dress up at her house and have a sleepover after Melanie's party, which was a pretty great idea in my opinion.

I mean I was going to spend time with my best friend, at her house, where she lived with her family: her mother, father, and brother.

If that wasn't awesome, I had no idea what to call it.

So yeah, in conclusion, I was pretty excited about the sleepover because I wanted to hang out with Caelum. I continued my tutoring session with him after we exchanged apologies during the week, but a part of me still felt guilty. I hadn't told him about the kiss we'd shared in his bedroom, and he didn't remember it. It wasn't any easier when all I could think about during our sessions were of us making out.

"Daesyn." Emery poked me. "Why are you staring blankly at the wall? We're already late."

Shaking the thoughts out of my head, I straightened out my red dress and turned to her. "How do I look?"

"I told you this dress was the one, you look so pretty!" she cooed. "The red lipstick makes your lips delicious-looking. Caelum won't be able to take his eyes off them."

I knew my face had turned the color of my lips, so I cleared my throat and gestured towards her dress. "Don't you want to know what I think about your dress?"

Giggling, she faked a bow and struck a pose. "How do I look?"

I picked the hairbrush from the dressing table and used it as a microphone. "Hello ladies and gentlemen," I said. "Mademoiselle Emery wanted to look super sexy so she picked a black dress. My fair lady, it literally looks like you're being peppered with kisses all over. I can't even—"

"Are you guys going to stand here and compliment yourselves all night or..." I heard Caelum's voice, and I choked on my saliva.

"What the hell, creeper!" I yelled after my choking spree. "You can't just creep up on somebody whenever you want!"

"So, I can creep up on you whenever you want?"

"Shut up."

He shrugged. "Are you guys going or should I go back to sleep?"

Glancing down at his outfit, I hid the smile threatening to spill. He wore a jean jacket on a black hoodie and regular cotton Chinos. He looked so good.

Emery picked her purse from the table, then turned to Caelum. "You could go back to sleep Caelum, nobody cares," she said, waving her purse around. "Plus, Daesyn and I can fight away the wild horny wolves at the party. Alone."

Caelum opened his mouth to speak, but Emery was already out of the door.

I dropped the hairbrush on the table and picked my small bag from the table. "So... Caelum Jensen, huh?"

He quirked an eyebrow, maintaining eye contact with me. I moved closer to him. "Caelum Jensen," I tested the name on my tongue, and I furrowed my eyebrows. "Have we met before?"

"How would I know?"

"But you keep asking me if we've met before." I lifted my hand to run it through my hair, but Caelum caught it and dropped it.

"You don't want to mess up your hair before you arrive at the party." He smiled, and I completely forgot what we were talking about. With Caelum, things were no longer easy and hard, but easy and hard and complicated. He indirectly rejected me but he kept giving these mixed signals that made me wonder what he really thought of me.

"Daesyn, you look so pretty!" Wyatt said immediately as I approached the thirty flight of stairs. "I could stare at your beauty all day long."

"Shut up Wyatt," Caelum muttered from behind me and I rushed down the stairs. Was he doing stuff like that purposely, or did he really want me to meet my death tonight?

"Excuse you," Wyatt countered. "I'm just complimenting the beauty in front of me."

"Well, you shouldn't!" Caelum glared at him, and poor Wyatt raised his hands in surrender.

Wyatt was spending his Christmas holiday with the Jensen's—so I was told. Their school had already closed though Christmas wasn't until like two and a half weeks. Emery said he didn't want to be 'bored out of his mind,' so he decided to spend time with his favorite cousins.

"Chill out," Emery said, walking into the living room, a cookie hanging off her mouth. "No need to go all caveman-y on Wyatt."

Caelum narrowed his eyes at the both of them, before muttering an "I'll be waiting outside, so hurry up."

I giggled at how annoyed he looked before he left the house, and I programmed my brain to believe Caelum was being his usual self and not burning from jealousy. He was PMS'ing like the normal Caelum, nothing else.

Yeah, and the sky was green.

Letting out a small squeal, away from Wyatt's prying eyes, I walked up to Emery and quietly asked her if Caelum was jealous. With a large grin, she mouthed, "how would I know?" before leaving the house.

The drive to Melanie's felt kind of short since we—Emery, Wyatt, and me—sang along, like maniacs, to Drake's Toosie Slide.

Melanie's house, under the dark sky, looked breathtakingly gorgeous, and I obviously took my time admiring it. When I returned my attention to the people I had come with, I realized it was only a person standing beside me.

Caelum.

"So..." I said as we walked towards the entrance of the house. "What do you think about the price of diesel in the black market?"

Caelum shook his head, smiling. My insides fluttered once again knowing I was the reason for his smile. Little quirking of the lips, upturns of the mouth, and small grins from him had become common these past few weeks, but I still wasn't contented.

I wanted to be the reason why his eyes lit up, why the full-fledged grin on his face appeared, or why the happy laughs I could listen to all day surfaced. I wanted all of it, but Caelum just wasn't giving it to me.

"Daesyn." I felt something poke my arm, and I turned.

"What?" I asked.

"You stopped walking, and you looked so poetic by staring into the distance," he said, chuckling, and my face flamed.

The party was already in full swing.

I grabbed Caelum's free hand with mine, and together, we passed through the sea of bodies in search of Melanie.

"Once again, happy birthday Melanie," I said and got a hug in response. It was kind of awkward since my left hand held the gift I was going to give her, and the other was still holding onto Caelum.

"Hey Clara," I greeted the dark-skinned girl beside Melanie before turning to the cousins. "Thanks for ditching us out there, Emery and Wyatt."

They smiled.

"Happy birthday Melanie." Caelum chucked his wrapped gift into her hands with a nervous laugh, and I bit my lips to prevent myself from cooing at his cuteness.

"Oh my god!" Melanie squealed before literally throwing herself over Caelum, and I narrowed my eyes at her dramatics. "Thank you so much, honey. This means a lot!"

Honey?

Because of the hug—I hoped—Caelum let go of my hand and gave her a small pat on her back. To say I was burning with jealousy would be an understatement. My eyes involuntarily went to Clara's and I glared at her when she lifted her middle finger and mouthed a 'you're fucked."

I cleared my throat like none of that affected me, before shoving my gift to Melanie's back—since she was still 'oh so deep' into the appreciation mode with Caelum.

She finally I don't know... unhugged herself from Caelum, straightening her white ball dress in the process before collecting my gift. "What did you get me?" she asked.

I shrugged. "It wouldn't be a surprise if I told you now, would it?"

To be completely honest, getting Melanie a gift after coming to her house that Friday proved to be insanely hard. The girl was loaded and she could practically get anything she wanted from the mall with her money, so I made her something that couldn't be bought.

It could still be bought, but whatever.

So apparently, I wrote multiple notes telling her why I loved her, asking her if she could remember some stuff that happened, and put them into a jar. I had also included a mug I'd bought when Emery and I went to the mall that said 'break our friendship and die,' a pajama set, and a necklace with a llama on it. I hoped she knew it genuinely came from my heart.

When I told Emery about the letters, she had chuckled and said some stuff about her not being able to wait for her birthday. What that sentence indirectly meant was our bond was stronger than the one I had with Melanie, so she couldn't wait to see what I was going to get her.

Melanie nodded. "True. I'll be opening all your gifts soon and I can't wait."

Emery and Wyatt had already left, and Melanie looked like she was going to join in the partying soon so I smiled at her. "I didn't tell you this earlier, but you look gorgeous as always. Seventeen looks fucking good on you."

Grinning, she pulled me into another hug. "I really didn't want to cry today Daesyn. Well, at least not now. But I'm so lucky to have you as a friend. This means a lot, I promise."

When she pulled back, I could see the tears forming in her eyes and I gave her a smile in return. With the gifts in her hands, she gestured towards the dance floor before walking away.

"I love your hair!" Clara yelled. I lifted my middle finger to her, repeating the 'you're fucked' she said to me earlier, before dragging Caelum and walking to God knows where.

I heard Clara's 'fuck you' over the loud music, and I chuckled to myself.

Caelum freed his hands from mine but before I opened my mouth to speak, he intertwined our fingers together and I turned to mush. He led me through the dance floor, out of the living room, into and out of the kitchen—where he picked a bottle of alcohol and lemonade—and finally outside.

"Oh wow." I grinned. "How did we not get lost?"

"I have a great sense of direction," he said as we sat on the bench. "Thank you very much." The cold breeze blew through my hair and against my skin and I shivered a bit. I then realized how stupid the decision to ditch my coat was. I had thought I could endure the December chill for the long walk from the car and into the house.

Caelum wrapped his arms around me, pulling me to him and shielding me from the brisk cold. He looked down at me with vibrant eyes, then frowned. "Why didn't you bring a coat?"

I was tempted to wrap my arms around his neck to get some heat from him, but I didn't want to push it. It felt surreal that he had wrapped a hand around me even though I'd never asked him to. "Because a coat didn't go with my outfit, and I thought I was going to stay inside throughout."

He pulled back a little, taking off his jacket and hoodie, before putting the jacket back on a pale gray tee. "You're right, Daesyn," he said. "Looking good is more important than dying from the cold."

"Shut up," I said.

He stretched out the hoodie to me, and I shook my head, telling him to wear it instead. Grinning, he slipped the hoodie over my head, forcing me to put my arms through the sleeves and I complied. "I wore the jacket for a reason," he said, pulling me back into him and wrapping an arm around my waist.

Little actions like that sent my heart into overdrive, and Lord knows my poor heart couldn't take such emotions. I sunk into his chest, completely and utterly at ease. Just weeks ago, we couldn't stay without arguing, and here we were, hugging and finding comfort in each other's arms.

"Uh-huh." I nodded, collecting the lemonade from him. "What do you wanna talk about?"

"My friend."

My mouth opened and closed. I didn't know he had other friends, but I let him speak.

"When he was younger, his parents were really busy, so they hired a babysitter to take care of him," he said. "The babysitter appeared perfect to everyone, but my friend..."

"Martha would sexually abuse him," he said, looking right at me.

My heart stopped. Something in me knew it wasn't about his friend, it was him. I was already tearing up.

He sighed. "And every time she would come, she would undress him in that fucking b-basement, and well... do her thing."

I was pretty much crying ugly tears already for his 'friend,' but I told him to not bother about me and continue. His jaw was tensed and his grip on my waist tightened. He wasn't looking me in the eye anymore. He was ashamed, I could see it. My heart broke and it pained me when I realized I couldn't do much to ease the pain.

"It was so fucked up that she made him promise to never say a word to anybody," he continued. "Even though he desperately wanted to."

I bit my lips, fresh tears threatening to pour out.

"It continued for years until Mother came in and saw her." He paused. "So with her depression, and finding out about Emery and Linda, and the stress from work and Father never being home, she just cracked."

He spared me a glance through hooded eyes, and I squeezed his hand in mine as some sort of encouragement or promise. "When she turned to drugs, it started reflecting on her work at school, and the management had no choice but to dismiss her. Then the rumors started at school."

He finally released his tight grip on me to run a knuckle over the line of my cheekbone, then pursed his lips. With glassy eyes, he murmured, "She was so sad that she couldn't protect me, and I didn't know what to do. But Lord knows I should've seen it coming."

My heart lurched to a stop, a sick feeling twisting in my gut. I knew what he wanted to say. My throat closed up, and even though I wanted to force words past the painful lump there, to tell him how none of it was his fault, I couldn't speak. So, I lowered my head to his chest, wrapping my arms around him and letting the sound of his heartbeat fill one of my ears.

"The bathtub," he said. "The water was so red. Very, very red. Like nothing I'd ever seen before. And she was so pale..."

His words were strained. Caelum hadn't said anything about it aloud in years, that much I could figure out. I could swear that I tried to stop the tears from escaping from my eyes, but I couldn't. They slipped, trailing down my face and landing on his chest.

For Father, I hadn't witnessed any part of his death. He had been there one day, and not there the next. All I knew about the hit-and-run case was only from what Mother had told me. It pained me to think about it, but for a while, I had thought Mother was messing with me and Father would come home just like he used to, with candies and more candies, to pick up from where he had left off.

But it didn't happen.

Then Caelum?

He had witnessed every single image, and they could likely haunt him forever. It was heartbreaking.

I wanted to kiss him, and that was where my thought shouldn't have gone to after he'd just spilled a huge part of his life to me. What he needed was comfort, and I was willing to give that to him. "I want you to let go," I said, cupping his cheeks and bringing his face closer to mine. "You still blame yourself for everything that happened, even though I don't see how it's any of your fault."

"Dae—"

"I want you to forget about your past and begin again. Right now," I said. "To stop hurting and hating others because of things that were beyond your control."

"It's not me," he muttered. "It's my friend."

"You have a pure soul," I mused like he hadn't spoken. "You have a heart that knows how to love and forgive. You deserve so much better than what you're going through. Just get yourself out of all the negative and important thoughts, and things will start looking up. It will take time, but it will pass. I promise."

The edge of his lips quirked upwards. I watched the light in those familiar dark irises shine, and I pulled him into me. "Do you regret anything?" he asked against my neck.

I shook my head. "I have never for once had any regrets," I said truthfully. "I just wished things were different."

He slowly lifted his head off of my shoulders, then said, "Me too," but before I could even fully register what was happening, his lips were on mine.

-

Author's note:

Happy FUCking birthday Melanie. It seems you're not the only one celebrating ;;;)

I already said I was speeding up the book, so uhh... next update is on Monday :)

I watched a movie last night; Bad Boys For Life, and the bad boys mantra is stuck in my head. (Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? whatcha gonna do when they come for you?)

Don't forget to vote and leave me a comment (if you liked the chapter of course), lo_ove you!!!