I should probably head back now.

Kennedy checked her watch. 8:41 AM. Rebecca hadn't called her to see where she was. Maybe she hadn't woken up yet. Or maybe she didn't care whether or not Kennedy died on the side of the street. Hopefully the former. Probably the latter.

She stood up from the cold steel playground bench below her, wincing slightly as a gust of wind hit her exposed skin. She should have worn a coat, but she hadn't thought about it before leaving Rebecca's apartment that morning. She had just wanted to get out and started walking in a random direction, until she ended up at a playground behind an elementary school.

Kennedy sat on the playground bench for an hour, staring off into space and thinking about how little she had to be grateful for this holiday season. She felt as if everyone had teamed up against her for some reason and she just couldn't figure out why. Maybe if she could figure out why, then she would have some sort of clarity on why everything was just so incredibly awful. And when it would stop being that way.

She started walking back in the vague direction of Rebecca's apartment, still a bit miffed at the fact that Rebecca hadn't reached out to see if she was alive. She was cold, but not freezing, and the pajama pants she had borrowed from Rebecca were too short on her, so her ankles were hit with every puddle she stepped in.

She didn't remember it taking this long to get to the playground from Rebecca's apartment earlier that morning. Or perhaps she was just lost and didn't want to accept it yet.

Kennedy was about to give in and call Rebecca when she noticed a familiar spot a few blocks ahead of her. The apartment was only a few minutes away, and she silently berated herself for almost allowing Rebecca to see even a moment of vulnerability.

She walked in the front door of Rebecca's apartment ten minutes later and saw Rebecca sitting at the kitchen table, sipping something out of a mug and scrolling aimlessly through her phone. Rebecca turned her head when the door opened and Kennedy didn't say a word as she closed it behind her. She wasn't sure whether or not she was upset that Rebecca hadn't reached out—after all, she had tried to frame her for murder.

"Where were you?" Rebecca asked, glancing up from her phone I'm looking incredibly uninterested in where Kennedy had actually been, "I saw your note."

"Well, you didn't seem to read it very well." Kennedy replied coolly, rubbing her hands together to try and warm them up, "I went to a playground and just sat there for a little bit. It was good to clear my head."

"And you did that in 40 degree weather with no coat?" Rebecca raised her eyebrows, "I feel like that would be more miserable than therapeutic."

Kennedy shrugged, becoming more and more irritated with Rebecca as the conversation went on, "Well, it was therapeutic for me. Do you check your phone when you wake up in the middle of the night?"

Rebecca seems startled at the abrupt change in the topic of conversation. "Yeah, I usually check it when I wake up in the middle of the night. I guess I just didn't wake up that much last night, or I would have seen your texts."

Kennedy nodded, not trying to hide the fact that she didn't believe Rebecca.

"Sure, that sounds believable. Not made up at all." She sighed and headed for Rebecca's room, "I'm going to head to the gym. Can I borrow some workout clothes?"

She was already in Rebecca's room when Rebecca replied with a faint 'yes,' not really caring about what the answer was. She grabbed the largest sports bra she could find and a pair of shorts that she knew she would end up regretting when she stepped foot outside and walked out the front door five minutes after she had walked in.

She then remembered that she didn't have her car with her.

Kennedy turned around and walked back into the apartment to find Rebecca standing two feet from the door, car keys in hand.

"Here."

"Thanks."

The gym had always been a place of refuge for Kennedy, and she had been forced to stop using the Clemson University gym when she was placed on probation pending the outcome of her trial. So, she had started using a local gym that was large enough for her to move about virtually unseen.

She started her workout at the squat rack, increasing the weight after every set until she hit her previous personal record on each lift that she could think of using the rack for. 37 minutes in, she was sweating more than she had in weeks. It felt like every drop of sweat was releasing just the tiniest bit of the anger and resentment she had been feeling since the trial began—or really, since she had decided to do something to make Hank pay for what he had done to her. What he had taken from her.

Kennedy headed for the treadmill to finish out her workout, Beyonce blasting in her earbuds and her mind completely turned off to the rest of the world. Nothing else mattered at the moment, because she was by herself, still a free woman, and didn't have to think about anything going on outside of her treadmill.

But then a hand appeared next to the arrows dictating her speed and started turning the speed down, causing Kennedy to look to her right with a horrified expression on her face.

"Excuse me?" She took out her earbuds and Check Up On It stopped playing, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

The woman who had touched her treadmill looked like she was about thirty, with a long brunette ponytail and sneakers that looked like they were from two centuries ago. Her needle-thin eyebrows were raised almost into her already receding hairline and she was shoving a phone into Kennedy's face.

"Hi, I'm Tasha with Chopped magazine. Just wondering if you had any comment on Kaylie Ernest's story about you in our publication this morning? Or your new nickname? The 'Clemson Killer'?"

Kennedy stared at the woman in complete silence as people started to notice them. Her one safe space throughout everything going on in her life had been invaded, and now she truly had nowhere to go. She was trapped. And she was staring at this woman, Tasha from Chopped, with wide scared eyes and a mouth slightly open in shock.

"This is bullshit." She finally managed to whisper, grabbing the keys to Rebecca's car and getting off the treadmill. "You should be embarrassed."

Kennedy walked out of the gym with her head held high, holding back the tears until she got into the car. She pulled out of the parking lot, Tasha watching her from the gym's front steps, and drove over to a parking lot that used to belong to a Wendy's but was now full of crackheads who didn't even notice her pass by.

When her car was parked and the headlights turned off, Kennedy Abrams sobbed and screamed, with no one there to listen.

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Rebecca rolled out of bed at 8:46 AM Sunday morning, went through her skincare routine without thinking about it, and walked out of her room to actually find Kennedy asleep on the couch. She had heard her come into the apartment late the night before after leaving for the gym around 9:00 in the morning. She had left Rebecca without a car for the entire day, which had proved to be a problem when Celeste needed help jumpstarting her own car. But Rebecca was at the point where she had stopped caring about what Kennedy did that was an inconvenience to Rebecca. It just made her life so much more negative.

She sat down at the kitchen table with a buttered English muffin and a cup of coffee in her hands. She grabbed an apple out of the bowl on the table and bit into it, then opened her laptop and went to the Karl Farrow Wilcox LLC website. Nothing had changed since the last time she looked at the website, except for the fact that she no longer cared if Lydia saw that she was investigating. It was still full of the same typos and missing links and didn't seem to account for the fact that one of its three cofounders was now dead. Although, if a website hadn't been used for a couple of years, Rebecca supposed that they wouldn't feel the need to update it when one of them passed.

She didn't know what she was looking for as she went through the website but looking at it made her feel like she was doing something instead of being useless. She knew that she didn't have to do anything to help Kennedy, especially after everything that Kennedy had done to her, and yet the people-pleasing part of her still wanted to be helpful in some way. Especially with the defense witnesses beginning their questioning the next day.

Rebecca had been staring at the website for over 30 minutes, and when the clock hit 10:00 exactly, a knock sounded on the apartment door, as if someone had been waiting for a specific time to knock. Rebecca didn't get up right away, waiting to see if it was important enough for the person to knock again. After 10 seconds of silence, the knock sounded again this time louder and with more intensity.

She got up entered it through the door, checking the living room as she went to see that Kennedy was still fast asleep—the knocking hadn't woken her.

Rebecca opened the door slowly to see a very unwelcome face on the other side.

"Hi Rebecca," Lydia Farrow-Abrams said, "Can I come in?"

Rebecca remembered what website was up on her laptop, in full view of the front door, and immediately walked outside to join Lydia, closing the door behind her.

"I don't think that's a good idea. Kennedy's asleep, and I don't want to wake her. What can I do for you?" Rebecca asked, watching as Lydia tried to control the emotions she was feeling on her face. Lydia seemed different this morning then she had in a previous meetings with Rebecca—she didn't seem as self-assured as she usually did, and Rebecca couldn't tell if she was upset with the situation or with something that didn't have to do with her stepdaughter.

"I wanted to give something to Kennedy, as a sort of peace offering," Lydia said, despite the fact that she did not appear to be holding anything, "And as a token of goodwill for her trial tomorrow. I heard that the defense witnesses are beginning their testimonies tomorrow."

"You heard? I expected you and Christopher would have been sitting in the front row, rooting for Kennedy to fail throughout the entire trial so far."

"Well, I'm assuming that you've been there every day, so you should have noticed that we haven't been there since opening statements were given." Lydia retorted, her anger at the situation becoming more obvious. "So, Can I give something to my stepdaughter? I stopped by her apartment, but the girls there said that she hadn't been home since before court on Friday. I figured your apartment was my next best bet."

Rebecca shook her head, standing firm in her decision to not let Lydia see Kennedy.

"I can deliver whatever you have for her. She's asleep right now, and I won't be waking her up to see you." She said, surprised at her ability to stand up to someone who terrified her as much as Lydia did.

Kennedy's stepmother's face contorted into something Rebecca had never seen before as she tried to remain respectful in her anger, "Fine then. I will not be giving it to you to pass along. I guess I will see you girls in court... if we decide to show up."

"See you there." Rebecca turns without looking back and close the apartment door behind her, locking it quickly.

"What was that?" Rebecca spun around to see Kennedy standing in the kitchen, sipping out of Rebecca's cup of coffee. "Were you talking to someone?"

Rebecca shook her head, making a split-second decision to not tell Kennedy about Lydia's visit.

"No, I was just going out to take out the trash." She hoped that Kennedy didn't notice the overflowing garbage can sitting next to the sink, "How did you sleep? It seems like you got a better night's rest than you did last night." Rebecca changed the subject, again hoping that Kennedy wouldn't notice.

As Kennedy began to tell Rebecca about her sleep schedule, Rebecca thought about the last time there were secrets between the two of them. She just hoped that this one wouldn't result in anyone getting arrested.