" I just don't feel up to a party tonight." I told my best friend, Serena, for what had to be the hundredth time.

I was lying. She knew I was lying. It wasn't the party that I didn't feel up to. And she knew me well enough to know it.

" He won't have time to harass you tonight. It's his party. He'll be too busy smoozing his business associates to worry about you." Serena tried to assure me. Now she was the one lying. Because we both knew, Chuck would make the time to harass me, one way or another. " Besides," Great, she was switching tactics. I could tell by her tone. " You can't let him stop you from going out and having a good time. That would mean he wins."

I huffed, that was hitting below the belt.

" I have no intention of letting him keep me from having a good time. I just don't see how showing up at a party held in his honor will send him the right message. I'm over this, S. I don't want to see him ever again. I don't want to talk to him. I just want him out of my life."

" He will never be completely out of your life, and you know it. " She informed me sagely. " What you have to do is prove to him that you aren't there for him. Come to the party. Find a hottie and hook up, right under his nose. It'll drive him crazy."

I considered that. Knowing Chuck, she was right. It would make him nuts. But I wasn't sure I was even still interested enough to try to make him nuts. We had been through too much recently. Hurt each other too badly. My best action would be to just walk away. I needed to put the entire Chuck Bass fiasco out of my mind and remove him from my life.

The problem with that was, she was also right there, I would never be able to completely cut him out of my life. He was a part of my social structure. Everywhere I went, he was likely to be there. He had all the same friends, all the same acquaintances. Hell, he was my best friends step brother apparently. The only way to get him gone totally would be to get an entire new set of friends. And there was no way that was happening. I had spent a lifetime with those people. Worked hard to build the relationships I had with each of them. To just give them all up would not only be social suicide, it would mean he really had won, not just the battle but the entire frigging war.

So, what were my options ? If I didn't show up at his little soirée, which, incidentally, was turning out to be the elite social event of the year, he would know it was all because of him. I didn't want him to know that he was affecting me at all. I wanted him to believe that I really had moved on. Turned my back on him utterly.

I wanted him to believe that he never crossed my mind, not even for a moment.

I wasn't sure I was a good enough actress to pull that off.

Even with war brewing between a certain teacher and I, my mother's new marriage to a man that somehow was growing on me, and Yale darken the doorstep of my future, Chuck was never far from my thoughts.

It seemed the someway, everything I thought about, always came back to Chuck. It was like my thoughts were on an endless loop and they all centered around him. No matter where they started, they always ended right back on his smug, infuriating, self-serving, manipulative, dazzling, sexy, smile.

Damn him ! Of all the men in the world it should be easy to stay mad at, he was the one. Everything he did, every move that he made in our little game of checkmate, should have made me hate him.

But for some unknown, unfathomable reason, I couldn't make myself stay away from him. I couldn't keep myself from wondering where he was, what he was doing and who he was doing it with.

With his father's death things had shifted between us. I thought the night he spent in my arms, broken and beaten and so very much, UN-Chuck-like, would mean something. I thought the hours I spent rocking him and whispering to him that everything would be okay would count for something.

And apparently they had. They had turned him against me.

I would never in my life be able to forget the way his lip curled and the look of disgust on his face when he yelled at me, telling me I was not his wife.

He had made the word sound like the worse possible curse he could think of. Made it sound as if the mere thought of such a thing revolted him so terribly that he couldn't stand it.

And all I had been doing was trying to be there for him. All I wanted was to protect him from his vile, conniving uncle who was trying to take advantage of him so plainly. I just wanted him to see that I was looking out for him when he needed someone to be there.

Chuck didn't have many people in his life he could count on, trust. I had been one of the few. And he had done to me exactly what he did to everyone else. He pushed and pushed until finally I couldn't take it anymore. He left me with no other option besides running to save myself before I got caught up in his self destruction and he ruined me as well.

I had spent a lot of time trying to imagine why he reacted so badly when he figured out that someone cared about him. And I think I had a pretty good idea. Under all the swagger, all the conceit and insults, under all the cold, calculating evil, there was nothing but a scared, bewildered little boy. A little boy who was never good enough to earn his father's love or approval. A little boy abandoned by his mother before he even got a chance to find out if she loved him. A little boy raised by a string of people who were paid to care for him, paid to love him. A little boy that learned too quickly that once the checks stopped for them, so did the love and affection.
God, was it any wonder that the man was a walking psych textbook ?

I knew all too well what it was like to never be good enough in the eyes of a parental figure. My mother was a walking, talking, sneering, testament to what it meant to not be good enough. No matter what I did, it was never enough for her. There was always room for improvement. I could have worn my hair different, chosen a better shade of eyeshadow, worn a dress better suited to my figure. The criticism never stopped.

So I knew that kind of thing wore on you after a while.

What I couldn't figure out was what I could do for him ? I didn't know how to break through the walls he had built up to keep the world away from him. And frankly, I was tired of beating my head against them. It was more than I could take. Chuck's resistance to real affection, real love was stronger than I was. And there weren't many things in the world I'd found that were stronger than I was.

" B ? Are you still there ?" Serena asked, bringing me away from my thoughts and back to the problem at hand.

" I'm here and I'm still not going to tonight." I answered, firmly.

" But everyone is expecting you to be there." She was practically whining now. God, I hated it when she did that.

" Well then everyone will just have to be disappointed."

" I'm coming over. In fact, I'm right down the street from you. I'll be there in five minutes. Then we are raiding your mother's latest line, calling Andre to do our hair and makeup and we are going to this party tonight. So yank out your favorite Jimmy Choo's, because this is happening whether you like it or not."

" S, you can't just make me do something I don't want to do. That would be kidnapping." I insisted.

She sighed so heavily I heard it through the phone. " Well, then just consider yourself napped."

She was true to her word, and as the elevator door opened, my shoulders dropped in defeat.

" Hardy Harrington." She announced as she stepped through the doors.

" Hardy Harrington ?" I asked, not recognizing the name.

" Hardy is the son of Mason and Judith Harrington. You know, you met them last summer at the Hamptons. Or were you too wrapped up in the whole ' Marcus' thing to remember ?" She explained.

I gave her a sneer as I search my memory for the name. Then it came to me and I nearly choked. "The Mason and Judith Harrington that sit on the Yale review board ? The Judge and his lovely wife, mistress of the Hampton social rooster ?" My interest was peaked.

" Yes, those Carringtons. Their son, Hardy is seventeen, blond, tan, handsome, rich and so very, very UN-Chuck it's ridiculous."

" Is he single ?"

She just nodded and gave me a huge smile. " Single and new in town and going to attend the party tonight with Nate."

" Why is this the first I'm hearing about this ?" I demanded, wanting to know why I was left out of the loop.

" Nate just called me. He wanted to know if Dan and I would help him introduce Hardy around. Apparently he doesn't want to ruin his date by having to babysit." She answered with a wave of her perfectly manicured hand.

"But won't that ruin your date ?"

" Not since you are going to take Hardy off both our hands." She smiled.

I slumped onto the red velvet chaise I was standing in front of, a frown creasing my forehead.

" What ?" She demanded, hands suddenly on her hips. " How is this not a perfect arrangement ?"

I tossed my hand in the air, telling her that the plan wasn't the problem. " It's just that Nate didn't think of pawning this guy off on me first. He called you instead, knowing that you would have a date just like him. Still, he called you."

She came over and sat down beside me. " Actually, Nate thought you had a date tonight, too. He figured you would especially not have time to deal with Hardy."

I looked up at her from under quirked eyebrows. " Why would he think that ?"

" He assumed you'd be going to the party as Chuck's date." She muttered under her breath.

I sank further into the cushion. " What made him assume that ?"

She looked away, then back, hiding her eyes behind a curtain of blond hair. " I may have told him that last week."

" Why would you do that ? You know Chuck and I are over." I exclaimed coming to my feet. " God, no wonder no one asked me to go to the party with them. They all thought I was the date of the man of the hour."

" It was before this latest breakup. I didn't know. I just thought you'd most likely be going together." She tried to explain.

" Since when has my name become attached to Chuck Bass' socially ? How did that happen ?" I screeched.

She stood up and put a hand on my shoulder. " There was a time, not so very long ago that you wanted your name attached to Chuck's like that. You have to give us a break, B. You two are so on again, off again, its hard to keep up."

I widened my eyes in outrage. " You're one to talk. People need a scoreboard to keep up with you and Brooklyn."

" His name is Dan. And we weren't talking about me. We were talking about you." Her voice was low and I knew I had stung her, but really I wasn't concerned with her at the moment.

" But I never really even dated Chuck." I continued like she hadn't spoken.

" No, you didn't but no one missed the antics. You and Chuck were all over Gossip Girl. Everyone knows you were together, even if you weren't ever actually together."

" Who were you together with ?" A new voice intruded on our private conversation and I turned to level him with a look that said it was none of his business.

" No one." I told my new step father as he came into the living room with that stupid smile he always wore covering his face.

" I didn't know you were seeing anyone." He said, like I hadn't just gave him the silent back off sign.

" I'm not. Like I said, it's no one. Just a misunderstanding." I repeated, through clenched teeth this time.

" This no one wouldn't have anything to do with the new cellphone you had to buy because you threw the other one at the wall last week, would it ?"

I huffed and stomped by foot.

" I thought so." He laughed. " Whoever no one is, he seems pretty determined. Must have been some kind of something to inspire that sort of persistence. By the way, I haven't seen much of that boy that used to come around all the time, lately."

He was teasing me. How dare he ! He had no right to go sticking his nose in my personal business like that. He wasn't my father. Even my father would have known better than to intrude on me like that. This demanded a talk with my mother, soon, very, very soon.

" That boy won't be coming around anymore. Not that it's any of your business." I answered, icily.

" That's too bad," He sighed, as he made to exit the room. " I really liked him."

Okay, the man really was deranged. He liked Chuck ? Parents didn't like Chuck. Parents sent their daughters to convents to keep them away from Chuck.

"Can we please go get ready for this party now ?" Serena asked.

I pushed by shoulders back and took a deep breath to release my irritation. " Okay. I guess I have no other choice."