Adam walked over to the beautiful girl sitting at the bar with a beer in her hand talking to friends. She was facing away from him, but he recognized her immediately.

"Hey, Lauren", he whispered in her ear as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, squeezing her tight, and kissing her softly on the side of her head.

She turned around and looked up into his face and smiled.

"Hey, Adam. It's so good to see you."

He smiled back at her, gave her another squeeze and talked to her for awhile. He also chatted with a couple of the people around her, mostly friends of his from school, including Lauren's husband, David.

Lauren, David and Adam had all attended the University of Chicago together. Lauren and Adam had met their freshman year; they lived in the same dorm.

While Lauren and Adam had seen each other in passing, they didn't really get to know each other until later in the school year.

Lauren had started dating Kyle, a brother at Delta Phi, at the end of their first month. She spent a lot of time with him at his fraternity house, so Adam didn't see her at the dorm all that often.

That December, Lauren and Kyle had come back to her dorm after a party and Kyle had started pressuring her. When she refused, the situation escalated quickly.

Adam was coming home from a late night study session at the library when he heard Lauren's screams. He remembered running all the way up the stairs to find Kyle trying to shove Lauren backwards, kicking and screaming, into her room.

Adam quickly intervened. He grabbed Kyle's jacket and pulled him off of Lauren, positioning his body in front of her to protect her and then threw a hard right hook at Kyle's jaw before telling him to get the hell out of there.

After Kyle had left, Adam had turned around to face Lauren, who looked as if her legs were about to give out from underneath her. He quickly closed the distance between them, wrapped his arms tightly around her, pulled her head into his chest and breathed into her, "I'm so sorry", as tears began to stream down her face.

He wasn't sure if Kyle would dare come back, but he didn't want to risk it, so he gently nudged her past her door and into her room, closing the door behind them holding her tightly as she sobbed. Brushing her hair with his lips, he whispered "You're safe now."

The next morning, when she woke up, she had found him asleep on her floor. As she sat up, she had recalled the events from the night before. She remembered how scared she had been that Kyle would come back, but she knew Adam had already done more than enough for her, so after she managed to control her sobs, she had told Adam that he could go home.

He had looked down at her, one hand on the back of her head, the other caressing her cheek as he wiped the still falling tears away with his thumb, immediately recognizing the fear in her eyes. "I'm not going anywhere", he told her.

She had smiled, giving him an appreciative nod and then crawled into bed. She had cried herself to sleep, yet there he was, on her floor in the morning.

When she came back from winter break, Kyle had come to her dorm room and tried to attack her again. Adam had let her spend the night in his room. She had slept in Adam's room for the next couple of weeks too until Kyle had been expelled from school.

During that time, Lauren and Adam had quickly bonded. They actually had a lot in common: they both had lost someone close to them when they were young, they hated musicals and they both had a love for old school rap.

During their junior year, Adam had met David in one of his classes. He became good friends with him, introduced him to Lauren and the rest as they say is history. Lauren and David had gotten married two years ago and Adam had been David's best man.

Since Noelle and Adam had gotten together, the couple had spent a lot of time with Lauren and David, who were happy to have another couple to hang out with. Adam knew Lauren was glad to have another girl in the group again too. It had been six years since Adam had dated anyone seriously; the last girl he had dated was Kate, who he had dated for almost 4 years.

After saying a brief hello to everyone he recognized, he bent down and whispered to Lauren, "Hey, have you seen my girl?"

He was a man on a mission.

She smiled back at him as she pointed towards the center of the dance floor.

Adam looked where she was pointing and saw her, in the middle of the dance floor, surrounded by people, hands in the air, dancing without a care in the world.

Of course she was, he thought to himself. He couldn't help but smile as he watched her.

She was definitely the most beautiful girl there, but it was her fearlessness, her love of life that made him love her. And she didn't even know what she was doing. She was just being herself and that only made him love her more.

Adam looked back at Lauren and she gave him a knowing smirk, which he returned and then preceded to make his way onto the dance floor to find his girl.