My nightmares returned when I was released from the hospital. I never remembered what they were about, but after waking up screaming three nights in a row, I reluctantly started taking my sleeping pills again. I stopped having the nightmares, but the pills always left me feeling groggy for most of the morning, which I hated.

            When school started up again, I was back on crutches. I wasn’t happy about it, but I knew that I’d be back to my cane in another week or so, so I didn’t let it bother me too much. The semester was starting to wind down, so final projects and exams became a bit of a worry. And it wasn’t only my own projects that I had to worry about; Chase was going to be starting his project with Vicky Morgan tonight, and I knew I had to be there for him, no matter what my feelings were about her.

            Chase took me straight to his place after school. Bev and Carson were still at work, so we had the house to ourselves until Vicky got there. Chase decided that spending that time in his bedroom was an acceptable pastime, and I couldn’t say that I didn’t agreed. We spent a pleasurable hour together, then got dressed again and grabbed a snack from the kitchen. We moved into the living room and I stretched out on the couch with my notes so I could do some studying. Starlight settled himself contentedly on my stomach, and Chase sat with my feet in his lap.

            When the doorbell rang, Chase groaned and reluctantly got to his feet. I heard him go to the front door and open it, and then a moment later, he came back in. He resumed his position with my feet in his lap while a girl with light brown hair and blue eyes came into the room. She was looking around curiously at everything, but her eyes narrowed when she saw me on the couch. “What are you doing here?” she asked snidely.

            “Nice to see you to, Vicky,” I replied drolly. “I’m here because I’m spending time with my boyfriend and our child.”

            Her brows winged up. “Child?”

            I nodded solemnly and stroked the kitten that was still purring on my stomach. “This is Starlight. We adopted him a few weeks ago. I know it may seem a little soon, but we couldn’t say no to his little face.”

            Chase snorted, but didn’t say anything. Vicky just looked at me like I was on crack. “You are so weird,” she muttered, before turning to Chase. “Should we get started on the project?”

            He shrugged and glanced over at me. I smirked at him and then looked back at my book. “Just pretend I’m not here. It’d probably be easiest if you just gave Chase something to do, since it doesn’t seem like he’s going to talk to you.”

            Vicky sighed loudly before looking over the project outline. “Fine, you can just look up foods from the country we’re researching.”

            Chase grabbed his laptop from the table beside the couch and placed it on my legs. He opened it and started typing into a search engine. I concentrated fully on my own book once more, and that’s how we spent the next hour. My leg started to get stiff, so I shifted a little, trying to get into a more comfortable position without disturbing Starlight. When Chase looked over at me questioningly, I smiled apologetically. “My leg is cramping up,” I explained.

            Understanding lit his face, and he shut his laptop and put it beside the couch. Then he put both hands on my left leg and started to massage it gently. Slowly, the muscles loosened up, and I sighed and closed my eyes in appreciation. It had been weird the first couple of times that he had massaged my leg for me, but I was used to it by now.

            He slid his hands under the leg of my jeans and pushed it up slightly so he could rub my skin. He was careful of the spot where I’d had surgery just under a week ago, but other than that he applied equal pressure everywhere.

            I became so relaxed that I was nearly falling asleep when Vicky suddenly spoke up. I’d almost forgotten that she was there, since it had been so quiet in the room. “God, how can you touch that horrible thing?” she asked in disgust. “It’s so gross!”

            I automatically tried to pull my leg out of Chase’s grip, but he refused to let go. I looked at his face, and the expression in his eyes had me swallowing back the words I’d been about to say. I’d only seen that look once or twice, but I knew him well enough to know by now that nothing good was going to happen now. I waited in tense silence for him to speak. When he did, he said only two words. “Get out.”

            Vicky’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped. “What?”

            Chase gently moved my feet off his lap and stood up, his whole body rigid with anger. “I said get out.” His voice was low, but the anger in it was enough to send shivers down my spine. When Vicky just remained sitting with her mouth open, Chase’s control snapped. “Get the hell out of my house!” he shouted.

            That caused Vicky to jerk out of her stupor, and she scrambled to gather her things. A moment later, she scurried out of the room. The sound of the front door slamming reverberated through the house as Chase turned back to me. He knelt by my head and ran a finger down my cheek. “You okay?”

            I nodded speechlessly and he went back to the end of the couch and resumed his previous position, minus the laptop. He stared off into space as he absently stroked my legs lightly. When I finally got over the shock of hearing him yell like that, I nudged him lightly with one foot. “Told you she didn’t like me.”

            Chase turned his head to look at me with one brow raised. “You failed to mention that she’s an evil bitch.”

            “Sorry, I thought that was implied,” I said dryly. “What are you going to do now?”

            He shrugged. “I’ll just tell my teacher that I can’t work with her. Either I’ll get a different partner or I’ll fail. I don’t really care; there is no way in hell I am working with that girl again.”

            “I don’t want you to fail,” I murmured.

            “Don’t worry, I’ll figure something out. Want to go get something to eat?”

            I agreed and we spent the rest of the evening just relaxing and not doing anything related to school. I was a little worried about what would happen in Chase’s class, but he seemed to be pretty laidback about it, so I decided to just wait and see what happened.

            The next day, Chase was waiting for me outside the cafeteria and he was once again scowling. I brought him to the same stairwell as I had last time so I could talk to him. “How did it go?”

            “I hate that teacher,” he grumbled.

            “Did he fail you?” He shook his head. “Are you stuck with Vicky?” Another head shake. “Then what happened?”

            He crossed his arms over his chest. “I got paired with Adam.”

            I blinked a few times as I processed his words. “As in, my ex-boyfriend Adam?”

            “Yes, that one,” he snapped.

            I stared at him for a minute before groaning and rubbing my hands over my face. “Now what do we do?”

            He settled his hands on my hips and pulled me a little closer to him. “I don’t know. It’s going to be a little awkward.”

            I let out a humorless laugh. “That’s putting it mildly.” I peered up at his face. “Do you still want me to be there when you have to work on the project?”

            Chase hesitated for a second before nodding. “Yeah, I don’t want to do it without you.” He sighed and dipped his head to give me a light kiss. “We’ll figure it out tonight I guess. He’s supposed to come over so we can work on it.”

            “Look on the bright side. At least we know he won’t be an ass to me.”

            He snorted. “Oh yeah, I’ll just have to worry about him having inappropriate thoughts about you. No big deal.”

            “Well, I’ll only be having inappropriate thoughts about you. Doesn’t that count for something?”

            His lips tugged up into a reluctant smile and he kissed me again. “It counts for a lot,” he murmured against my lips. His arms tightened around me, shuffling me closer until I was pressed against his body. He deepened the kiss and I wrapped my arms around him snugly.

            A throat clearing had us springing apart, and I looked over my shoulder to see a teacher standing there with a disapproving frown. “None of that on school property,” she scolded us.

            Chase and I looked at each other and barely managed to keep straight faces as I hastily apologized. We moved past her, out of the stairwell, and went to the cafeteria to eat. My lips were still tingling from that kiss, and I saw Chase shoot me a few glances throughout the rest of the lunch period. I’m pretty sure Cindy noticed the looks as well, but she didn’t say anything.

            When the school day ended, Chase brought me to his house once again. We wasted no time going to his bedroom, just like yesterday. Only this time, the doorbell rang before we even had a chance to get all our clothes off. Chase looked at his watch and frowned. “Damn it, he’s early.”

            “I’ll get the door. You take a minute to… calm yourself down.” I put my shirt back on hurriedly and grabbed my crutches. I made my way out of his room and to the front door. I opened it and gave Adam a small smile. “Hey.”

            “Hey,” he responded. He looked me up and down, and then raised an eyebrow. “Did I interrupt something?”

            I glanced down at myself and cursed when I realized my shirt was on inside out. “Um, maybe?” I said with a blush.

            He rolled his eyes. “No need to be embarrassed. I remember what it’s like.”

            I winced. “Uh, maybe don’t say anything like that around Chase, okay? He’s already not happy about having to work on this project with you.”

            “Don’t worry; I have no desire to get into a fight with him. I have a feeling he’d win. Are you going to let me in?”

            I stepped back to let him in and then closed the door behind him. I led him into the living room and a moment later, Chase came in while pulling his shirt back on. I saw Adam’s expression waver slightly when he caught a glimpse of the scars on Chase’s body, but luckily he didn’t say anything. Chase came to my side and kissed the top of my head before leading me to the couch. I didn’t have my history book this time, so I curled up beside him with the TV remote.

            Adam sat in a chair to my right and pulled out his books. “So, I did some research with my other partner before we got switched around.” He paused for a moment. “Why did we get switched, anyways? I don’t even know who you were working with.”

            “Vicky Morgan,” I replied. “She said something unpleasant to me yesterday and Chase kind of snapped.”

            Adam’s expression turned icy. “What did she say?”

            I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.” Her comments had bothered me more than I’d let on, and I didn’t want to talk about it.

            Chase put a hand on my thigh and rubbed it gently. He brought his lips down to my ear. “I told you not to worry about what she said,” he murmured.

            I shivered as his warm breath blew against my ear. “It doesn’t bother me,” I lied. “I don’t listen to anything she says anyways.”

            Adam regarded us curiously before turning his attention to Chase. “What did she say?”

            Chase hesitated a moment. “She saw Dana’s leg,” he finally said.

            Surprise and then understanding dawned on Adam’s face. “I’ve never understood why she hates you so much, Dana.”

            “She had a crush on Luke, but he wouldn’t give her the time of day. She decided to blame me for that, even though I had nothing to do with it.” Starlight chose that moment to leap up onto my lap, so I concentrated on stroking him. “Look, can we just forget it? It’s over and done with. You should work on your project.”

            I think Adam wanted to argue, but something in my expression must have deterred him, because he agreed and gave some papers to Chase for him to read. Much like yesterday, the time went by quietly, though I had the TV on this time. Chase kept touching me in small ways, and I think part of the reason he did it was because Adam was there. I was tempted to be a little annoyed about it, but I knew he was still a bit insecure about anything good in his life so I let it go.

            After an hour of them working on their project, Adam said he had to get going. But before he left the room, he hesitated for a moment. “Dana, do you think I could talk to Chase alone for a minute?”

            I raised my brows and opened my mouth to protest, but Chase cut me off. “It’s okay. Why don’t you go hang out in my room for a few minutes?”

            I searched his face closely, but didn’t detect any anger in him, so I agreed. I went to his room and five minutes later he came in as well. “What was that about?”

            He sat beside me on his bed. “Maybe he’s not as much of an ass as I originally thought,” he mumbled grudgingly.

            “What did he say to you?”

            He lifted his head to look at me. “Basically he threatened to kill me if I hurt you.”

            “And that makes him less of an ass?” I asked incredulously.

            He grinned. “Yeah.”

            “I will never understand guys,” I muttered.

            “You don’t have to understand us,” he replied. “Although there is one aspect of me that you should always know.”

            “Oh really? And what’s that?”

            Before I had a chance to react, he had me pinned to the bed. “I always finish what I start.” He sealed his mouth over mine, effectively distracting me from my thoughts about how confusing men really are.

************************************************************************

I apologize if this chapter sucks; I didn't edit it at all. Let me know if there are any major mistakes. I was debating about having Vicky become a nice person, but I decided it was more fun for her to be evil :-D.

A few people have expressed interest in me writing an R-rated scene from chapter 15, where Dana and Chase sleep together for the first time. If enough people tell me they would be interested in reading that, then I'll write it and post it for you guys. I guess that's my question for this chapter lol.

Please vote and comment. I can't put enough emphasis on how much your reaction to my chapters really does influence how often I update. Hope you liked the chapter!