Thank you so much for the reviews! I wrote this chapter, and then completely erased it. And then rewrote and then erased it again, so I hope that it's up to par. Review please and let me know what you thought. I'm off to a baseball game. This is exciting to me for two reasons: one, and most importantly, there's cotton candy at baseball games (I once ran through three sections of the stadium chasing down the cotton candy man). Secondly, and this is pathetic but true, I'm a sucker for jumbo-trons. I watch that more than I watch the game. I could care less about the actual game. So whilst I enjoy my cotton candy, go forth and enjoy the latest chapter.

Disclaimer: the characters are not mine.

"Mrs. Cohen? Are you hurt?" Ryan repeated. She wasn't answering, and she was shaking uncontrollably. Ryan hoped that the damn police would hurry up, the guy lying on the ground wasn't going to stay unconscious very much longer, and when he did wake up, he was most certainly going to be pissed.

"I'm…yes, I'm okay," Kirsten finally managed.

"You're bleeding," Ryan noticed. "Did you get hurt anywhere else?"

"I…uh, hit my head," Kirsten said placing a hand to the back of her throbbing head. Ryan gently led her away from her currently unconscious attacker and outonto the sidewalkwhere they were met with the lights from the stores across from them, and from the dingy street lampsabove. They only were there for a moment beforethe police cruiserpulled up in front of them,and one of the officers hopped out and grabbed Ryan and pulled him away from her.

"Are you Kirsten Cohen?"

"Yes, what are you doing? He didn't do anything wrong! He helped me," Kirsten explained. She pointed back towards the alley. "He knocked out the guy who attacked me."

"Do you need a paramedic?" The second cop asked as the first went to collect the man in the alley.

"Yes she does," Ryan spoke up. "You probably have a concussion, Mrs. Cohen." Just as Kirsten was about to argue that she was fine, Sandy's car came into view, and came screeching to a halt behind the cop car. Sandy didn't even bother turning off the car as he made a mad dash to his wife.

"Kirsten! Are you okay?" He grabbed her and pulled her into a hug. When he pulled away to study her, he noticed the blood. "You're bleeding! What happened? We need to get you to a hospital." Kirsten knew that there was no way that she would get out of going to the hospital now. Not with Sandy in full rambling, overprotective mode.

"This is your assailant ma'am?" The first cop said pulling along a man in handcuffs.

"Yes," Kirsten said nodding, remembering his hands pulling her skirt roughly up, and shuddered thinking of how close she came to being raped, or maybe even worse. Sandy's arm, draped protectively around her shoulders, squeezed tighter when he felt her shudder underneath.

"We'll need statements from both of you," the cop said to her and Ryan.

"Yeah, sure," Ryan said, wishing suddenly that he had just gone straight home after work, and then immediately feeling guilty for thinking that.

"After she goes to the hospital," Sandy said in a tone that left no room for argument. A tone that he had used on Seth on a number of occasions. A tone that Kirsten knew well.

"Yeah, of course," the second cop said. "We'll send an officer over."

"Thank you," Kirsten said softly. She wanted to apologize to the officers, apologize to this young man who saved her, apologize to her husband for being so thoughtless. What did she think was going to happen when she parked her Range Rover in front of a dark alley in a not so good part of town? But she kept her mouth shut and just allowed Sandy to look her over once again, as if reassuring himself that she was standing there with him, not completely unharmed, but okay for the most part.

The officers loaded the guy into the back of the cop car and then the first one turned back to Ryan. Ryan was standing off to the side, his hands stuck in his pockets.

"Sir, can you come with us to the station to make your statement?"

"Uh, sure," Ryan said starting to follow the cop.

"Wait!" Kirsten said stepping out from Sandy's grip, and placing a hand on Ryan's arm. "I…just wanted to thank you." She pulled on Sandy's arm. Ryan was staring at his feet, his hands stuck in his pockets. "This is Ryan. He…well, I guess, he saved me." Sandy reached his hand out to Ryan, who looked taken aback, and hesitated only momentarily before taking Sandy's hand in his own and giving it a shake.

"Thank you so much Ryan," Sandy said. "I don't know what I would have done if something would have happened to her."

"It was no problem," Ryan said softly looking down at his feet.

"There has to be something that we can do to make it up to you," Sandy said looking at Kirsten for some idea.

"No, that's not necessary," Ryan said shaking his head. "It was nothing."

"It was not nothing," Kirsten argued. "He had a knife! You could have been killed. You stood up to him, you helped me! That's not…nothing…please let me make it up to you. Can we…can we buy you dinner tomorrow?" Ryan wanted to argue that he didn't need anything, but he could tell that these people, these Cohens, they weren't going to take no for an answer, and besides that, he hadn't eaten a good meal in days. Not since the last time that Teresa had invited him over for dinner. His mother was having a bad couple of weeks, which meant that the only thing in the house was alcohol, and a moldy loaf of bread. More than likely, he wouldn't be eating anything substantial the next day either, unless he took these people up on their offer.

"I don't…"

"Please?" Kirsten pleaded. "Please let us buy you dinner." Ryan gave a small, nearly imperceptible nod, and Kirsten beamed.

"Can we come pick you up after work tomorrow?" Kirsten asked. "Around six?"

"Yeah...uh, that's fine," Ryan said. "I'm glad that you are okay."

"We'll see you tomorrow then," Sandy said before placing an arm on the small of Kirsten's back and leading her to his waiting car.

A few hours later, after Kirsten was checked over and her statement was given to the cops, she and Sandy headed back out of the hospital to her car. Kirsten just wanted to get home and curl up in bed and sleep the night off.

"How are we going to get my car home?" Kirsten asked as Sandy held open the door for her. Ryan had been right, she had a concussion, which meant that she couldn't drive her own car home.

"We'll have to get it tomorrow," Sandy said. "Now, we're going to take you home, tuck you into bed, and have a fun night of waking you up every hour." He shut the door and got into the driver's side. As they pulled out of the parking lot, Kirsten's phone rang and she glanced down at it.

"Seth," she said as she opened it up to answer. "Hello?"

"Mom? Where are you guys? You said that you would be home by now," Seth said in one breath. It wasn't like his parents to not be home when they said they would be. They were almost compulsive about it, and so when they didn't show up two hours after they said they would, Seth had started to worry. Seth often shrugged off his parents' affection, but they were all that he had, and though he wouldn't admit it, he had started to panic when they weren't picking up their phones. He had called his grandfather, who hadn't heard from them, and then he had gotten so desperate, that he even called the Coopers wondering if maybe they had stopped there after dinner. He doubted it, but he had been running out of ideas.

"Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. We meant to call. There was…I had…there was a little bit of an…incident, and Dad was worried, so he took me to the hospital."

"Are you okay?"

"Yes, honey, I'm okay. A mild concussion."

"What happened?" Sandy motioned for her to give him the phone, and she handed it over wordlessly.

"Seth? It's Dad. We'll explain when we get home…she's okay Seth. No…really…why would I lie? Well, I suppose that's true…no, no! I'm not lying! She's okay. You talked to her yourself. No…Okay. We'll be home as soon as we can…okay. Love you kiddo." He hung up the phone and handed it back to Kirsten.

"He's worried about me?" She asked resting her head back against the back of the seat.

"He's not the only one," Sandy muttered. "Why don't you close your eyes and get some sleep? I'll wake you up when we get home." Kirsten went to open her mouth to protest, but she felt too exhausted to argue, and just did as she was told.

Kirsten called off work the next morning, and an irate Caleb demanded to know why he wasn't told of what had happened the night before.

"You should have called me Kirsten," Caleb berated. "Seth called looking for you. Didn't you realize that I would be then wondering where you were, and if you were okay? Didn't you think that I would like some sort of conformation that my daughter is still alive and well? And besides that, you should have called before Seth. I would have liked to have been informed when it happened."

"I'm sorry, Dad. We should have called you after Seth called, but I went straight to bed when I got home," Kirsten said. "And there was no need to call you when it happened. I was fine. You didn't have to worry, or come down there."

"I would still like to be apprised of these things," he said angrily. "I had to hear it from Sandy, when he called this morning to recruit me in helping him insist that you stay home today and take it easy." Kirsten smiled despite herself. It was just like Sandy to call ahead.

"I'm sorry Dad, I would have called you today, and I would have told you myself what happened." Caleb sounded like a five year old when he replied,

"But I wanted to know last night, Kiki!"

"I'm sorry," Kirsten said again. Her headache had just begun to subside, and now was coming back full force. "I'm going to go lay down." She hung up before Caleb could lecture her anymore, and grabbed an aspirin and a glass of water. Sandy had promised to come home from work early so that they could head down towards Chino and pick Ryan up at the construction sight at six. They had asked Seth if he wanted to come, and he had agreed to go, albeit unenthusiastically.

"So, he's what? A construction worker?" Seth had asked that morning at breakfast. "Your knight in shining armor is a construction worker?" Sandy whapped the back of Seth's head.

"Hey, this is serious Seth, she could have been seriously hurt if he hadn't shown up," Sandy reprimanded. "You could show a little gratitude towards the kid."

"It's a kid?" Seth asked incredulously. "When you say kid, what exactly do you mean by that? College age?" Kirsten shook her head.

"No. When your father says kid, he means kid. He looks about your age," Kirsten said, and then she shook her head again. "Can you imagine, Sandy? He should be in school!"

"Unfortunately, in my line of work, I can imagine. I can imagine a lot worse." Well, Sandy could imagine worse, but for Kirsten, a sixteen year old working construction when he should be worrying about school and girls was terrible enough.

A part of Kirsten wanted to ask Ryan all kinds of questions that night when they went to pick him up for dinner. Why was he working there? Why wasn't he in school? Where were his parents that they were allowing him to drop out of school? But another part of her didn't want to know the answers to those questions. And she knew that he wouldn't appreciate her prying into his life. She knew it was terrible, but she half hoping that Seth and his big mouth would ask everything that she was too chicken to ask.

After she hung up with her father, Sandy called for what was already the third time in two hours.

"Really, I'm okay," she said slightly exasperated. "I'm just going to go take a nap."

"Okay, I'll call you in a little while."

"That's not necessary Sandy."

"Humor me, okay?" He sighed. "I love you."

"I love you too," she said before hanging up and grabbing a book and heading upstairs to curl up in bed for the day.

"Kirsten? Are you ready?" Sandy called up the stairs to their bedroom. "We're going to be late if we don't leave soon. There's going to be traffic."

"Right, I'm ready," Kirsten assured him as she came down. She had spent a lot of time in front of closet agonizing as to what to wear to dinner that night. She didn't know what was too dressy, what wasn't dressy enough. It also didn't help that she didn't know what Ryan was expecting. Would he just wear what he wore for work? In that case, all she would have to wear was jeans and a sweater. Or would he be expecting something a little less…casual?

Somehow, Seth and Sandy didn't have this problem. Neither had thought twice before throwing on a pair of pants and a shirt. And she was sure, because life was completely unfair, that they would be acceptably dressed no matter where they went.

"Where's Seth?" She asked when she got to the bottom of the stairs.

"Waiting by the car," Sandy answered, and he held out his hand for her to take. "You look nice."

"Do you think this is too dressy?"

"No?"

"Is that a question or an answer?" Kirsten asked.

"An answer," Sandy replied. "You look fine. You'll look perfect no matter where we go." He opened the door and they headed out towards their car.

"Can I drive your car home?" Seth asked.

"What you don't want to spend time bonding with your old man?" Sandy asked feigning hurt. Seth rolled his eyes and climbed into the backseat. "I'm guessing that's a no?" He said to Kirsten, who laughed and nodded as she got into the passenger seat.

Ryan was waiting for them when they arrived at the construction sight. He had had the same problem that Kirsten had when deciding what to wear. He didn't know if by dressing in something other than his work clothes he was forcing them into taking him somewhere nice, but he knew that they were wealthy, and they were used to dining in restaurants where a certain dress code was required. Or at least that's what Teresa told him when he went to borrow a shirt from Arturo.

"These people are rich," Teresa said exasperated as she handed Ryan a blue button up shirt that she insisted would bring out the blue in his eyes. "They don't exactly eat at places like Denny's." Ryan had thanked her for giving him the shirt, and had gone home to remind his mother that he wouldn't be home that night, being fully aware that she really wouldn't have noticed. Her latest catch, AJ, was a known coke dealer, and his mother had taken full advantage of the connection. And sure enough, when he had walked in the door, there were coke lines on the table and his mother was lying on the couch, one arm slung over the side and the other holding a bottle of vodka. He sighed, and shut the door quietly, hoping not to wake her up. AJ stumbled out of the bathroom as Ryan headed back towards his bedroom.

"Why aren't you at work?" He demanded. Ryan had asked to leave work a couple hours early so that he could change and shower before he had to meet the Cohens for dinner. Ryan ignored him, and walked past and shut the bathroom door and locked it behind him. He had gotten ready as quickly as he could, and went over to Teresa's to kill time until five-thirty when he headed back over to the construction sight.

He had been standing there for a little over ten minutes when the same sleek BMW that had screeched to a halt in front of him last night pulled up to the curb. Kirsten climbed out of the front seat and walked over to him.

"Ryan," she smiled warmly at him. "Thank you again for last night." Ryan, once again, blushed at the expression of gratitude, and just nodded as she motioned for him to follow her to the car. "You met Sandy, my husband last night," she introduced. "And this is our son, Seth." Both teenage boys lifted their hands in hello. They all then stood there for a minute, not knowing what to do next.

"Well, let's get this show on the road," Sandy said breaking the awkward silence that fell over the four. "I'm starved."