Hey guys. I usually respond to your reviews individually like in a PM or something, but most of the reviews were pretty much the same, so I'll just answer them here.

For those of you concerned about the cussing in the story—they're teenagers. There will be some swearing involved to make it as realistic as a sci/fi show can get. And half of the time they do, they are thinking it because of how I write in POVs. So because of the way you're reading it, it just doesn't look like that.

And there will be a couple more…intense moments like you want between Christine and Chase, but remember, I can only do so much to keep it at its appropriate T rating because it's outside my limits to write anything higher than a T rating. And Chase is like my first time doing a legit male POV, so please be easy on me. I'm a girl, I really don't know how they think.

Before I forget, LL will have 30 or 31 chapters depending on the layout of the plot and how much is written and revealed in every chapter. LL might end from around middle of February to the early beginning of March at the latest.

So everything you guys want can/could be coming in later chapters because there are a lot of them.

Hope that cleared up some things for you!

September 30th 2013

Chase's Pov

I sat at the counter, chair positioned so I sat with a view of the living room. Davenport and Tasha had taken Leo out to try and fix his hamster's wheel. (How had he managed to do that?) Adam was in the lab and Bree was lying on the couch with a huge comforter around her, reading Struck By Lightning.

"You know that gay guy from Glee?" Bree called out from her spot. "You know the one who plays Kurt?"

"Are you sure the actor is gay?"

"I don't know, but he wrote this book; I think you'd like it."

This was nothing new. Reading books and giving reviews about to each other was normal between Bree and me because we'd grown up having no one else to tell the book to. (I mean really—when did Adam read and when did Davenport get over his ego to listen long enough?)

I look down at the strings of my guitar, plucking as I say, "Oh really?"

Bree hummed back a yes in reply, flipping the page as I started the opening to The A Team by Ed Sheeran. I've always thought to ask her how she could read while I played, but never did in case she'd thought to ask me to stop.

I was at the second verse when the door slammed open and shut loudly.

"Hey Christine," Bree greeted my girlfriend casually.

"How can you do that?" Christine asked in shock instead of saying another greeting back.

I looked up to see what she was talking about. She kept gesturing between me playing and Bree reading, looking puzzled as she did so.

Bree shrugged. "You mean the reading? I've grown up with noise and reading in the same sentence—I've learned to live with it."

Finishing up, I set my guitar down carefully and grinned at Christine, kissing her jaw as I wrapped my arms around her waist. She laughed and leaned into me. "Chris, as much as I love you, why are you here on a Sunday?"

"You didn't hear?" my girlfriend pulled back to face me surprised. "There's an emergency meeting because Alissa's leaving tomorrow for a week to a family wedding. And there won't be a substitute until at least Thursday."

"Do we need to dress up? And keep in mind, by we I mean me." Bree dog-eared her page and tossed off her blanket. Like me, she was in sweats but wearing a Detroit Tigers sweatshirt. How'd she hear about them, much less pay attention to baseball? "I really don't feel like changing."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, because you really can't afford to lose those valuable three seconds of your life."

She glared at me and stuck her tongue out. If I was any less mature I'd do it back at her.

That's what I did.

Christine rolled her eyes as we shoved our shoes on and followed her out the door. "Must you two always bicker? I swear, you guys fight like senior citizens over the last pudding cup?"

Bree paused mid-step. "How would you know that?"

"Television."

That was never not the answer nowadays.

Christine and I spent the walk arguing over which teacher was the meanest and most like their even crankier substitute. By the time we got there, we tied at Mr. Freeman, the sour-faced sub for journalism teacher, Ms. Bakermen.

Bree shut her book—had she been reading all this time? How did she make it without crashing into anything? And how did I now notice? "How long is this going to take?" she whined while stomping her foot. Adam may have been the dumber one, but when it came to complaining about something, Bree beat him by a landslide. "I'm at really good part in my book!"

"That's what you always say when you have to stop reading."

"Chase, shut up."

"Not again!" Christine grabbed our arms and pulled us to the auditorium, where the rest of the cast (understudies like me included) were sitting in a big circle around the stage, a lady in the middle of the ring of students; it wouldn't have rang as many bells if the woman had been wasn't so…unexpected?

The school was cheap enough to use all the old subs, elderly and middle-aged cranky people who were charging themselves on coffee just to scream at us. Never the new, fresh out of community college teachers like this one seemed to be.

He was your classic slicked back, shiny loafers and all pearly whites as he stood in a charcoal suit with a very unflattering banana colored tie.

"Ah! Welcome, welcome!" And god did his voice carry. It boomed to us, a fairly long distance away from the stage—at least twenty rows filling that distance. "Come in, come in. Better late than never."

I would hate to wake up to that peppy attitude if he was a regular school teacher. We threw our sweatshirts and things onto some chairs in the third row before bounding up the stage steps and worming our way into the circle. My eye nearly started to twitch when seeing that boy toy smile Callan shot over at my girlfriend. I hated to have her sound like property, but we were ten months strong; I really wanted to make it past that one year mark.

I saw a few girls giggling like demented maniacs and pointing and whispering about the substitute teacher; oh please. Like they could be any more obvious.

Mr. Johnny Handsome clapped his hands and rubbed them together. I leaned back on my hands. "I know you all heard about how Ms. Alissa's out of state for a family funeral." He sighed and let out a loud, unnecessary "Tragic!"

"I thought it was a family wedding," Christine interjected with furrowed eyebrows. Her arms came around to hug her knees as she sat up. Even she could make sweats and a Marilyn Monroe T-shirt look absolutely gorgeous.

Johnny Handsome shrugged. "Might have been. I didn't have my reading glasses on when I read the e-mail."

Give me a break—now he was just trying to get all the girls to swoon. I was not going to be able to up with this for a two hour practice.

"Anyway," he continued with a yank upwards of his pants. "Today we are going to focus on partners. You all are equal—you all are important."

Okay, so now he was a motivational speaker?

"Everyone will have a scene together at some point." Lies. Did he even read over the script? Just a little bit? "So in order to act together, you need to work together. I'm going to pair you off in to groups of two and have you rotate every half hour. First we're going to start with the main roles and escalate from there."

Despite how wrong this guy was in detail wise, his logic kind of made sense.

The first grouping was fairly okay. Christine was paired with Gemma and they practically knew everything already so all they did was stretch at the edge of the stage and talk about how nervous they were for the play. (I can only be so specific on the topic of their conversation because I admittedly listened in.) Bree was paired with Damon, even though she wasn't even in the play—only backstage. But she didn't look too keen on correcting Johnny Handsome any time soon. And you can just imagine my joy at seeing Callan and Tina paired together. It was a very funny sight, seeing him squirm at being so close to a dive nearly half his size. I was with a mousy, talkative girl who played Rosaline. All I had to do was smile and nod because she wouldn't let you get a word in edgewise. I felt kind of bad for not knowing her name—she might've even told me it at some point but the girl talked so fast I gave up on trying to make out what the words were.

When we had to part (thankfully, I must say) for the next rotation, I was paired with a shy, jumpy girl named Lacey. She was stereotypical for a nerdy student—nervous looking, checking and double-checking her script even when it wasn't needed, focused on work all the time. And even I thought I was bad.

"I play Nurse," she stated simply. "You are an understudy."

"Gee, I didn't know."

"Your sarcasm is noted." Lacey tucked a tuft of caramel hair behind her ear. "Lucky for you, I've grown up with it so I'll ignore it." She looked around the stage, eyes picking apart one sight to the next. Then she raised her thin arm to point across the stage and say normally, "You're worried about her, aren't you?"

I whipped my head to see she was talking about Christine, who threw her head back and laughed at something, Max, the class clown actor who played Count Paris, said. Technically, Lacey was right, but I wasn't worried about her at the moment. If she ever was paired Mr. Popular over there with Gemma, I would explode.

"Are you always pointing out the obvious?" I asked.

Lacey shrugged. "I'm an observer; sometimes people need a little bit of the obvious."

"Whose quote is that?"

"My own."

Maybe being paired with her wasn't as bad as I was exaggerating it to be.

We sat down on the stage and flipped to act two, scene four, where Nurse is seen by Juliet to find Romeo. (I was still peeved about being an understudy, even though I wasn't the best actor ever, but neither was Callan. He was just trying to pick a fight with me and it was working.)

"She wants to do it." Lacey—Nurse, whatever I'm supposed to call her. "Juliet needs to marry you."

"She has Count Paris," I said dejectedly. "A man buried deep in his wealth. Why would she ever pick me?"

"She doesn't need wealth. She needs—wants—what is real. You two are in love." Lacey's voice dropped low and she looked at me through her hanging bangs. "Till death do you part."

"Till death do us part…" I whispered, not even needing look down at my script. I memorized the entire thing the second night I had gotten it. I was just using it as a prop of sorts.

Lacey smiled a corky smile at me before standing and stretching. Johnny Handsome was standing in front of the stage, a whistle lodge halfway to his mouth.

"Time to switch!" Jesus, did he really need to blow that all the time? He was a step-in drama teacher, not a full-time coach.

I sighed and grabbed my switch before Damon stepped in front of me. "Hello, Romeo. How are you and your Juliet doing?" He asked with a smirk.

"Shouldn't Christine have told you this already?" I said with a look. I trusted my girlfriend, but knew for sure that even she gossiped (if you could call it that) about me at times. The people she gossiped to happened to be Gemma and Damon. And I really can't believe I bothered to remember all this stuff when Rachel and Bree were pestering me about it.

Damon shrugged. "Point taken, but she's a woman. Women naturally twist their opinions differently than the males." I gave his guy a once over. From a distance he seemed alright, but up close and when you really got him talking, he made you wonder. "But what's your opinion?"

"That Pretty Boy only joined the play to get close to my girlfriend," I replied instantly, snapping my head towards Callan who Lacey was now paired with. I couldn't help but admit at being impressed on how she wasn't putty around him like all the other girls (excluding Christine and Rachel). Instead she just nodded and crisply flipped through her script. It was, like I said, impressive.

Damon tsked and shook his finger in my face, like I was child. He dropped his script, it the least of his concern, and continued to shake his head at me. "Poor, poor, naïve Chase. Christine isn't concerned about kissing him, if that's what you're getting at. She really doesn't care."

"And why doesn't she care?"

"Because she thinks you don't care. You see"—he clapped a hand on my shoulder—"the girlfriends think that if the boyfriend doesn't care, they don't have to care."

"But I do care," I pointed out, trying to poke holes into what he said.

"So?" Damon continued. "Dude, she doesn't know that and probably doesn't want to know that. Girlfriends find the relationship much less stressful when the boy blows everything out of proportion. But, unfortunately for them, we have a way of doing that."

"D, quit feeding that boy nonsense!" Gemma called from across the room, making several people laugh. Damon bowed before turning to me.

"You see?"

"Not really." He was about to say more when Johnny Handsome's whistle went off. Damon snapped his fingers and was about to leave when he turned to me.

"We'll finish this later."

I nodded and waved him off, but made a mental note to stay away from him, even if that meant taking extreme measures to avoid him.

And guess who my new partner was?

"You're going to be so pissed," Bree stated when stepping front of me.

I furrowed my eyebrows. "Why?"

She looked a little pitiful when she said, "Just don't turn around."

Because she told me not to, I had to.

God did I not like what I saw.

Callan and Christine—paired together. And she was laughing. They were so close it made my fists tighten and blood boil.

"Chill," warned Bree, grabbing my wrist and pulling me backwards. I was so focused on my anger I hadn't realized I'd already taken a handful of steps forward. "Freaking out and yelling at him won't do anything."

"Then I'm out of here." I wrenched my arm from her grip and stormed off stage to grab my stuff from the seat it was thrown across and marched straight out of the auditorium. I was barely outside the school doors and past the flagpole when I was stopped.

"Chase! Where are you going?"

I turned to face Christine. She'd thrown her sweatshirt back on to run after me. "What going on? Why are you freaking out all of a sudden?"

I tried to dodge all her question as quickly as I could. "I just needed to think for a while. I think I'm going to head home early."

"Is this about Callan and me?"

My girlfriend was too smart for her own good.

"I just need to…think for a while. Alone."

"But answer my question," Christine demanded, twisting my arm so that I spun to face her. She looked stern, but I didn't care.

I had enough of putting up an emotional shield. "Yeah, maybe it was about Callan. So what? I'm heading home."

I yanked my arm back and started to angrily jog away from her, but not faraway enough to block out her. "We're talking about this later, whether you like it or not, Chase!"

Third Person's Pov

Christine gathered the rest of her things to slump home, confused. She thought everything had been settled that summer, left behind for a happier, brighter future with just her and Chase. It didn't matter that Callan existed, that the new school year would without a doubt be much more difficult than the last; they were supposed to be handle it.

"Dad? Rem? I'm home." Christine threw her stuff onto the couch and sighed, retreating up to her room. She flopped onto the bed to glare up at her ceiling stiffly.

Why was everything so confusing?

Was Chase really going to wreck everything they worked so hard for just over a stupid little play?

Meanwhile, unaware to his daughter, Allan Grant stood, robe, slippers and all, in front of the back of his closet. This was a form of torture. He could walk away now and forget all its contents. But no, the very thought brought upon him an even worse pain.

He had to face his fears.

Placing his sickly looking hand on the pad, the slight tingle of movement waved over his screen before flashing an approving green, metal smoothly sliding away from the wall long enough to let him duck inside.

The walls sleek and gray are covered in snippets of his weighing past. Pictures and tickets snubs, pamphlets and more donned the walls. Long, thin candles lay abandon on the floor, next to their matches. Frames of all kinds—everything from the most expensive metal to the cheapest plastic and Popsicle sticks—let her happy dancing eyes burn straight into his sad, sunken ones.

Allan was her disappointment. He knew it, and wherever she was, she knew it too.

"She's becoming more and more like you every day." Allan chuckled darkly, sinking to the knees of pajama pants to shakily grip his favorite picture of her in his hands. He felt so unworthy. "Even in a play now—lead role, just like you."

It was candid. Maria looked on mournfully, hair sadly cascading down her shoulders in a waterfall and her hands fist her dress in anxiety. She was an image of pure perfection on that stage; the whole audience knew.

That thing of flawed masses just mere months ago that he saw? Impossible; it wasn't her. He was positive.

Guilt gripped and twisted his knotty stomach as he shook.

Maybe they weren't meant to have a happy ending after all.

Kind of a downer of an ending, but this was like, really, really long. A thousand words longer than a normal chapter, so I hope you're happy.

But I blame the long A/N at the top, and everything I had to say was in that, so yeah. Review and tell us what you think :D