As for my new Lab Rats story, I can officially say it will be up at the beginning of October, and with longer chapters than what I'm used to writing.

As for this one, I can definitely confirm that it will be over by the end of September, and that Begin Again will start a month later.

But I'm still clueless on how many chapters there will be, but I'm going to strongly guess five or six with a long-ish epilogue.

That's pretty much it for story news.

Chase's Pov

I spent half the day moping around in my room, feeling like a sorry idiot. I mean, I wasn't trying to force myself on her, and past make-out sessions (that include my shirt being flung to the floor) have proved that Christine did in fact want it.

So why couldn't she do it now? Did she realize that I wasn't Hunter? That I wasn't older or cooler like him? (Although, I beg to differ—Hunter may have fame, but I'm a living, scientific miracle; enough said.)

I continued to torture myself with negative thoughts and how she was probably going to dump me because of this, because that's what any sane person would do when they don't love someone.

But maybe I was also freaking out because I wasn't her first serious thing, and I'm not even going to begin thinking about how many times they did it afterwards.

"Okay, this is ridiculous," Leo announced, storming into my room. It was around noon. He gave me a hard look as he stood in the middle of my room, scrawny arms crossed over his defiantly. I looked at him from where I sat on my bed, blankly looking at my tablet.

"You, me, and the guys are going out," he continued. "Because locking yourself up in your room and acting like a moody teenage girl with hormonal problems will get you nowhere closer to where you want to be."

I continued to look at him blankly. "The guys being…?" I asked dryly.

Leo sighed in defeat, slumping over. "Adam and Big D. But, he did agree to let Adam drive this time."

I gave him a long hard look, taking in his hopeful face before letting out a sigh. "Fine," I caved, putting my tablet aside and pushing myself up, "let me get change and meet me downstairs."

Leo let out a whoop of victory before darting out of my room. Rolling my eyes at his excitement, I yanked my shirt off and went to my closet to dig out a fresher one.

I was flipping through hangers; standing with my back to the door, when from downstairs came a loud groan of disappointment. It sounded like Leo. Figuring that Adam made his player in some game explode, I kept looking.

After finding a blue and white striped polo shirt, I plucked it off and turned, about to walk out, when my bedroom door slammed open and Christine walked in, rambling too fast for me to properly understand her.

In shock, I dropped the shirt. She didn't seem to notice my unresponsive attitude as she continued to talk, anxiously wringing in her hands and beginning to pace.

All the bad, nervous thought I had earlier came rushing back, making the edge of my vision tint black and red as my head grew fuzzy. I blacked out, lightheaded.

No One's Pov

Christine stopped, suddenly noticing how one-sided the conversation was. Granted, she really hadn't let him get a word in edge-wise, but still.

"Chase?" she said tentatively.

He stood near his closet, a shirt dropped at his feet. She couldn't tell from across the room, but did his eyes look darker? His (bare) chest was moving up and down heavily. Christine could see his corded shoulder muscles in his arms and where they met with his chest.

"Spike," she said with a defeated sigh. Chase had been mad before she stormed into his room and her suddenly appearing out of the blue later after their fight just provoked that anger.

Spike's mouth curled into a smirk as he stepped over his shirt and came closer, hands tightening into fists. Christine eyed them warily. Spike had a tendency to fight whenever he reared his head, and that left very little options open with Christine being the only other person in the room.

But Spike had something else in mind. He walked closer and Christine warily stood frozen in her spot, wondering what her chances were that she could slip away from him and successfully make it to the door without being caught. Then she recalled the messed up product of when Spike got his hands on Callan and Hunter, and decided that if she wanted her pretty face to remain pretty, she might as well just stay rooted to her spot.

"Chase was never that convincing," Spike growled in her ear as he backed her up until her back met the wall.

Christine looked at him with big eyes, hands on his chest. "What?"

He growled, and his fist slammed against the wall near her head before fiercely smashing their lips together. Christine scrunched her face up, tightening her hands into fists to pull him closer by his shirt.

Spike was rough, his tongue prying her lips open and tracing every crevice of her mouth. His callused hands held the back of her head steady, keeping them close.

Christine shut her eyes tighter, all sense of fighting and argument completely dissolved from her state of mind.

November 18th 2013

Chase's Pov

Christine had left just as quickly as she came when I came to. She'd been extremely flushed with swollen lips and disheveled hair and clothes, muttering a string of stupid excuses before tripping out of my room.

My best guess was that Spike had his way with her, because of how my lips hurt and I was still heavily panting.

The next morning I wasn't the earliest one up, which took me by slight surprise; I'd always been the early riser.

But I found Bree, stationed at the monitor that showed us the examining room Davenport had put Maria in. We'd given her plates of food and glasses of water, which she hadn't touched since she got here.

"What're you doing?" I asked, stepping behind her.

Bree shrugged, not turning away from the screen. "I don't know—I was bored and didn't know what to do, so I just did this."

"Yeah, because sleeping totally wasn't the best option."

She turned her head up to glare at me, face twisted into a tired scowl. "Shut up, I couldn't sleep."

She twisted back around to look at the monitor again. Even from the perspective of a camera you could tell how stiffly she slept. She twitched and tossed a lot, looking almost like she was shivering.

"Do you think Rachel would bite my head off if I suggested an idea?" Bree asked.

I shrugged even though she wasn't look. "Only if it's complete shit."

"Gee, thanks for that morning confidence boost."

The tornado warnings had passed the previous night, but the rain hadn't. We ran into school, hoods and hair dripping as we came to a stop.

Bree groaned and twisted her ponytail, squeezed water running down her hands. "Ugh, I probably look like a drowned rat," she complained, shaking off her wet jacket and hanging it in her locker. I did the same with mine, still freezing.

Rachel suddenly appeared out of nowhere, nor Ashley or Sammie in sight. Christine still hadn't arrived yet, and Leo was off texting Janelle, who on her way to school.

"You texted?" she drawled, blinking at us expectantly.

Bree shook her hair out, stepping forward, "I have an idea."

Rachel's thin eyebrows rose in curiosity. "Oh, really? About what?"

Bree licked her lips. "I think we should to the police about James."

Everyone snapped their heads to her in shock. Even Leo looked up, fumbling with his phone so much that he nearly dropped it.

"Even I know that's a terrible plan," Adam bluntly stated.

Bree rolled her eyes and firmly placed her hands on her hips. "I mean, think about it. If we get rid of the Maria clone running around the place and get a confession from the real Maria that James and his little freak-a-zoids he had been keeping her captive after kidnapping her, then he can be charged with that and starvation."

Rachel pressed together in a thin line. "And how would we capture the clone?"

"Well," I spoke up thoughtfully, "usually clones are powered by a unnatural force—like chips similar to the kind we have, or programmed machines that look humane."

"Like Rem?" Rachel suggested eyebrows still highly rose.

I nodded. "Exactly. And most of the time they aren't exactly copies, but it's something that be easily explained."

"Like dyed hair," Bree interjected, nodding as she added it all up in her head.

"And work-outs causing leaner bodies," Rachel muttered, going into complete strategy-mode. You know, for a girl so smart you think her outlook in guys could have excelled past Adam, but sadly that day has yet to come.

After a moment of pacing the length of the hallway and doing an insane amount of muttering, Rachel snapped her head up. "You know," she said slowly, smiling a little, "that could actually work."

Bree elbowed me in the ribs. "Told you so," she muttered from the corner of her mouth.

Rachel shook her head quickly. "We'll put this on a top shelf for now. We regroup at lunch!"

She stalked off in a direction of her homeroom, leaving us to stand there.

I turned to Bree. "How did you think of that so quickly?"

She shrugged, hiking her bag higher up her shoulders. "Let's just say my sleeping schedule's a little…off-balanced."

Christine wouldn't meet my eye all day, and when I ever stood near her or grabbed her hand, muttering something before inching away or randomly blurting out a conversational topic. She didn't even act this out of it when we first got together.

I ruled out it being anything bad, because if so, she would be declaring a screaming match in the middle of the hallway and slapping me around instead of muttering just as stupidly as she did when she left my room in a rush last night.

Now we were standing in front of the monitors I had found Bree in front of this morning, watching as Maria slowly picked apart the tray and reluctantly tried it. Her hunger must have finally broken her. I wondered if James had poisoned her food at some point, or some other way, and made her this cautious, or if just being kidnapped and traumatized had made her paranoid. (Like it would anyone.)

"What are you going to do with her?" Christine asked, face blank. Usually I could read her so easily, but this was one of the times where she was completely in herself, unable to let me it—and it scared me.

I took in a deep breathe. "Your dad wants to see her and decide."

She snapped her head around to face me, chocolate locks whisking against my face. "What?" she seethed, her face going from blank to outrage in seconds.

I stepped back, nervous. "This is out of my hands. Davenport told him and he thought that it would be best."

"Well, why'd he open his mouth in the first place?" Christine sputtered, beginning to angrily pace the length of the lab.

"She is his wife," I felt the need to point out.

"Not his real one!"

"Remember, she agreed before she disappeared."

"And you know that how?" she snorted condescendingly.

I gave her moving form a pointed look that she couldn't see or was just steadily ignoring. "Chris, you told me that."

Christine stopped, turning to roll her eyes at me so I could see it. "Whatever, she left, left him a mess; he shouldn't give two shits worth of what happens to her."

"So, you're saying that if she suddenly died before we got there and we found her body, you wouldn't care at all?"

Christine gave me a hard look, picking her bag up from where she had casually tossed on it counter.

"I gotta go," she muttered, stalking off with loud, angry stomps.

I watched her leave, smirking because I knew I was right.

No One's Pov

Christine stormed into her house, flinging her bag onto the couch in an angry huff. Rem was nowhere in sight, and she normally came in to the room when hearing Christine get home, so she figured she must be on the second floor, watering the window sill plants or something along those lines.

"Dad?" Christine hollered, making her presence known.

A faint reply of, "On the patio, Chris!" came from the back of the house.

Christine quirked an eyebrow. It was still pretty cold from all the previous rain Mission Creek got earlier in the week and just this morning, the accompanying winds not having let up since then. Why would her dad want to be out in that?

"What are you doing out here?" she asked, wiggling her way through the glass door that always got stuck. "It's freezing."

Her dad shrugged off her concern dismissively, his shoulders rising and dropping in his thick fur rimmed jacket.

"Just thinking," he told his daughter offhandedly.

A beat of silence passed between them before Christine blurted out, "I know what you decided about Maria."

Her father gave a long, tired sigh. "I knew you would eventually."

"Why do want to see her again? She caused you a bunch of pain and heartbreak," Christine protested, waving her hands around wildly. "Dad, she landed you in the hospital."

"I'm aware of this, Chris," was his reply.

"Then why give her a second chance to ruin something again?"

"You're mixing up your truths and lies," her father told her, standing from the porch chair he had been sitting in. "Just leave this with me, you have enough on your plate as it is."

Christine watched him head back inside, a sour, puckered look of disagreement firmly etched onto her features. Stubbornly, she kicked at the ground.

"Hardly," she muttered to herself before going back in, the glass door sliding shut with a squeak and slam against it frame.

Probably the shittiest ending you'll ever come across, but its whatever.

I start school really soon, like less in two weeks, so the updates after that will be horrid and take much longer. I hope to catch up with all my writing before school starts to avoid collisions on different projects because if that happens, Lord will it be a mess.

Anyway, I have something really exciting to share: I'll be self-publishing a book! I'm in the midst of writing it now, and only on the third chapter, but I have all the details worked out on this self-publishing site called Lulu.

So if any of my loyal readers want to PM me or leave something in your review that lets me know you want to look into the details with me, be my guest.

Next chapter up soon enough, later ya'll.