AN: My Loves, Likes, and Dislikes. I love my readers, and their encouraging reviews. I like constructive criticism. I welcome it with open arms. I dislike flames. They only serve to discourage and anger me. And that makes my writing suffer, hence the long wait between chapters.

AN Part II: Sorry for the wait... I'm getting over a major case of writers block. Thanks for being patient. Hope you enjoy!

Apartment of Rosangela Adessi
February 23, 2006
4:45 AM

I sigh as Karma shifts on the bed again, settling back into the position she'd just moved out of. She gets her restlessness from me. I'll wake up in the morning to find my blankets and pillow on the floor, having been pushed off because I move around so much.

But she defiantly did not get her blanket hogging habit from me. I think Chris somehow rubbed off on her in that area. In the whole nature vs. nurture fight, I say nurture wins out. Because Karma is more like Chris than she is her own father… which I'm happy about.

Her father was a mistake that I don't regret making only because the best thing to ever happen to me came out of it. I was naïve back then, thought he was perfect because he had nice hair, pretty eyes, and a contagious smile. I wasn't the only one to fall head over heels for him either.

Every girl in school fell for him for two reasons. One, he was the bad boy in a world of 'daddies little girls', and somewhat upright young men. And two, because their arch enemy, or best friend liked him too, and it made him untouchable.

I liked him because Veronica Lands, aka Roni, liked him. Roni and I had been acquaintances pretty much from birth, because our parents ran in the same circles. They were all friends and got together often, and thought that their girls would become fast friends.

Roni was a spoiled jerk. She broke my favorite doll on purpose when we were five, so I in turn broke her nose… accidentally on purpose. We hated each other ever since. Everything we did was considered a competition.

So when he came into the picture, it was a race to see who would get him first. I won, obviously. If it wasn't for Karma, I would have wished Roni had won. If it wasn't for Karma, all the chasing and head butting I had done won't have been worth it.

The scars I carry around now wouldn't be worth it. Whenever I feel them weighing me down, all I have to do is think of my bright, vibrant, beautiful daughter and I feel lighter. I'm not a vain person, half the time I wish I had limp dirt brown hair instead of these blue-black tresses. Or plain brown eyes instead of jade green gemstones, as Chris liked to call them.

But Karma has some very good genes, I have a gorgeous daughter. I'll give her father credit for half of them, but that's about all he can stake his claim on. I now know how my parents felt as I was growing up. She's only five, but she's growing up so fast that I'm going to open my eyes tomorrow and she'll be going on her first date.

It's amazing how in tune she is with my emotions. Whenever I start thinking about her father, Chris, my attempted suicide, my attack, whatever it is, she knows. And she's there to give me a hug and tell me she loves me. I've got a fridge full of pictures she's drawn in order to cheer me up.

Like yesterday when I went to Luke's to see her, she could sense how tense I was around him. She clung to me like she had after I try to kill myself. She'd thrown a fit when I tried to leave, insisting on coming home with me. That's how I ended up here… cramped from sleeping on the edge of the bed with my five year old daughter laying on top of me and cold because she had kicked all the blankets off the bed.

But in the blue twilight of the dawning morning, there's nowhere I'd rather be…