AN: I've been doing a lot of brainstorming with my beta, and now it's all a matter of how much freetime I get for this fic to make progress. Thanks to everyone for all of the favorites/alerts/reviews!

Finn stood alone in the parking lot for a few minutes after she'd sped off without him. He'd never really understood Rachel. Most girls would kill for a chance to even be with him, and Rachel was freaking out. It wasn't like he didn't get that she didn't want him. He'd spent years trying to somehow get back in her pants because Rachel had been kind awesome in bed that one time they'd slept together, and she was also kind of cute—if you weren't too into boobs, and anyway she's a lot hotter with her shirt off. Like when she's riding him half-drunk in the hazy dark of his room—and fucking Christ he was not supposed to still think of her like that after all of these years.

Except was he now? Now that they would be together again…even if it would only be for a few months? It was really too much for him to wrap his head around, and he'd never been the best at word problems, and he was definitely not a philosophy major. He shook his head after he realized that he'd been standing in the parking lot looking like a total dipwad for a few minutes. Rachel always made him think really hard, and he didn't always pay attention to his surroundings when he was in a Rachel induced thought coma.

He was always thinking about ways to win her over or the cute little way she scrunched her nose when she thought. Of course, none of his hair-brained plans for wooing ever really worked out. Even wanting to be with Rachel hadn't really changed his general outlook or disposition. It was more like added incentive to keep being that same cocky guy. After all, hadn't she had sex with cocky Finn? Mostly, Rachel was just this giant puzzle to him. He liked to think that he knew something about girls. At least as a college student, he liked to think that.

Sure he'd had his share of absolutely terrifying high school relationships, but he'd kept those firmly in the past when he went to college, and now he thought he had something that resembled 'game' on the rather large campus. He never went without a date on a Friday night if he wanted one, but Rachel kept evading him.

For him, this forced arrangement was something of a blessing. Of course, he knew that, if anything, it would make Rachel even more resistant, but he also knew that if he could actually spend more time with her, he might be able to finally, finallywin her over.

:.:.:

After the meeting with her fathers she was still fuming. How dare they? How dare they do this to her! Leaving her high and dry with no choice by to date the one boy she wanted to avoid more than anything else. The one person who had seen her at her weakest and taken advantage of her and… she was absolutely livid. It wasn't like her fathers had played a big role in her life before this. They were always too busy trying to run the business. Too busy for dance recitals and school plays and their daughter. Rachel drove away from the large corporate building the tears starting to prick at the corners of her eyes. It was a short drive to her apartment, but the tears started leaking as soon as she hit the second traffic light.

She couldn't even look at Finn without remembering too much. The feel of his hands against her skin. "More…" Insistent whispers in a dark room. "Harder." He hadn't taken her virginity. That had gone to Jesse St. James during her junior year of high school, but Finn had affected her more than he should have. More than she should have allowed. "Shit." Pain. Blood. Sudden realization. Hospital.

Rachel sat at the front of the intersection lost in her memories until a honk from behind her shocked her out of her stupor.

After they'd first slept together, she and Finn had kind of dated. She liked him. She had actually more than liked him, and it felt good to be with someone who knew about her dads' horrible parenting, but things change, and really it was for both of their benefit when she started ignoring him. She was embarrassed, and it hurt to look at him.

She kept driving trying to forget about the specifics of the situation that led to her cutting ties with Finn. Stupid, naïve, drunk as hell. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Busy, stressed, blood.

Calls that went un-returned until he finally showed up at her dorm one day with a bouquet of flowers.

"Whatever I did, I'm sorry." He's standing outside her door at eleven o'clock at night. She can't forgive him because he did nothing wrong. She's the one that needs forgiveness except she just can't tell him.

"It's just not working." Lie. Lie, lie, lie, Rachel. Just like her daddies taught her. Keep lying and it will all just go away.

"I thought…" He looks so heartbroken. Dejected.

"Last time I checked, you're not much of a thinker," that's right. Twist that knife deeper. Make it sting so that he'll stop. So that he won't come back. She really doesn't want him around anymore. He already knows too much and not enough.

"I'm not giving up on you."

"You should."

He leaves the flowers at her door anyway. She steps on them as she rushes to class the next morning. Another beautiful thing dead in her wake. Dead from her inability to notice and perceive.

Her dads had no idea what they were getting into when they set this entire deal up. She hadn't told them about Finn. She hadn't told them about anything in years. They didn't even bother pretending to care anymore. The last real conversation they'd had had been about her major freshman year.

They'd threatened to not pay for her education if she didn't major in business. She'd threatened to never speak to them again. In the end, she'd won the battle, but not the war. She was juggling an insane double major in theater arts and business all to please fathers who hadn't given an honest fuck about her since the day she turned eight, and could be left full-time with the nanny.

She hadn't realized how hard she'd been crying until she almost missed the open parking space right in front of her building. Rachel had ended up skipping her last two classes of the day in the process of her trip to her fathers' office so she made her way up the steps with only her backpack and dignity. As a start to the spring semester, today had sucked. She quickly mounted the three stories to get to the apartment that she'd shared with her best friend Santana since last spring when they'd both finally decided to move off-campus.

"It's about time. I thought your last class ended at two on Monday—what happened to you, and why are you crying?" Rachel swiped her hand under her eye doing her best to dry the tears that had been steadily falling for a little over half an hour.

Rachel pressed her back against the closed door and slumped down resting her head on her knees. "It's finally happening, Tana. The entire universe is against me."

"You'll understand why I take that exclamation with a grain of salt." Santana got up from where she'd been painting her toenails on the couch and walked over to Rachel, "What is it this time, Diva?"

Rachel lifted her head from her knees to look at her roommate, "The Daddies Berry, are making me date Finn Hudson. It's some… some shit about the companies merging and it looking better for business. I can't do it Tana. I can't look at him and pretend to date him and… I can't!"

"Heavy. They still don't know about—"

"NO! You're the only other person who knows, and I'm not telling them. They're making me do it anyway."

Santana shook her head from side to side blowing out a breath between her teeth, "Ok, Berrylicious, here's how this is gonna go. You're going to get up, and I am going to cook you some of that awesome vegetable curry that I know you love, and then we're going to watch a shitty, girly movie."

"I have a date with him on Friday, and he's in my Monday, Wednesday, Friday history class," Rachel added.

She took the hand that Santana was leaning down to her and slowly got up from the floor. "You can do it, chica. What's one little date anyway? And during class you should actually be paying attention."

"It's six months, San. I'm supposed to pretend to date him for six months."

"Well fuck."

:.:.:

Rachel ignored him for the rest of the week except to confirm that he'd made plans for Friday night. She informed him that he would be picking her up at seven PM sharp, and he would have been remiss to argue with her. The ice queen routine had been stepped-up ten-fold over the last week, and she barely even glanced at him during class. They mystery of Rachel Berry was one that had plagued him ever since that first night. It had only intensified over the passing years as she'd avoided him more and more. He'd never even been able to determine why she'd started avoiding him freshman year.

One day they were making plans to go out to dinner again, and the next he was outside of her dorm begging her to tell him what was wrong.

It wasn't the most orthodox way of doing things, but Finn hoped that he might finally get some answers during this six month adventure in courtship.

AN: Alright, you know what to do. Leave speculation on Rachel's secret in your reviews ;). Also, lots and lots of hugs and kisses for my awesome beta Sam (sdl90) who is the best brain twin ever!