Maya liked him? Lucas stared at the dying embers of the campire long after his friends had left. Riley had spilled the proverbial beans earlier that evening and surprisingly he and Maya had had a moment, an indefinable confusing and complicated moment but one nonetheless. Now he sat in his hometown under his sky, under his stars and thought about Maya Hart. The girl was a whirlwind; a terrifying, energetic, beautiful whirlwind. She was also vulnerable but tough in her own right, guarded but openly compassionate towards her friends. She was Riley in the sense that she too would do anything, sacrifice anything for her friends, evidently had done exactly that by pushing her feelings aside because her best friend felt the same things. Lucas wondered if Maya had felt something for him as far back as when she'd blatantly started and ended a fake relationship with him that day in the train. Even then, nervous about his new life in a new city and a new school, he had been completely taken aback by the burst of wild blonde hair and torrent of words that made no sense but still managed to amuse him. In hindsight, he realised that was Maya doing what she did best, making footprints for her wide-eyed and innocent best friend to follow in. With the wild, untameable freedom of the Texan land he'd grown up in, he searched his own heart for feelings he didn't know if he had, but he owed it to Maya to figure it out, maybe he even owed it to himself to find out.
Maya was hurting. A painful spiral of emotions crashed through her like a cacaphony of colour on a canvas; anger at Riley for bearing a heart that wasn't her own, confusion at the look in Lucas' eyes, hope that he might share her feelings, betrayal that her best friend had broken her confidence, humiliation that it had happened in front of all their friends. Maya didn't know where one emotion ended and the next began. She felt tired, spread thin, she needed her friend, only Riley was half the reason she felt this way. She was sitting on Pappy Joe's rocking chair, Lucas hadn't returned from the campfire and the others had gone to bed. She rocked slowly, nursing a cup of hot chocolate in her hand while her arm curled around her middle, cluthing her thin jersey to her. She wasn't cold, just needed to feel safe, some semblance of comfort in this strange and unfamiliar place that smelled and looked nothing like home. The sky was too big, the stars too bright and too many. It was disconcerting but beautiful, she wished absently that she had her canvas and her paints with her. The view was something she'd loved to have drawn, in another time, another night, before the drama had happened, before things had changed. As she sat, drinking her hot chocolate and staring at the sky, it didn't occur to her that Lucas needed to come back, that he had to pass her before going inside, she might of left had she realised.