--I don't own Casey, I don't own Delilah, I don't own Harrington, I don't own The Faculty or anything to do with The Faculty. Sam is mine; I do own her. Please ask permission before using her. This'll be the final part of this story, so I hope you enjoy…--

You held my hand and walked me home
I know while you gave me that kiss
It was something like this
It made me go ooh, ooh
You wiped my tears, got rid of all my fears
Why did you have to go?
Guess it wasn't enough
To take up some of my love
Gosh, you're so hard to trust…
– from Don't Tell Me by Avril Lavigne

Friday – Sam took the bus home by herself… she figured Casey must have just gotten a ride from Delilah… it wouldn't be the first time. She rode in silence, feeling that long-lived emptiness, and perhaps slightly betrayed.

She felt a very small nudge of relief as the bus stopped in front of her house. Quickly, she gathered her things and head towards the front door. Once there; she thumbled for her key…

Finally, she got the lock in the door and pushed it open. She stepped in the kitchen, swung her backpack off her shoulders, but nearly jumped out of her skin as someone else inside the room spoke.

"Hi Sammy," it was her mother. "Have a nice day at school?"

"What the hell are you doing home?" Sam exclaimed, staring at her mother who was standing at the counter by the phone, looking through some book.

"Got the afternoon off," Mrs. Warren said this not only as if it was a truly terrible things, but also as if she were trying to spare Sam's feelings even through saying it yet not… really trying… at all…

"Oh," Sam muttered, throwing off her "coat", and began to go through her backpack, pulling out her homework, she organized it and then took it into the living room where she dropped it on the coffee table, got out a pencil, and began to do it.

"… Oh, Sammy, I almost forgot," her mother called from the kitchen after she'd only been sitting down for a few minutes. "You got a call while you were out."

"Yeah, who from?" Sam called back, not looking up from her papers.

"I don't know. Some guy named Casey…"

"Casey?" Sam echoed, looking up now.

"Yeah…" a pause. "… He sounded pretty upset…"

Sam jumped up, walked at a very quick pace into the kitchen, grabbed the cordless phone, turned and flew back into the living room, up the stairs, and into her bedroom where she shut the door and then began punching Casey's number in almost immediately afterwards. It rang only once before someone picked up…

"Hello?"

"Casey?"

"Sam?" his voice cracked.

"Casey?" her throat was becoming tight, and she swallowed hard trying to make it loosen. "Casey, what's wrong?"

"C-can you come over?" his voice was so small, like a young child's, and sounded like he was going to brake down at any given moments.

"I'll be right there," she promised, and then hung up, dashed back downstairs, grabbed her zip-up hoodie off the chair in the kitchen where she had left it, ignored her mother's stream of questions, and bolted out the door.

Sam stood on the Connors' doorstep now. She knocked, and waited… no one answered. She knocked again, then looked down at the knob… she waited, and still no one came, so she grabbed the knob and twisted. The door wasn't locked… and she was expected, anyway… She stepped inside, shut the door silently behind her, and the turned back to the room, the living room… no one was in there… and everything was so still and quiet.

"Casey?" she called. She waited, allowing her plaid over-shirt to slip off her body, casting it away onto the couch carelessly. No answer. She tried it only one more time, getting the same results, before moving to the stairs. She climbed to the second floors. "Casey?"

"Sam?" his voice was still so small, and muffled behind the door. Her eyes flicked over to the door to his bedroom and she walked up to it, stepped inside, and shut it behind her before flinging herself around.

Casey was sitting on the floor at the side of his bed facing into the room, his arms wrapped loosely around his knees holding them to his body. He turned his head to look up at her, and his eyes were puffy and rimmed with pink and his cheeks were shinning with wet tracks of tears already fallen.

"Oh, God, Casey," she whispered without even thinking about it, it was as if it used her voice without so much as even asking. She stalked over, quickly, and sat down to his left, farther away from the door. She looked at him with an unwavering stare and firey concern clear in her eyes. "What's wrong?"

He looked away, his eyes growing glossy as if he were going to cry again. "I'm sorry t-to call you here, Sam, I-I just didn't know who else to t-turn to…"

"Forget it," she said gently. "Just tell me what happened."

"D–" He faltered. "… Delilah broke up with me…"

Sam stopped. Casey bit his lip to stop it from trembling. She set a hand on his shoulder and he looked back up at her, blue eyes shinning even in the very scarce light there was in his room at the moment.

"… Want me to kill her for you?" Sam asked, in a delicate voice. "I'll kill her for you, Casey."

Casey let out a small laugh, but it was laden with the deepest pain and sadness. "… It was after school," he began to tell Sam the story. She didn't want to hear it, because she knew it would be truly horrible in every sense of the word, but she knew he needed to tell. "I went to see her like I always do, you know? A-and I tried to kiss her, but she wouldn't let me… that's when I noticed she had this weird look on her face… so I asked her what was wrong a-and she said… she said, 'I'm sorry, it's over'. Just like that! That simple! And of course I was shocked so I asked her to tell me why… and she said that it was because… my popularity was falling fast and that no one believes us and thinks I'm crazy and that she couldn't be seen with me anymore because of how it could effect her public image…" he practically spat the last two words.

Sam frowned. This was all her fault… she'd known better! She had known that the only reason Delilah had ever been with Casey was to get her face on all the magazine covers, she had known all along… she had known that this was going to happen… Oh, why hadn't she told him? She just wanted so much for him to be happy… and would he have even believed her?

"Okay, forget it," Sam stated openly. "Now I'm killing her whether you like it or not…"

He smiled, but it looked forced… and their eyes met and locked… blue on gray… and they sat there, unmoving, for a long moment, just staring at each other, mostly in the eyes… before Sam titled her head a little, and moved it closer to his… but she hesitated halfway, her eyes moving restlessly. What was she doing? But she couldn't think, she didn't know why… she looked back up and saw that Casey had moved his head in her direction, too, about a quarter of the way they started out with, but he was hesitating even worse then she was. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but quickly shut it again. She tipped her head to one direction a little, and he moved just a little closer, until there lips were brushing against each others, before they seemed to both decide to just do it…

Their lips locked, and they kissed. Casey's hand slipped up to the gentle curve of her hip, while her hand slipped around to hold the back of his neck. The kiss was soft in the beginning, gentle… but soon it would grow deeper… it would grow harder, more passionate… until everything was forgotten in the two, except for this kiss, this blissful little exchange… and soon they were lying on the bed, him on top of her, kissing hungrily in their own little world.

Sam's cap had fallen off in the process of getting on the bed.

Casey gave a little moan of surprise as he felt her long fingers wrap around his hands, but she ignored it. She guided his hands slowly up from where they had been on her sides and under her shirt to guide him through sliding it up off her body.

They both sat up, as if guided by the same force on the same path at the same time, him in her lap, and Casey gently pulled the shirt off her, slipping it over her head and arms. She took the shirt from him and tossed it away, leaving the unwanted garment behind, and her in her soft white bra, before slumping back on her back on the bed again, pulling Casey down with her, fingers laced in his shirt. Revising their kiss, Sam's hands slid down from his collar and began to unbutton his shirt… but she didn't make it past the third button, before it hit him what they were doing…

"No," he breathed, pulling away from her and grasping her hands, on in either of his own. Her eyes popped open and she looked at him, a little surprised. There was a pause, before he let her wrists go and then slumped down off of her and onto his side beside her on the bed. They were quiet and still for a minutes, before a sob forced its way out of Casey's body.

Sam turned her head to look at him. His chin was pressed to his chest, his jaw was clenched, his eyes were squeezed shut, and his shoulder's shook with the ware of his sorrows and sobs. He tried to bite back the sobs that came and came over and over again like hiccups, sounding like choked whimpers.

She frowned, before turning over onto her side, and pulling him closer. He rested his head against her breast and began to cry. She rested her chin atop his head and wrapped one arm around his shoulders and the other around his neck with her fingers running through his hair.

"Shh," she whispered in a quiet, soothing breath of a voice. "Shh, it's okay… it's okay, Casey, it's alright… shh… shh…" Of course, none of this changed him… and she knew it wouldn't… but that couldn't stop her from trying… nothing could ever stop her from trying.

She stayed until Casey had fallen asleep. She waited until the sobbing stopped, and he lay still, and his breathing came in a steady rhythm, and even beyond that to make sure he was truly deep in sleep… all the while, she listened for the sound of tires on the gravel driveway or the front door opening or people moving around downstairs… there were none, luckily, she wouldn't have to deal with his parents.

After that she went home, brought her homework up to her room, but couldn't do it at all… Mr. Tate wasn't going to be too happy if she didn't finish the 1,000 word essay she was supposed to write for his class, but she couldn't really care… her mind was set on Casey, worried about him, and what he might do now that… that Delilah had shown her true colors once again.

The next school day was very quiet and slow, save for at lunch time when Gabe, who had heard about Delilah breaking up with him, made fun of Casey alerting the entire school about the event, where Sam had lost it and… well, let's just say it had taken Stan (who had been sitting with Stokely only a tree farther away) quite a bit of trouble, having pulled her by the back of the shirt and have dropped her a couple times to narrowly avoid a blind lashing, to pull her off the jock… not that he hadn't gotten a hit or two in on her… but still.

After that day Casey and Sam started spending less time together, which was just as much time as they'd spent together when he was with Delilah: slim to none.

Sam didn't know what had imposed the separation… had it been the kissing? The time they'd spent apart during Delilah's rein? The number she'd done on Gabe? She didn't know… it was probably the kissing… but a week passed by, just like that, that they remained apart… and that familiar feeling that hey were losing each other came into play again… and that familiar question of 'how can they stop it?'… But always; it felt a lost cause…