"Well, look who's here." My mother sneered as she looked up from her papers and at Chase and I. Her lip curled and she scowled. Every time she did that (which was more often than I could count; and I barely saw her) she became that much uglier. Stupid bitch.

"It's nice to see you again, Mother. I'll keep out of your way and you won't ever have to see me."

"That sounds perfect." She said, her tone clipped, "Make yourselves scarce. Since it's the holiday season, I have to be here, and I don't want to see you two every where I turn. Show your faces for the Christmas Eve party and for Christmas dinner with Jack and his son and that's enough." She instructed, and Chase nodded, while I just glared hostilely, my arms crossed defensively over my chest.

When we were upstairs, I followed Chase to his room, where he dropped his bags. "Jack's son is this Charlie kid, right? The one who's apparently an asshole?"

"Yeah," I snickered, adding, "You're going to love him." Chase and Charlie, I'd just realized, were complete opposites. Charlie was outwardly nice and a really great person when it came to people within his own little posse, but Chase was much more reserved and maybe even slightly standoffish, but he was polite to everyone once you got past all that.

"Haha." Chase said drily, "Now go get ready. I'm taking you out to lunch."

"Okay, fine." I agreed, heading to my room to change. I was wearing ripped skinny jeans with a Sherlock t-shirt, so that meant I only had to change my shirt. I put on a pink, slightly dressier top and some lip gloss and mascara before I was ready to go.

This town only had really fancy restaurants and smaller places. Knowing Chase, we definitely wouldn't be going to one of the fancy places.

"I'm ready." I told him through the door of his room, rapping on it once to get his attention.

"Great." He opened the door. His hair was slightly wet. How the hell had he taken a shower and gotten ready in less than ten minutes? I was in the shower for at least twenty minutes every day.

We went to the same diner I went to with Chris all that time ago, the same one Julio and I had gone to, too, before we'd gotten together and a few times since.

We sat at a booth in the corner, and the waitress handed us menus, giving me a smile of recognition, which I returned.

I just got some sort of sandwich while Chase got, as expected, a burger, saying that it had been forever since he'd had a nice, proper cheeseburger with all the works.

"You still have to tell me what you were supposed to tell me." I told him, once the waitress had come back with Chase's Coke and my ice water.

"Right." Chase spoke awkwardly, clearing his throat, "Let's discuss this later. In private, okay?" He cast a surreptitious glance at the couple in the table in near ours, who were looking at Chase curiously. I recognized the girl from school, but the guy looked a little older, like he was a college student or something.

"Sure." I nodded, sipping thirstily at my water.

We made some small talk for a while, before entering a heated, yet very amusing debate over whether fries or onion rings were the better side. Like any sane person, I went with the fries, while insane brother chose onion rings which, admittedly, weren't that bad, but they had nothing on fries.

Someone walked into the diner and, from over Chase's shoulder, I could see who it was. I instantly began panicking. I was not ready for this to happen. No one was ready for this to happen.

Julio's eyes met mine, and his lips quirked up into a small smile. Despite my nerves, I smiled back at him, unable to help it. His smile was just so cute and so infectious and so perfect.

He caught sight of Chase and his eyes narrowed momentarily before filling with understanding. He knew I was going to pick up my brother today and, through his impressive skills of deductive reasoning, he'd deduced that the male sitting across from me wasn't, in fact, competition for him but just my older brother.

"What are you looking at?" Chase asked, turning around and seeing Julio standing there.

"Is that the boyfriend?" He demanded, sizing him up. Julio, like the idiot he was, made his way over to us.

"Hey, princess." He greeted, smiling. He didn't make any move to try and touch me, which Chase probably appreciated more than I did. "You must be Chase. It's nice to meet you."

Julio held his hand out, being unusually polite. Chase shook his hand briefly, carefully appraising him as he said, "You must be Julio, then. My little sister's boyfriend." Chase's tone was guarded.

"Yes, sir." He didn't even call our teachers sir, and now he was saying that to my brother?

"Sir?" Chase said, cracking. He smiled slightly at Julio, so small that it was easy it to miss, and gestured for him to sit down.

He took a seat beside me, and I grabbed his hand, interlacing our fingers. He smiled down at me, squeezing reassuringly for a second.

"I was going to make Taylor invite you to dinner, but this is just easier. We can get it out of the way now. First off, what are your intentions with my sister?"

"Honestly?" Julio began, "I don't have any intentions."

I turned to him, gazing at him open-mouthedly. What the hell? Even Chase was taken aback for a second.

"What do you mean by that?" He said finally. Julio was unaware of the reaction he'd gotten.

"I mean that I like her and I want to keep dating her for as long as she'll have me. I don't intend to do anything else." Oh, that's what he'd meant.

I settled again, proud of him. This was the right answer to give Chase.

"Would you do anything to hurt or disrespect her? I hope you know that, if you do, I will not hesitate to punch you."

"I'd never disrespect your sister. She's probably the only person here I respect." He said. "Even if I ever did hurt her, I'd be the first to punch me and, with all due respect, I think I can hurt me better."

It was a risky thing to say, and I braced myself for Chase to get pissed and do something that could potentially destroy my relationship with Julio but, to my surprise, he just laughed.

"I like you, kid. You're better than all the other tools she's dated till now."

The rest of lunch went fine, with Julio stealing half of my fries despite having a decent-sized portion of his own. Chase asked Julio questions about himself and, by the end of it, I could sense that Julio was a little surprised at the fact that Chase actually seemed to like him. Honestly, I was surprised too. I'd assumed that all of his talk in the car about me almost being an adult now would just fly out the window the moment he met my boyfriend.

"Hey, uh, Chase." I said, once we were done eating and Julio had excused himself to go pee. "You go on ahead, alright? You look like you need a nap, anyway. I'll come home a little later with Julio."

"Sure." He agreed, probably because of how jet lagged he was. He normally would never have let me, and would've immediately assumed that we were going to go off an have sex. We weren't that far into our relationship.

I gave him a hug and sent him on his way, waiting for Julio by the door. While the girl who I recognized from school was still glancing inquisitively at me a few times, her boyfriend had moved on a long time ago, and was focusing on his dessert, which was some kind of pie.

"Princess." He acknowledged, slipping his arm around my waist, but only after looking around to see whether Chase was still there.

"Come on." I tugged at his free hand, and pulled him out with me. "Let's go somewhere quieter to talk."

"Am I in trouble?" He asked, his lips curving up in a small smile as I dragged him towards his familiar motorcycle, which was parked a few metres away from the diner.

Impulsively, I leaned up and pulled him down by the back of his neck, drawing him in for a long kiss. "Would I kiss you if you were in trouble?" I murmured against his lips, before pulling away.

"You could just be getting my guard down, only to yell at me when we're in private. I think I need a couple more kisses to really be convinced." He smirked devilishly, and I giggled, before shaking my head.

"Yeah, you have high hopes." I teased, straddling the bike and patting the space in front of me, as if ordering him to get on.

"And you just dashed all of 'em." He said jokingly, as he obeyed my directions.

"Julio." I said, just as he was about to start up the bike.

"Yes, princess?" He asked, relaxing as I slipped my hands around his torso.

"If I ask you to take me somewhere, would you?" I inquired, leaning into him to make my request more likely to be accepted.

"Anywhere." He promised. "Why?"

"I want you to take me to your house." I said, wondering how, after almost a month of dating, and at least twice as long knowing each other, I'd never been to his house.

"You know I don't like that place." He said tersely, his posture losing its previous mellowness. It wasn't something he'd ever expressly told me, but it was understood. It had always hung between us, unspoken but still known.

"I know. I just, I don't know, want to see where you grew up." He paused, as if calculating something, and thought for, quite literally, a minute before saying reluctantly, "Alright."

"Thank you." I said, resting my chin on his shoulder.

He started up the motorcycle, and the sound stood out in the almost dead-silence. He was probably the only person in town who rode one.

He drove for a while, until we reached the same bit of town the warehouse was in. We didn't go quite so far as the warehouse, and he slowed down once we reached a row of residential complexes.

The houses were all a little rough around the edges, and in need of love. They weren't exactly in the poorest part of town, but just before it.

He stopped in front of narrow building, with what looked to be two floors. It was painted a fading blue, and the paint job needed to be brushed up. The tiny yard in front was overgrown with more weeds than actual lawn. The white-painted door was a little scuffed, too.

"Here we are, princess, home sweet home." He said cynically, taking the helmet I handed to him without another word.

"Hey," I told him, as he opened the door and held it open for me to enter. "It's perfect."

The meaning of those words stayed between us. He knew exactly what I meant by it. The house itself wasn't anything amazing. It wasn't perfect because of its homeliness— a quick glance inside would tell you that. It was perfect because it was his, it was perfect because it was a part of him.