Destiny gasped and flailed, trying to keep her head above the water. The bitter cold of the lake shocked her into a paralytic state for she had no clue exactly how cold the water was until she was submerged in it. She hadn't swum in cold water like this since she went on a field trip to the beach with her seventh grade class; the indoor pool was heated. She could feel her teeth chattering and the feeling in her toes start to seep away into the depth of the lake underneath her. From Destiny could understand the lake was decently deep for a lake. Even though she was somewhat short, she couldn't touch the sandy bottom of the lake. Therefore, to Destiny, it was a deep lake.

Destiny took a few deep breaths in order to steady herself and turned to look up at the dock in back of her. Jason was standing there, looking stunned and somewhat relieved. But before Destiny could ask why he was relieved, she had to say something else first.

"Why in the world did you throw me in the lake? Did you not stop for a second and think that I couldn't swim? What if I drowned, Jason! Would you come get me? Oh, of course you wouldn't! You DROWNED IN THIS LAKE YOURSELF!" Destiny screamed this loud and clear, yet quickly and in a mesh of gasps and breaths. Her anger was quickly replaced with a slight jolt of fear. Her lung capacity was starting to short circuit from the sudden drop in temperature in her body, so she quickly swam toward a far off edge – away from Jason – and hauled herself up. She winced as she pulled herself up, soaking and freezing and clenched her eyes shut at the feeling of wet denim and cotton sticking to her skin. The worst of it all, however, was something she noticed when she looked down at her shirt

It being white caused it to be almost completely see through. You could see the outlining of her bra and tone of her skin through the thin fabric.

'O-oh, Lord…'

A quick blush flew to her cheeks as she made a beeline for the house and left Jason to marvel in what just happened.

'Destiny YELLED at me…I never thought I'd see the day, Mother.' Jason shook his head slightly, trying to pull himself back together turned to watch her as she bolted for the house. He took one step and he felt a screeching pain in his ears.

"Jason, you leave her alone right now! She has to go change from being thrown into the lake!" Jason growled under his breath as the feeling he was learning to hate more and more seeped into his nerves and caused them to become hypersensitive.

'Mother, I didn't THROW her! I lowered her into the lake! I wasn't trying to kill her or anything!'

"But you didn't think before that whether or not she could swim, now did you? You're pretty darn lucky that she can, Jason! Imagine watching her drown to her death, just like you did…" Jason clenched his eye shut and took a deep breath, trying to rid the awful moment from his head. His heart started beating more quickly, but not as hard as before.

'Mother, I don't want to think about it.'

"Of course you don't! But you have to learn to think about things now before you do them! You should have asked Destiny if she could swim before trying a thing like that!"

'Mother, she couldn't even speak! She looked like she was dying! What in the world happened to her?'

"The heat was just getting to her head, Honey. She'll be fine now that she's out of those jeans she was wearing,"

'What are you talking about? What else would she wear?'

"Well, take a look for yourself, Dear!" Jason frowned in confusion, now recognizing the fact he was staring down at his feet the whole time. He slowly looked up toward the house and saw something he thought he's never see.

Destiny was walking toward him, a deep red settling on her cheeks now that he was watching her, and she moved a tiny hand down to tug at the jean shorts she was wearing. Her hair was still wet, and now slightly messy from not being brushed out. She was no longer wearing the white shirt from before. She was now wearing a white button-up with a collar. All of the buttons were fastened modestly, even the ones at the very top that were meant to be open purely for fashion purposes.

It took Jason a few moments to realize that Destiny was watching him from afar as if she thought he was going to lunge at her and strangle her to death. Did she think that he thought she was a bad girl because she was wearing something bad girls wore? Jason had to admit that it was definitely a shock, to see her wearing something so revealing, but the shorts she was wearing weren't nearly as short as he had seen before. Most girls' shorts looked as if they were wearing denim-colored underwear, but Destiny's were a few inches longer and covered most of her upper thighs. Her legs were distinctively pale from the rest of her body. Since Destiny always wore short sleeves outside, her arms had grown a decently noticeable tan. But now that Destiny was wearing shorts, you could see a difference. Not that Jason minded either way…

…She looked beautiful.

"J-Jason?" Destiny called out to him softly, nervously, as if she was contemplating whether or not to say anything at all. Jason shook out of his daze and made his way toward her, trying to look apologetic, because he was. He almost had a heart attack when he watched her struggle in the water, his past starting to creep back onto him, but once he saw that she had a grip on reality, he was relieved. EXTREMELY relieved.

"N-no, I'm the one who should be sorry," she said weakly, staring at her now bare feet. "I-I know you were trying to help me out. I-I was just shocked that you actually dropped me in the water. I-I guess I just didn't see that coming, but I-I wanna thank you for helping me. I-I felt like I was overheating…" Destiny started to play with her wet hair, stroking it absentmindedly. "I-I was kinda scary, actually…" Jason fought back the growing urge to gather her in his arms and comfort her and simply lifted up her chin with his finger. She was now staring up at him in slight fear again, which caused him to tilt his head to the side, indication his confusion toward it.

"J-Jason…I-I know you don't like r-revealing clothes, but…i-if I wore those jeans any more times, I-I think I would o-overheat again…s-so…I-I…i-is this…?" she trailed off and managed to look down again, starting to shake again. Jason let out a soft sigh and pulled out his notepad again. He didn't mind her wearing them only because of what happened to her. He didn't want Destiny overheating again. And he noticed that her shorts were somewhat longer than other shorts, so that was a contributing factor…

…And the feeling he had before, while he was watching her with the flowers, rushed back and caused him to come to the conclusion that she looked just a little too pretty for him to say no to her wearing them.

"It's fine, Destiny. I understand that what just happened scared you, so it doesn't bother me. I still know you're a good girl." Destiny read the note and looked up at him, smiling weakly.

"Th-thank you for understanding," she said softly. "T-to be honest, I-I've never worn shorts like these before…I-I'm not really used to them yet." She gave the short another little tug downwards, her face lighting up more brightly.

"They look nice on you." Jason almost tore out the paper before showing her, feeling slightly stupid.

'Was that really the best you could come up with, Jason?' Destiny looked up at him, blinking, looking confused.

"Y-you really…think so?" Jason nodded and stowed the notepad away, trying to give Destiny the impression that he didn't feel like talking anymore. Destiny seemed to understand and simply looked down, tugging at the short more and more.

"U-um…" Destiny bit her lip, looking like she was struggling to come up with something to say. "D-do you want me to read you something?" Jason nodded and Destiny gave him a smile.

"Okay! What do you want me to read? Action? Comedy? Drama? Romance?"

Jason looked down at her and gave her a look that was trying to say, 'Did-you-really-just-say-you-would-read-a-romance-story-to-a-serial-killer?' Destiny's smile suddenly faded into a frown and she stared up at Jason intently. Or, at least tried to. She looked like she was about to keel over laughing any second. She really wasn't good at acting.

"Yeah, I said romance. A lovely, mushy, skip-several-pages-to-avoid-reading-smutty-scenes-out-loud story. Would you like that?" Jason frowned and quickly pulled out his notepad, one word not fogging over his mind.

"What's smutty?"

That was all it took for Destiny's face to go dark red and fall over on the ground, laughing her little head off and for Jason to frown down at her, still lost. After a good minute or so, Destiny got to her feet, trying hard not to laugh anymore and dash into the house to retrieve a book. Jason shook his head slowly, chuckling a little to himself. Could she possibly get any stranger?

Destiny went through her pile of books and pulled out one called 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime' by Mark Haddon. It really wasn't one of her all-time favorites, but she wondered how Jason would like it. It was an interesting enough read for anyone. She fought back a smile as she flipped through the pages, making sure she remembered the story before showing it to Jason. She had to thank God that she didn't have any smutty books give Jason an example. She was even surprised with herself that she even said the word. It usually caused her to back away whenever she saw it in a bookstore.

When Destiny went back outside, Jason wasn't there. She looked out toward the campsite and saw that there was another car, other than the one she came in, parked right next to it. Destiny's heart leapt into her throat as she dropped her book in fear. Of all the times for Jason to suddenly go missing…Destiny slowly backed away from the campsite, almost tripping over the field of flowers. She looked around frantically, praying for Jason to pop up out of nowhere like he always did. But he wasn't anywhere. He wasn't there, he wasn't here. He was gone. Perhaps…was he already stalking the teens now? He hadn't even seen them yet, so they must have already settled in. Destiny knew better then to just be standing there in the open where one of the teens could notice her, but for some reason she was just too frightened to move. Usually Jason lifted her up and carried her to her room whenever teens came around. Did he think that she would stay in his house until he came in?

Destiny bit her lip, trying to concentrate on moving her body, and took a slow step forward. The sudden hand on her shoulder interrupted her thoughts, and her concentration disintegrated into pure fear and terror.

"And just where do you think you're going, little lady?

END CHAPTAH

Guys, I'm sorry, again, for not posting this on Sunday. I had a friend over whom I haven't seen in a while and we watched Run, Fatboy, Run, Blitz and The Double…and a little bit of Bionicles and this show about the Avengers' teenaged children…yeah, those two didn't last for long. And I didn't post yesterday because I just got contacts for the first time and MAN did they hurt…it took me a good fifty tries to get BOTH of them in and out. The skin around my eyes was bright red and irritated from me pulling on it and I felt pretty nauseous. In fact, I still do…I just put them in. I'm supposed to keep them in for six hours today. Fun fun!

Do you think I make too many cliffhangers? In all honesty, I kinda like it! It's like one turn after another, you know? Or maybe I'm just a little too drunk with power… *Hides bottle of cliffhanger whiskey behind back* But really, tell me if it annoys you.

And speaking of things that are annoying…if people haven't read my reviews yet, the latest one says the following:

"I really like this story but for the love of god please STOP STUTTERING it's ok to do it once in a while but constantly is just annoying. It is actually putting me off of your story." – GiveItUpOrIGiveYouUp

I'll be honest and say that I took this pretty hard. It left me wondering if it annoyed the rest of you guys, and if it does, let me know. But it's just…obviously, Destiny's a shy girl, more shy than any other girl out there, really. And it's not her fault that she stutters; it's just in her nature. I try to make it in some cases where she doesn't, like when she's mad or trying to be serious. But, yeah…just tell me what you think. Oh, and I'm not mad at whoever GiveItUpOrIGiveYouUp is. I just…kinda wish they didn't take the last sentence of my profile page so seriously… (_;)

I hope you guys liked this chapter! Please review!

-NikoRu Rene