A/N: Dudes, I am WIPED ... but I nearly promised DisforDasey that I would have this out by today, so here it is, spelling errors and all. Enjoy the final chapter (minus the epilogue) of the Crazy Game trilogy!

Casey's mind was oddly still as she sat next to Derek in the darkness. Finally, after years of not knowing what's been going on with Greg and not having a friend in the world to turn to, she found someone who was willing to listen without judgment. Well, maybe without judgment. This is Derek, after all. Gosh, I miss him. I missed him. It's been so long …

"Hey, Derek," Casey said suddenly, breaking the silence, "why exactly did you leave Kingston all those year ago?"

"Are you kidding me, Casey? Like you don't know." Derek turned to face her, his eyes challenging.

"Uh, no, Derek, otherwise I wouldn't have asked."

"Casey."

"What?" Casey exploded. "All I know is that you came to my room, dumped me, and left. It was months before I knew that you weren't coming back, and years before I heard anything about your life! I was a mess, Derek. I still am." Casey turned her body to him, her chest rising violently with anger.

Derek clenched a fist. "Fine, Casey, I'll tell you. I was walking to class—Intro to Film, the only class I ever really went to—about two weeks before classes were finished for the year. I remember, I was hoping to run into you so that we could grab a coffee before class, and I saw you talking to some guy.

"You were waving your hands around, all crazy-like, and then you threw something on the ground. You started to stomp off, but this guy—he wore glasses, that's all I remember—grabbed your wrist, pulled you into him, and kissed you. Hard. In front of everyone."

Casey started to speak, but Derek cut her off and kept talking.

"I just turned and went home after that. Didn't go to class. I threw anything I could grab into suitcases and boxes and left. Sam was shocked—he had no idea what was going on. I just told him that I was leaving and that there was nothing he could do about it. And then I went to see you.

"And that was it. I drove away, begging you to call me, but you never did. I promised myself that if I heard from you by the first night, then I'd go back. But you never called me. So I kept going.

"It wasn't pretty, Case. I haven't told you everything, and I probably never will."

"Yeah, please don't," Casey said quietly. "I can only imagine."

"Yeah."

Casey sat for a minute in silence, Derek's tortured, drunken breathing beside her. What the hell is he talking about? There was no other guy. It was always him. Always about him. Doesn't he know how much I love him? Loved. Love. I don't know … OH! Finally, she spoke:

"That guy you saw me kiss? His name was Allan."

"Casey"—

"Allan Butterman."

Derek's jaw dropped a little in the moonlight, and Casey could see the light go on above his head. "The actor?"

"Yep."

"So you two were just"—

"Acting? Yeah. Remember how I told you about that play that I was in?"

"Uh …"

"Der-EK! See, you never listened to me anyway. I was the female lead in one of the spring student plays. We were rehearsing the scene in which the male lead—Allan's character—reveals to my character that he had an affair with some other girl."

"So you"—

"Threw his things on the ground and stomped off? Yes. And then he"—

"Tried to kiss you to win you back," Derek finished, his gaze focused on some unseen point across the lake again. "So after all these years"—

"You dumped me on a misunderstanding. And you didn't even let me explain."

"I was too mad!" Derek exclaimed, turning his gaze back to her. "Do you have any idea how humiliated I was?"

"Do you have any idea how destroyed I was?" Casey shot back. "Derek, you wanna know why I didn't call you? Because I was catatonic for three days. By the time I finally snapped out of it, I came to the realization that you wanted nothing to do with me. Nothing. So I did nothing. I finished my classes—barely, by the way—and spent my summer hardly moving. I gave up my role in that play"—

"Whoa, you gave up your role?"

"Yeah, I did," Casey said, rubbing her eyes. "I wasn't in any state to perform. And it's too bad, too, because that play got picked up by the Fringe Festival, and that's how Allan got to be as famous as he is now. I could have been part of that.

"Instead, now, I'm a barely professional, almost house-spouse to a man that I haven't seen in over two years. One which I can't leave, because as far as I know, he's alive and we're engaged. I can't leave that. Who knows, he may be locked up in some cell somewhere, getting threatened by a human meat grinder daily, holding onto life only by the thin thread of hope that I'm still waiting for him. And then he comes back and what, I'm gone? No. I can't do that and I won't do that.

"And the worst part is that you don't get it. You don't get that it's you. It's always been you. Even though I love Greg—and I do—it will never be the same with him as it was with you."

"Wow," Derek said, sucking in a deep breath. He held it for a second, then exhaled. "God, Casey, I'm so sorry about this. This is all my fault. If I had just listened for a second"—

"Whatever, Derek, it's over," Casey muttered.

"No, listen to me. It's always been you for me too. I may have been with Sally"—

"You were with Sally?" Casey screeched.

"Listen to me. Yes, I was with Sally, for a long time after I left Kingston. But I wasn't happy. I was always thinking about you, comparing her to you, wishing you were with me. Because Casey, after all the crap we've put each other through, after all of the misunderstandings and the fights, I love you. I always have and I always will."

Casey and Derek both lapsed into silence, consumed with their own thoughts. Then Casey spoke:

"So what now, Derek?"

"I don't know, Case. I do know that I'm not going to make some grand gesture and kiss you here as the sun comes up." Derek gestured to the sun rising over the lake. "I may be a jerk, but I'm not that kind of jerk. You're spoken for, and I respect that. The question is, what are you going to do?"

"I guess I'm going back to England," Casey said, her eyes filling with tears.

"Yeah, I guess you are," Derek said sadly. "Come on, let's go home," he said as he got up and walked to the car.

"But I already am," Casey whispered, her words drifting away on the wind.

A/N: Aww ... all that UST! Thank goodness for epilogues!