotten here in the middle of making my lunch, so I didn't have any time to eat.

"Put your seat belt on Blaze."

"Msdsasf."

"What?"

Chewing my food as fast as I could, I swallowed so I could respond. "I said 'hurry up because I told Parker we could work on the project after this'."

On the way there, I got a phone call from my brother. I hurriedly answered it, eager to talk to him. It's been a couple days since we last talked.

"Hey Austin. Why'd you call?"

"Can't a big brother call his little sister without an ulterior motive?" I let out a weird mix between a snort and a laugh that had my mom looking at me in disgust.

"Not you. Usually when you call it's to tell me you need something or something happened, so which is it?"

Last time he called me, it was because he needed me to Venmo him 5 bucks so he could buy something at a gas station. We still talked and caught up, but that's why he called.

And the time before that it was because he needed me to keep something a secret from our mom.

"I'm offended." I could practically see him putting his hand on his heart in mock hurt over the phone.

"What do you want?" I asked again.

"I was calling to tell you that my flight got delayed so I'm going to be late to your party. But don't worry, I'll still be there."

"That's fine. As long as you are still coming. I feel like I haven't seen you in forever. Me and mom just got to the hospital so I'll talk to you later. Bye."

"Bye."

I shoved my phone in my back pocket and got out of the car. The process of getting my stitches out didn't take as long as I thought it would.

We were done within 30 minutes, and since we had extra time to spare, my mom decided to take my shopping for a new bathing suit.

I still had to be a little careful with my scar in terms of taking care of it. They even gave me a little instruction pamphlet on how to take care of scars.

We arrived at the mall after arguing about what we were going to eat for dinner after we're done shopping.

My vote was for Chinese takeout, but my mom was insisting on making spaghetti (gross).

But, in the end she won the argument since she is my mother and over rules what I thinks. "I still don't get why we can't get Chinese for dinner," I grumbled as we walked in a store I had never been in.

"Because, always eating out is not healthy. Plus, we just had McDonald's for dinner 2 nights ago. We don't need to be eating out again," she explained.

I mumbled a 'fine' and then turned my attention to the swim suits. They were arranged on the rack in rainbow order which was very satisfying to look at.

Each color was organized by design and each design was organized by size. I wasn't sure what color suited me, so I started with red since it was at the beginning.

My mother was somewhere else in the store, probably looking at their shoes. She was obsessed with those thing I swear.

After spending a couple minutes searching through swimsuits the color of fire trucks, I still couldn't find anything so I moved on to the oranges.

And again I had no luck finding a swim suit, so I moved on to the next color.

It was a tedious process, searching through the entire rack. There were probably hundreds to choose from. It didn't help that I didn't have a vague idea what I wanted.

The first few colors didn't produce any crush worthy suits, so I finally moved on to the blue. It was one of the few colors I knew looked good on me, besides green. But green was too cliché for me.

A red-head wearing green? That's so overdone.

The first swimsuit I saw I knew was the one. Damn I should've just started here. Then I could've saved myself the torture of the last half an hour.

The swimsuit was a royal blue. The top was a typical bikini style with two straps tying around my neck, and a thick strip of fabric under the chest part. The bottoms were high waisted and had a thick piece of fabric near the waist.

It wasn't super fancy but it would make me look good in front of Scottie, and that's all I cared about right now.

I know that makes me sound shallow, worrying what a guy thinks, but you would be doing the same thing if your crush was coming to your party.

I called my mom over so she could approve of the swimsuit. She had been busy talking to one of the sales ladies for god knows what.

"It's good. Now let's go, I need to hurry and make dinner before your father comes home." She grabbed my hand and dragged me over to the checkout area.

The swimsuit only ended up being $30 for the top and bottom which surprised me. As the lady checking us out handed me my bag, I heard a voice behind me.

"Well, well, we'll. If it isn't the boyfriend stealing bitch from school."

I whipped my head around so fast I almost gave myself whiplash. "What did you just say to me?" I snarled.

She had no right to call me a bitch, especially coming from someone as mean and cold-hearted as her.

"I called you a bitch. And don't think I didn't forget about you slapping me. I will be getting you back for that. Just wait."

"Please," I scoffed, "your threats don't scare me. The worse you could do is hit me, and I highly punt that would do any damage."

"You want to bet?" She responded. Next thing I know, her fist is flying into my left eye and I'm falling to the ground.

Where's my mother? I thought. She should've stopped Apple before it escalated. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother come running over to me.

Of course she had gotten distracted by the shoes again, such a typical thing for her to do.

Slowly, I stood up and brushed off my clothes. "Fine. Just know, you asked for this." Without warning, I took off running towards Apple, leaving my mom in shock behind me.

-----

Don't forget to vote and comment!

Also, I apologize for not posting in almost a month. School has been really stressing me out lately and I haven't had the motivation to write. Plus, I just had my finals and I started a new job, so I've been kind of busy.

I know this may sound repetitive, because I've said this before, but I promise I will try to do better in the future. I tend to write a few chapters at a time and then completely forget about my story for weeks at a time, but I promise I will work on it.

I am a horrible procrastinator (if you can't tell). Anyways, I hoped you guys enjoyed this chapter and look forward to the next one. Things are going to start getting interesting between Scottie, Parker, and Blaze.

It will be posted sometime in the next couple days.