AN: So it has been forever since I last wrote... I'm sorry. It's been really busy... especially with the college stuff and everything. Sorry!

I didn't speak one word to my mother on our drive home from school. I was mad at everyone; my mom for taking away something I enjoyed, Larsson for tempting me with something I couldn't have, Kevin for turning against me and most of all I was pissed off at myself. How could I have let myself get attached to something? It wasn't fair.

All sorts of thoughts swam through my mind that just left me wanting to scream at somebody. It wasn't fair.

As soon as I saw the front of my house from the end of our street my seat belt was off. We pulled into our driveway and I was out before the car had even stopped. I slammed the front door of my house and ignored the looks Eric sent me from the kitchen.

"Good day then?" He asked sarcastically.

I rushed off to my room, obviously not wanting to talk.

I spent the rest of the night in my room, not paying attention when my mom knocked at the door to tell me that dinner was ready and when Rachael finally came to bed I was already 'asleeep'.

A few weeks passed by normally and before I knew it Larsson was on his podium announcing that our winter concert was this friday.

The only word that came to mind was fuck! Exactly one week until the concert!

That meant that I would have to see Kevin again, even after I had spent so much time and effort avoiding him. I cursed quietly under my breath which did not go unnoticed by Mr Larsson who gave me a knowing look before continuing. I was grateful to him because he had not mentioned the whole French Horn thing to me again after I returned it to him.

'So today I really need you guys to focus. We have two days left until we have to go and perform in front of your parents...and probably blow... so ya.' You could tell that Larsson was completely not himself. Rather, he was himself but in a 'I'm-tired-so-don't-fuck-with-me' type of way.

I sat back in my chair preparing myself for a long rehearsal where Larsson would only contribute to the drama that makes up the basis of orchestra class.

I left class that day in just as bad of a mood as Larsson was... and it wasn't made any better when I saw Rob and Kevin screwing around with a tennis ball in front of the bandroom. They were probably freezing their asses off in the falling snow... which kind of made me happy in a perverse way.

Seeing him made me grow warm with anger. I tensed and stood behind the tinted door and just watched him, while trying to figure out the best plan of escape. Maybe it would be best to just walk by and pretend like I hadn't seen him. Even though it had been three weeks since I stopped playing Horn, I could still see the look of anger Kevin had given me... and that's what pissed me off. He hadn't given me a chance to explain or anything, he just automatically turned against me.

A reasonable part of my mind argued that he had tried to stop me from running away from him but, another part of me wanted to hate him just to make things easier on myself.

I must've stood in front of the door for a while because I realised that everyone that had been in my class had already left. I shrugged a bit and just stood there waiting for the perfect moment to escape.

"You know, you could just try talking to him again." I jumped a mile and turned to find Larsson behind me with a stack of music in his arms. Why did he always have to sneak up on me?

I scoffed a little before replying, "I'm not talking to him again. I have my pride."

"And so does he." Larsson sighed. He shifted the music a bit to make it lay more comfortably.

"Do you want some help?" I asked. It wasn't as if I really had to be anywhere. My mom was working until late and I still hadn't found the oppurtune moment to pass Kevin.

"That would be nice. It's just some sheet music that I lent out to Lemont Creek ages ago. It just has to be filed." He said, sounding less stressed then he had earlier.

He dumped the load into my arms and reached into his pockets for his keys. While he unlocked the door to the music library I took one last secret glance at Kevin. When I turned to follow Larsson I noticed he was holding the door waiting for me to come with a smirk on his face. Had he seen my look at Kevin? Duh! Of course he had and now I was blushing. Dammit! I tried to walk by him with my head held high but I knew and he knew who I had been looking at.

When he closed the door behind us I waited for him to make some sort of stupid comment but he didn't. Instead he took the music from my arms and laid it on one of the tables.

"Ok so these go in the band section and these go in the orchestra section." He told me, even though I already knew where everything went seeing as I spent hours in the library looking through the music.

I looked at the first piece titled, 'Dancing Shrimp'. I couldn't help but smile... I mean come on, what kind of name is Dancing Shrimp?

Larsson and I had been in the library for quite a while before I finally got up the nerve to ask him a question.

"Did you hate the orchestra as much as the band kids here do when you were younger?"

He was slient for a little while before he answered.

"Well first of all I still am young but to get to the point of your question yes." He told me. "They were obnoxious snots."

I turned away from his look.

"That is until I went to college and started to actually meet with some of the people in my classes who just so happened to play instruments of the string variety." He smiled at me. "Why are you asking me this?"

"I was just wondering." I said, trying to keep the true reason to myself.

Another pause.

"You were wondering if there was any chance of you getting along with Kevin again, weren't you?"

"No!" I said, a little bit too defensively. I knew he knew the truth so I joked with him a little bit. "Besides what would a snobbish orchestra girl want to have to do with the band?"

"I don't know... then again I wasn't the one that picked up the French Horn secretly." He said, giving me a smirk. That made me blush.

"Okay so maybe I did, what of it?" I said. He just shook his head and laughed.

I had walked over to the opposite side of the room near the filing cabinets when I felt my phone vibrating in my pocket.

"Hello?" I said, putting my ear to the receiver.

'Hey honey. I'm in the parking lot waiting for you.' My mom's voice said, from the other side of the line. 'It's starting to snow pretty hard so I want to get home as soon as we can.'

"Okay, I'll be right there." I told her, hanging up.

"I have to go Larsson. My mom's waiting for me." I told him.

"Okay I'll see you on monday."

"Don't stay too long, she said that the snow is coming down pretty hard." I told him.

"Sure thing."

I grabbed my stuff and took a deep breath before heading out of the band room into the cold. Kevin's eyes met mine for a moment as I passed him but, I made sure to ignore him as best I could... and he did the same.

Kevin's POV

I watched her ignore me as she left the bandroom. Her feet crunched through the dirty snow leaving footprints that later served as the only reminder that she actually had walked past me. The fact that she had just ignored me was a slap in the face colder than that of the crisp air of winter. I really did regret yelling at her... especially when she gave me a genuine look of hurt after I said those things to her. I guess I did deserve to be ignored like that.

The tennis ball that Rob and I had been throwing back and forth at each other suddenly connected with my arm and I remembered that Rob and I were still playing.

"Heads up." He shouted too late for it to have any effect on me.

"A little bit late for that, don't you think?" I said, still watching Fia's retreating form. Rob shrugged.

"What was that about?" Rob said, in regards to the exchange Fia and I had just had, or rather the lack of one.

"She's angry with me." I told him. Rob gave me a weird look. I hadn't exactly told him about what had happened.

"I thought that I hadn't seen her around as much but I didn't know you guys were mad at each other. What about our last competition? You guys were making googly eyes."

"Well she quit, I guess I was a little bit harder on her than I should've been and she ran off." I explained.

"What?! I didn't know Fia did that." He basically yelled. What made it worse was that Larsson was locking up the bandroom just as he said it.

"Talking about Fia now, are we?" Larsson said, walking over to join our conversation.

"I didn't know she quit." Rob said.

"Yeah, she had issues at home." Larsson told us, giving me a look which made me feel even more like an asshole than I already did.

"I didn't realise..." I grumbled. "She won't talk to me now."

"Well that's because you wouldn't let her talk the first time." Larsson said.

"You screwed up on that one dude." Rob said, not making anything better.

"I really want to make things better."

"Then maybe you should try to apologise." Larsson threw out.

"How am I supposed to apologise if she won't talk to me?" I asked

"Have you actually tried confronting her, because she's obviously not going to come to you." Larsson asked, which made me feel kind of stupid.

"No-" I started.

"Well there's your problem. She probably wants to talk to you... just doesn't want to be the one to talk to you first." Larsson said, slapping me on the back, "Don't stay out too long boys it's starting to come down harder."

He left us standing out in the snow with new possibilities to consider.

"Looks like you have a problem to deal with now." Rob said, before we both headed off towards my car.

Fia's POV

That night at dinner I brought up the subject of my concert.

"Mom?"

"Yes?" She replied, looking up from her soup.

"My concert is this friday and I was wondering if you could make it?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"Oh honey... I can't. If I don't stay at work I'm going to lose my job." She told me, well it was worth a try. I looked at Eric next.

"I can't either. I'm sorry. I was going to take Rachael up to Long Isle for the weekend." He told me, I remembered him mentioning something about that now.

"Okay cool." I told them.

"Are you going to have a ride back home after the concert?" My mom asked.

"Yeah, I'll ask Ben or something." I told her. Alice wasn't even going to be able to make it to our concert so I knew I wouldn't be able to get a ride from her, so all that was left over was Ben.

The next morning I found Ben outside our math class.

"Hey dude, I was wondering if I could get a ride home from you after our concert." I asked, deciding not to dally on the question.

"Yeah sure. I don't really want to hang out too long afterwards though if you don't mind." He said.

"That's perfect." I said, smiling at him.

Friday came more quickly then I wanted it to. I stayed after school seeing as I didn't really have anywhere else that I could go. I had all of my concert clothes in a bag and I was completely ready for the concert. Now all I had to do was wait another five hours until it started.

I was hanging out in Larsson's office just browsing on the computer. Another one of his students had gone out to buy food for Larsson and she had agreed to bring me some too so now I was sitting and eating a hamburger with extra cheese. Larsson sat looking at judging scores from one of the band competitions that they had gone to. He would let out small sighs or ruffle his hair every now and then which let me know that he wasn't particularly happy with some of the judges comments.

That was basically my afternoon until people started showing up for the concert. Larsson literally kicked me out of his office and sent me to go and get dressed around 6.

I wore the same concert black dress that all the girls had to wear except mine had a slit up the right side to make it easier to play cello with a dress on. I actually let my hair down for once too. It was to keep my neck and shoulders warm but it actually looked kinda nice too, which I guess was an added bonus.

I bumped into Ben on the way back to the band room. He was wearing his tuxedo which was typical concert dress for all of the guys.

"Wow... you look nice." He told me gripping the tips of my hair inbetween his two fingers.

I just gave him a funny look, "Thanks" I told him unsure about his compliment. I wasn't going to lead him on.

Larsson called into the room from his office that we should all have our instruments out and be tuning and that we were going on in ten minutes.

The orchestra's always went on first and then the band followed right after. Larsson always tried to make the concerts as short and painless as he possibly could for the parents but, personally I believed that he was just trying to make everything short and painless for himself. I mean what hurts more than two out of tune piccolo's? Trust me... nothing.

Ben and I hurried to find our instruments and do any last minute tuning adjustments to the strings. As we were tuning I watched Ben out of the corner of my eye. There was something strange. He kept on giving me odd looks that definetely made me uncomfortable. When he realised I was watching him he smiled at me and I gave him a weak smile back.

"Let's go." He said, grabbing his instrument and my arm and lead me to the theater where the rest of our orchestra were already waiting. Mr. Larsson was giving his usual speech up on stage and we were all waiting for him to finish so we could take our seats.

When we heard our cue to come on stage Ben gave my arm a last squeeze, which felt more possessive than reassuring to me, then we all made our way onto the stage. My stomach was doing back flips and not the good kind. It wasn't from nervousness it was from the weird way Ben had been acting. Sure he liked me and he let everyone know on a regular basis but he never actually took action. However, I decided to put it out of my head for the moment so I could concentrate on playing.

The concert felt like it spead by. All of the work we had put into the music had been played within ten minutes. Ten intense minutes by the way... just to let you all know. Larsson had all of his section leaders stand up to take a bow and then the rest of the orchestra and then we were all basically carted off the stage to make way for the band.

As we passed by the bandies, making our way to the theater's seats to watch the band people perform, each group started making rude jeers at one another... personally I was indifferent. I walked next to Ben who had caught up with me rather quickly. I watched him walk slowly which made me walk slow as well. As soon as he was sure there was no one left backstage with us he turned his gaze to me and that was when I realised that there was something wrong.

"B-ben?" was all I could say. He set his violin and my cello on one of the prop tables the drama club used for their plays and then started backing me into a corner.

"Shhh." He said, getting closer to me. He pushed my hair out of my face. He leaned in and started sucking at the base of my neck. I began to shiver under his touch, afraid of what he could do.

"Stop it." I tried using my strength to push him off me but, he used his body weight to hold me against the wall.

"You know you want it." He said, continuing to kiss me. What was wrong with him? This wasn't the Ben that I knew.

He tried to go for my mouth next but I bit his lip instead. He slapped me across the face.

"Don't do that again!" He whispered harshly. I felt tears begin to prickle at the corner of my eyes.

"What's the matter with you?" I asked. "Leave me alone."

This time he covered my mouth with his and bit at my lip brutally trying to get me to open my mouth for him. I just stood against the wall stiff as a board, completely defenseless. He started feeling up my side and touched my thigh through the slit in my dress. I struggled against him trying to get his mouth off mine so I could call for help. All I could mutter were the words 'STOP' which were smothered by his unwelcome mouth.

The next thing I knew his weight was being pried off me. I heard a loud smack as someone's fist connected with Ben's nose and then the boy grabbed my arm and cello and pulled me out of the theater into the snow outside. He dragged me into Larsson's office where we hid under his desk away from the eyes of people. I felt like crap and I was completely shocked that Ben would try something like that on me. I looked up to see who my rescuer had been and was surprised to see Kevin's worried face looking down at me. That's when the tears started falling.

Kevin tried to pull me closer but, I scooted back and freaked, "Don't touch me!"

"I'm not going to hurt you." He calmly reassured me.

He waited a few seconds before he wrapped me up in his arms and pulled me closer to his chest. He stroked my hair lightly which was ten times more comforting than when Ben had touched it. Even if something inside me told me to be mad at him, the fact that he was sitting under Larssons desk with me, comforting me and holding me showed that he really did care for me somewhere deep down... despite our fight. I shook lightly as I muffled my sobs into his shoulder.

"Are you okay?" He asked, as my sobs began to die down.

I looked up at him. There was a soft look in his eyes; nothing that told me he thought I looked like crap though... there was just a nice tinge of sympathy.

I nodded my head. I rested my chin on his shoulder again. He really did smell nice... and I had to admit he looked amazingly handsome in his tuxedo.

He held me quietly, whispering reassuring phrases into my ears every now and then. It was really nice to have Kevin there caring for me again.

When the band finished their part of the concert everyone scrambled back into the bandroom to collect their cases and go home but, Kevin and I just stayed under the table in a comforting embrace. Larsson eventually came back into his office and found us under his table. He was just about to ask us what the hell we were doing under there when a person walked into his office.

"Have you seen Fia? I was supposed to give her a ride home." Ben's voice rang out through the office and I stiffened. Larsson was just about to answer when Kevin grabbed his foot and shook his head rapidly.

"No. I'm sorry Ben I haven't seen her. What happened to your nose by the way?" He asked, walking towards Ben so he was being pushed out of the office.

"Nothing." He said quickly, and then changed the conversation again, "Are you sure you haven't seen her? I could've sworn I saw her with one of those asshole bandies." I felt Kevin tense against me. If I hadn't been holding him I'm sure he would have jumped out at Ben and beaten him up again.

"I'm positive Ben." Ben let out a loud sigh before he stalked off.

I heard the door click shut as Larsson closed it. He went onto his hands and knees so he could be face to face with us.

"What's going on?" He asked, with a harsher than usual voice, "Why weren't you on stage?"

He was looking at Kevin and then his eyes softened when they met my face.

"What happened Fia?" He asked.

I choked a little when I tried to tell him so Kevin spoke for me, "I caught Ben basically trying to rape her behind stage."

Larsson's eyes grew cold again. "That is unacceptable! I can't believe he would do something like that. We should file a report right away."

"NO!" I yelled at Larsson, shocking both him and Kevin, "I don't want people to know and think I'm weak."

Larsson looked at me softly, "That's not going to happen."

"Still I don't want you to."

Larsson sighed, "Ben said he was your ride home, is that true?"

"He was until he did this." I told Larsson.

"Where's your mom?"

"She's working the graveyard shift tonight." I explained.

"How are you getting home then?" Larsson asked.

"I can give her a ride." Kevin said, butting into our conversation. "That is if it is okay with Fia."

Larsson gave me a look asking me if it was okay, "Yeah sure, it's fine with me."

"I think that'll work out for the best." Larsson said. "You guys can stay in here for as long as you need but I am going to go and talk with the head of the district's music department."

"Nahh, that's okay... I think we'll head out now." I told him, "I just need to put my cello away."

"Okay, then I'll walk you guys out." Larsson said.

Kevin and I crawled out from under the table and I grabbed my stuff and we headed off to Kevin's car. It was snowing harder than it had been earlier now and it was freezing. Larsson gave me a hug and told me to call him if I needed anything. Kevin helped me into the front seat and we were off. The snow outside had begun to fall more heavily making for a slower drive to my house. At first Kevin and I only spoke if he needed to know when to take a certain turn, but as we got farther along to my house Kevin began to talk to me.

"Fia?" I heard him say almost cautiously.

"Hmmm?"

"I'm sorry." He said. That was all he had to say.

"It's okay." I told him, "I'm sorry too."

"For what?" He asked, "I was the asshole, not you."

"I should've explained to you that I was quitting."

"Well I didn't exactly give you a chance." He said. It was silent for a few minutes.

"Are we cool then?" I asked.

"I think we are." He replied. He took his eyes off the road for a second to look at me.

When we pulled into my driveway Kevin opened the door for me and walked me to my front porch. At this point it was snowing pretty hard and it was freezing. The wind and snow whipped at us biting at our cheeks. We both ran for the shelter of my house.

As soon as I opened the door we poured in tracking slush all over the floor. Our teeth chattered loudly.

I was the first to speak, "I think you should stay here for a while until the snow storm dies down."

"It doesn't look like it's going anywhere for a while so I think I should leave."

"Don't be stupid, it's too dangerous right now." I retaliated. He looked at me in consideration.

"Okay... but only until I can dry my clothes." He agreed. It was at this point that I noticed he was shivering and so was I.

"Here take your coat off put it on the heater over there. I'll go and find you some warm clothes to change into." I said, while walking to Eric's room. I'm sure he would understand if I let Kevin borrow his clothes.

As I was walking back I heard the phone ringing in the kitchen. I ran to answer it and shoved the clothes into Kevin's arms.

"The bathroom is in my room... first one on the right." I said pointing down the hallway. I picked up the reeceiver, "Hello?"

'Hi honey, it's mom.' The voice from the other end said.

"Hey."

'Listen, it's snowing really hard right now and I'm not going to risk driving all the way from work to our house tonight. Your aunt lives about a block away from my work so I'm going to stay there for the night.'

"Okay." I said, looking out the window. True to my mom's word the snow was gradually intensifying. "Be safe mom."

'You too honey.' She said, 'Oh umm... I haven't exactly had the heater fixed yet so if you go into the garage there are little mini heaters that you can put in your room.'

"Okay. I know where they are."

'Good. Well I love you and I guess I'll see you sometime tomorrow. Bye.'

"Bye mom. Love you too." I hung up, and turned around hearing Kevin walking towards me.

"Hey."

"Hey yourself." I said, back to him. I put the fact that the snow was coming down harder out of my mind.

"I hope you don't mind but, I hung my clothes up in your bathroom."

"No problem." I said, waving it off, "If you want you can have something to drink. I could put on the water right now."

"Sure." He shrugged, "That sounds good".

I turned on the stove and set the water to boil. Kevin leaned against the counter watching me scramble around for different items.

"Do you want anything to eat?" I asked. I was personally very hungry.

"Depends on whether or not you're eating too." He said.

"Yeah, I'm starved." I told him, "What do you want?"

"Whatever is easiest for you to make."

"Hmmm... how about hot dogs?"

"Sounds good." He told me, as I got out our frying pan, "Here, how about you worry about the water and I'll cook the hot dogs."

"It's really no trouble." I told him.

"It's okay, I like doing it." I reluctantly gave up the frying pan and handed him a fork and the hotdogs. I watched him flip them around until they were a dark crispy colour.

When everything was ready we took the food to the couch and turned on the tv. We flipped through the channels until we found a show we both agreed on. It was nice to sit next to Kevin and just relax. I had gotten us blankets to share and we began to totally lose track of time.

The show we watched was in the middle of a stupid joke when everything in the house went dark. I jumped a little before getting up. I stumbled over one of Rachael's stupid toys before righting myself again.

"You okay?" Kevin asked, satnding up next to me.

"Yeah." I walked around a bit, "Shit the powers off."

"Well no duh." He said, laughing a bit at my comment.

"I knew it was I just didn't want to jynx us or anything." I told him. I walked into the kitchen where I knew my mom kept candles and matches and a few flashlights stashed for situations just like this.

I lit a candle and set it in the middle of the kitchen, letting it illuminate my face. Kevin was over by the window looking out.

"Ummm... Fia..." He said, I walked up next to him, "I don't think I'm going home tonight.

AN: Wow I think that this was my longest chapter yet. Well I hope you enjoyed it and please read and review! :)