Rather then putting a long recap at the beginning of this, I've tried to include a bunch of background within the text, so you can remember what is going on. I haven't done an in-depth revision of this chapter because I wasn't sure if it would ever get posted, if I didn't post it, now. But, after I've gotten a few hours of sleep, I'll try and do a quick polish.

Chaos Theory

noun

the branch of mathematics that deals with complex systems whose behavior is highly sensitive to slight changes in conditions, so that small alterations can give rise to strikingly great consequences. Also, sometimes known as the butterfly effect.

Before there were real balls, real tiaras, and a real prince; there was Lucas and Riley. And, for the longest time, they were far better than any fairytale she could have hoped for.

She doesn't sleep the night before the funeral; instead, spends it kneeling on the bathroom floor, vomiting until her stomach aches and her throat burns. And, in a moment of clarity and dark humor, she can't help thinking that she's spent most of this trip on the floor of Maya's bathroom.

"Here," Savannah set a glass of fizzing liquid next to her, along with a sleeve of saltines and Riley can't even manage to get out a thanks before she's bracing herself against the toilet seat, once again.

When she's finished, she sinks back, letting her head rest against the back wall and closing her eyes. The tile is cold against her exposed legs and she wants to press her flushed face against it. The only thing stopping her is the last piece of her pride, which she's clinging to like a life preserver. (Because she lived at the corner of vulnerability and trust and all it got her was a bitter divorce and her name smeared across the tabloids.)

"You should get some sleep before tomorrow," Riley forced her eyes open, trying to appear more in control then what she felt.

"So, should you," Savannah pointed out, but she slowly drew herself up from the floor and left, leaving the bathroom door open just enough that she can hear Josh and Savannah's voices and the sound of her cell phone buzzing against the nightstand.

Riley pulled her knees to her chest and closed her eyes tighter; willing herself into nothingness.

In her darker moment she can't help wondering when things with James became inevitable.

Once upon a time, she'd believed in fairytales. She'd believed people were placed in your life for a reason and that some guiding hand had a plan all laid out for them to follow. She'd found the romance in, "Meant to be."

It had taken her a long time to find her way to the age-old debate between fate and free will.

In her less cynical moments, she liked to believe that maybe the truth was somewhere in the middle; someone watching out for you, with your best interest at heart, who was, also, willing to let you try and find your own way.

In her more cynical ones, she can't help wondering if her entire life was on a collision course from the very beginning.

She'd always been a lightweight when it came to alcohol. She hardly had the body mass to compensate for any heavy drinking and her parents had instilled responsible drinking into the very foundation of her moral values.

She'd waited until she was twenty-one before she'd even tried it and Lucas had laughed as she'd coughed and gagged over the liquid that was scorching her throat.

"That is awful," Riley informed him; blinking away tears that had gathered in her eyes.

"Come on, Ranger Rick, you've known the girl for how many years, now? She needs something highly diluted in a pretty glass with a brightly colored umbrella," Maya cut in, taking a deliberate sip of her water and raising an eyebrow at someone who appeared to be openly glaring at her from several tables away.

"You're just bitter that you can't drink," Lucas offered, and Maya turned the full weight of her gaze on him.

"I'm growing a human being, Friar. Your immature pursuits are beneath me, now," she informed him; her hands protectively cradling her stomach.

"You agreed not to fight, it was the one thing that I asked for on my birthday," Riley reminded them, and Maya offered an apologetic quirk of her lips that only Riley would be able to interpret.

"I'll get you something else," Lucas offered; squeezing Riley's hand as he left the table to talk to the bartender.

Riley couldn't help frowning at the poorly dyed blonde, in the low-cut top, who immediately perked up at Lucas's appearance.

"He's not looking," Maya offered, and Riley forced her eyes back to her best friend.

"I know he's not looking, but that doesn't mean that he isn't weighing his options."

"You had one sip of alcohol and you've already become completely delusional. That has to be some kind of record," Maya snorted.

"He asked me to marry him, Maya," Riley let her head fall into her hands, "And I turned him down flat."

"Oh, we're having this conversation again. At this point, we should really just record my answers and you can just play them back to yourself. It would save both of us a ridiculous amount of time," Maya sighed, and Riley parted her fingers just enough that Maya could catch the utter lack of amusement on the brunette's face, "Lucas told you he was willing to wait."

"But, how long, Maya? How long does a perfectly decent guy, who looks like that, wait for his commitment-phobic girlfriend to agree to marry him?"

"His original proposal date was for your graduation, so I would say that you have some time, Riley. And, Lucas, isn't going anywhere. You're his one great love; the one that he'll still be talking about when his memory eventually goes, and he's old and wrinkly and falling apart," Maya couldn't quite conceal her delight at the thought and Riley resisted the urge to rub her eyes and ruin her carefully applied makeup.

"I don't want to mess this up. I almost did and coming home, working on things, has just made me realize that I'm never going to want anything else the way that I want him."

"Refusing his spur-of-the-moment proposal, did not mean that you refused him, and Lucas knows that. He wouldn't be here if he didn't. I've seen plenty of ugly marriages and you and Lucas are going to make it, whenever you decide is the right the time. It's not something that needs to be rushed."

Lucas's return to the table halted their argument and, sure enough, he placed a bright purple drink in a martini glass directly in front of her; his hands ghosting over where she'd had hers resting on the table.

"Thank you," she doesn't mean for the drink.

"Happy birthday, Riles," he pressed his lips to hers and they ignored the sound of Maya's fake gagging.

She pulled herself off the bathroom floor sometime after four; feeling just as nauseated as she had when she'd originally staked her claim in front of the toilet. Her head was already pounding, and the glass and crackers still sat untouched on the dark tile.

"You look like crap," Josh informed her, from where he was sprawled out in the living room, staring determinedly up at the ceiling.

"Well, I feel like death," she informed him; pausing in the kitchen to grab a bottled water from the fridge.

"Me too," he agreed; something heavy in his tone and he moved his legs long enough for Riley to sit down before resting them in her lap.

"Life starts back up again, tomorrow. We go back to living and Maya goes six feet under," Riley mused; resting the water bottle in the space between his ankles.

They'd never been overly affectionate; a hug here and there when it was necessary, but for the most part she'd never been entirely sure how to act around him. Growing up, their age difference had seemed almost insurmountable and, then, there had been Maya, whose feelings for him had put their relationship in an awkward place.

Maya's death; their shared grief, had broken down some kind of barrier between them and she wasn't in any hurry to put it back up.

"And you catch a flight back to your fairytale?" He questioned, and Riley forced her thoughts back to the conversation at hand.

"I want to know what happened to her. I want to chase down every lead, every aspect of her life that I wasn't aware of, but it's not going to bring her back, Josh. And I've never seen Farkle this afraid, before; this sure that whatever truth we uncover is just going to make things worse."

"Maybe, it will, but I can't just stop. I need to know what happened to her between the time she left me and the moment that she died in that hotel room. She had to have been planning something, Riley, and you know it," He sat up; his eyes boring into hers with an intensity that had her frozen in place.

"You remember in middle school when I was in that mess of a love triangle and you sat me down and had me play out every crazy scenario that was going through my head?"

"You want to do that, now?" Josh questioned.

"I want you to tell me that I'm being ridiculous; that all of these theories running through my head couldn't possibly be anywhere near the truth."

"Then, let's run through this, lay everything out on the table one last time and if we hit a dead end, then we give up and go back to whatever's waiting for us on the other end of this," his eyes pleaded with her and she found herself giving in.

"We know that you were with Maya in Nevada before she died; that she took a flash drive with pictures of after her ex-husband hit her on it."

"And we know that the flash drive wasn't in the stuff that you received after the autopsy or in what the police found. It would have been leaked by now if it was," Josh cut her off and she rubbed her temples, in an effort to relieve the war her brain was waging against her.

"We, also, know that her phone bill was filled with calls to Zay. What if she decided to go public with what Kyle had done to her?" She suggested.

"Zay doesn't strike me as the kind of guy to give the violent ex-husband a heads up that he's about to out him. The guys a jerk, but even he has a limit, doesn't he? And if Kyle has no idea about Maya's plan or the pictures, then he has no reason to kill her."

"Unless she was blackmailing him," Riley pointed out, fingering the key around her neck, "I found this in her memory box, along with a message saying that whatever is in the safety deposit box this key unlocks has insurance against something happening to her."

"Which is useless without a location," Josh sighed; reaching over to examine the key and pausing a second on the engagement ring that rested beside it, "You still wear it?"

"Not on my finger," Riley slid the chain off her neck and handed it over to him, before abruptly changing the subject, "It doesn't explain the pregnancy test or the calls to the White House."

"There's one person who can tell you what those calls were about," Josh reminded her; setting the chain with the rings back into her hand and palming the key.

"I haven't talked to Lucas since the day that I left him," Riley admitted; the rings feeling heavy in her palm.

"You don't have to tell anyone why you left him, but he hounded the family for months trying to figure out what happened to you. He was a mess and not the kind of mess that knew exactly what he had done wrong. I don't know what happened and I won't make you tell me, but you had to know that you weren't going to get through this day without talking to him."

She was with him when he received the phone call; watched the color drain from his face and the horror settle in his eyes.

They'd had their legs twined together under the table and their textbooks stretched out in front of them on the table and, up until three minutes ago, everything had been fine in their world. Maya's hormones had finally started to settle down post-partum and the reality of Savannah had severely cooled Lucas and Riley's desire to progress their relationship too quickly.

Too many sleepless nights spent wandering the neighborhood and begging Savannah to go to sleep had thrown into stark clarity what growing up too fast looked like.

And, Zay had just gotten married in a shotgun wedding that was more depressing, then joyful.

Lucas and Riley were in a good place; were in an appropriate place for their phase of life and she, finally, felt like they were on the same page when it came to what they wanted and when they wanted it.

She should have known how quickly everything can change; Maya, Zay, even Farkle had been a testament to the way life can flip upside down in an instant.

But she wasn't prepared for this moment. It would take her years before she would realize that when it comes to the big ones you never really are.

"Lucas," Riley reached out to grasp his free hand, as he dropped the phone he had been holding to his ear with little regard for where it landed, "What's going on?"

"My father had a heart attack this afternoon," Lucas spoke the words mechanically, like he wasn't quite sure they were true, yet, "My mother was out grocery shopping and by the time she got home, there was nothing that she could do."

"Lucas," Riley choked out his name, unable to process the words that he was saying.

"My sister was in her room, she didn't know," Lucas continued; possibly unaware that she had even spoken.

"I have to catch a plane," he stood up abruptly; recklessly shoving his things into his bookbag, "I need to be there."

"Of course, I'll help you pack," Riley offered; rising from the table with him and hurrying to grab her own things when he headed for the door without waiting for her, "Lucas?"

"It can't be real. I talked to him last week, he was fine," He turned to face her; tears gathering in the corners of his eyes that he was furiously trying to blink away, "He was healthy."

"I'm so sorry," she struggled to push all of her feelings into the words; wrapping her arms around him and burying herself into his chest.

She felt the tears land in her hair and held on tighter, offering comfort in the only way she knew how.

"I need to pack," Lucas abruptly pulled away; wiping furiously at his face and she nodded, latching her fingers through his and following him towards his dorm.

He immediately dug through is closet to find his carryon bag and Riley watched helplessly from the sidelines, as he started throwing clothing at random into it.

His family had moved back to Texas right after Lucas had started school. The farm was becoming too much for Pappy Joe to manage, though the family had joked that he was going to live forever, and Riley had believed it. He was nearly a hundred, now.

"Do you need me to find you a flight?" Riley questioned; taking an automatic step towards where his laptop was sitting on his desk.

"Yes, I'm doing everything out of order," Lucas bit out in frustration and Riley hesitated between reaching out to him and turning directly to the task that she'd just been assigned.

The furious way he dumped everything out of his bag and started over again, made the decision for her and she logged into his computer and pulled up the website.

"There's one that leaves JFK at 10:30. That should give us just enough time to stop by my apartment, so that I can grab my things," Riley suggested.

"Are you sure?" Lucas questioned, and she immediately grasped that he wasn't asking about the time.

"I'm going with you, Lucas. Everything else is going to have to wait."

Farkle showed up sometime around seven; dressed in an off-brand suit that looked far nicer then anything she'd seen him in recently.

Riley was on her third bottle of water and had taken something for her head; trying to feel human enough to go shower before getting ready for the day that they had ahead of them, when Josh led him into the kitchen.

The tension between them was thick enough to cut with a knife and Riley realized that she hadn't seen the two of them in a room together since high school, though whether that was by Maya's design to keep them apart, or their own personal feelings towards each other, was anyone's guess.

"Did you sleep at all?" Farkle questioned; his eyes glancing over her in a way that made her distinctly uncomfortable. It was too calculating, like he was piecing something together that she wasn't sure she wanted him to know.

"Did you?" she countered.

"She didn't stop throwing up until sometime after midnight," Savannah entered the kitchen; already dressed in a black Rachel Zoe dress with long sleeves and a pleated skirt that reached her knees. She'd pulled her hair into a simple bun that coiled at her neck and Riley noted that she, at least, looked better rested then the rest of them did.

"It's been a rough few days," Riley offered; brushing passed the teenager on her way back to the bedroom.

It was a testament to how tired she was that she didn't immediately recognize that Farkle was following her, until she tried to close the door in his face, "We need to talk."

"We talked yesterday," Riley reminded him.

"Not about yesterday, at least not entirely," Farkle returned; his eyes moving down the hallway in a clear gesture that there were other ears listening in.

She pushed the door open and stepped aside; watching Farkle's face as he did a cursory examination of Maya's bedroom.

"I've never been in here," he admitted, "The rest of the place looking impersonal, I get. This was the show-house that was all about who she was pretending to be, but I guess I thought her bedroom would be different; would look a little less like a hotel room."

"Farkle," Riley sighed, and she watched as he struggled to pull himself out of whatever memories had sucked him in.

"My name isn't on Savannah's birth certificate. I know that I wasn't there when she was born; that I was a mess that took forever to pull my life together, so I was willing to accept whatever Maya was willing to give me when I finally proved that I was capable of being a positive influence in Savvy's life. But, everything's changed, now, Riley. I thought that it would be better to let her think that Josh was her father, but he's not. And, when she finds out the truth, I don't ever want her to think that I didn't want her. That she was the biggest priority in my life."

"You want custody of Savannah," Riley sunk down on the edge of the bed, suddenly feeling light-headed.

"What's your plan, Riley? You're going to take her back with you to your castle and play house with her and your prince. Her entire life is here; her school, her friends, her home. I can be here for her. I can give her consistency and the closest thing to a normal life that she's going to get," Farkle explained; shoving his hands deep into his pockets as he waited for her to process what he was saying.

"And what about keeping her safe? You were terrified, yesterday, that we were digging into things that were going to lead to retaliation and you said it yourself that I've got resources that you don't have," Riley reminded him.

"When I had my religious enlightenment, I sold all of my stocks in Minkus International, completely severed myself from the company. I donated a lot of the money to charity, but I kept a last resort rainy-day fund. Between that and what Maya's left Savannah, I can keep her safe," Farkle plowed on and Riley stared determinedly at the knee of the silk pajamas that she'd scavenged from Maya's closet.

"If you take me to court, I can't stop you. All it will take is a paternity test and, my guess is, that the judge will side with you," Riley admitted; struggling with the weight that had settled in her chest.

"I don't want to go to court. I don't want to take anything away from you. I want us, the two people who have the greatest claim on her, to decide what's going to be best for her."

She's known Lucas long enough to know what decision he's going to make before he's even realized there is a decision. She sees it in the long hours he spends in his sisters' room; trying to comfort someone who feels just as burdened with guilt and grief as himself; she sees it in the way he helps his mother dry dishes without her voicing the need; and, in the way, he looks behind the beat-up Chevy that had lasted through three generations.

He loves the land; loves his family; and she's the only thing still tethering him to New York. He's got less than a year left on his associate degree and he'd been taking most of his classes online, anyway.

He's needed in Texas; needed in a way that it would be selfish of her to claim she needed him more.

So, she braces herself for what's coming and waits for him to reach the decision on his own.

"Will you take a walk with me?" Lucas questioned; his hand resting on her back, as she washed dishes in the sink. His mother had excused herself in the middle of dinner when she'd collapsed into a helpless bout of tears and Lucas's sister, Camille had driven Pappy Joe into town to pick up a few things before it got dark.

"Of course," she agreed; setting the last pan to dry and drying her hands on a hand towel, "Let me just grab a jacket."

She stole one of his; breathing in his sent and trying to mentally prepare herself for what was going to come. Her only goal was to make this as easy and painless as possible. They'd hardly be the first couple to try long distance and if she was going to make it work with anyone it would be Lucas.

He was waiting for her on the porch and she sunk down beside him, leaning against his shoulder as they swayed in the swing and listened to the sound of crickets chirping in the distance.

"I have a hard time remembering that I ever had a life before you," Lucas admitted; twining his fingers through hers across the space between their hips.

"It feels like we've known each other forever," Riley agreed; a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.

"I wanted to tell you that I don't know how I would have gotten through this week without you, but when it comes down to it, it's been a lot longer then just this week. I am the person that I am today because I met you. And, I don't have the words for how incredibly grateful I am that you fell into my lap all those years ago because you are the best thing to happen to me. Probably, the best thing that will ever happen to me."

"I love you, Lucas," she breathed, "You're my first love and my last and whatever comes between, I'm sure I'll be loving you, then too."

"I have to stay, Riles."

She let the words settle between them, already knowing what she needed to stay, but struggling against the tug in her heart.

"You wouldn't be who I thought you were, if you didn't," Riley agreed; squeezing his hand, "Your family needs you."

"But, the thing is, that I need you. And I know it's the single most selfish thing I've ever asked of you, but I'm going to ask you, anyway, because the thought of letting you go back home without asking you to stay feels like the worst mistake that I'll ever make. We belong together, whether that's in New York, or here, or anywhere else."

"Lucas," Riley cut him off, her heart beating frantically inside of her chest.

"You can turn me down, but please let me finish getting this out first," Lucas pleaded, and she clamped her mouth shut, "They tell you that you shouldn't make any big decisions after a traumatic event happens, but this decision was made a long time, ago. Marry me, Riley. Come be here with me, as my wife. We'll figure everything else out, but a marriage with you is easily the greatest thing that I will ever do, and life is far too short to waste any more time when we already know this is right."

"Lucas," Riley repeated; unable to manage any words accept for his name.

"You're going to go home tomorrow and finish up the rest of the semester and, probably, freak out with Maya about this. But I want you to take this with you," he placed a black, velvet box into her lap, "And, when you're ready, I'll be right here."

Sometimes, she still believes that there are inevitable things in life. Things set in motion that are on a collision course with her destiny. Maybe, free will is merely how someone reacts to the things fated to them a long time ago.

Or, maybe life is just chaos; whirling past everyone without rhyme or reason.

The ring on the fourth finger of her left hand was eight carrots, cushion cut, in a white-gold setting. She hadn't worn it long enough to be used to the weight, yet. Sometimes, it still felt wrong; like the size wasn't quite right, though it had never slipped off her finger.

It slips off, now, however; resting against the towel that Riley had lined the sink with. The chain around her neck goes next, settling around the significantly larger diamond like they might all be friends.

One ring from Maya, one ring to Maya, one from Lucas, and one from James.

The steam from the shower starts to fog up the mirror and she slips out of her pajamas, once again, finding herself noting the weight that she's lost.

Once upon a time, she'd believed in fairytales. Not the ones with princes, castles, and jewels, but the kind you built out of simplicity and love.

She knows better, now.

Sorry, this is kind of a dark place to leave it. But I had to split this chapter into two parts and I figured this was the best place to do it. The next chapter is the big one, where Lucas and Riley come face-to-face in the present and the flashbacks show what tore them apart to begin with.

If there happens to be anyone out there still reading, I would love if you left me anything in the review box, just, so that I know someone's there and thanks for reading!