"And it seems that every time,

We're eye to eye,

I can find another piece of you,

That I don't wanna lose."

Fine By Me by Andy Grammer

XXX

Kisara never came out of her room—long after Mahad left, long after Seto's fight with him, and long after the day had turned to night. He tried consoling and talking to her through the closed door, but Kisara was silent, leaving him no choice but to wait outside her dorm until she came out. He knew that it could be several hours before she would decide to leave her room, possibly even more before she decided to acknowledge Seto. At this point, he didn't even know if Kisara and he were still together, but he didn't care. He refused to leave Kisara's door, wanting to be there whenever she came out.

The worst part about sitting in the hallway of a college dorm on a Saturday was that all sorts of students were coming in and out, all at odd hours of the night. Some approached him, asking him why he was there or if he was selling drugs. He didn't answer, figuring that would get them to leave sooner. It turned out silence was the best college student repellant.

Seto didn't sleep the whole time he waited. Not that Seto would've ever attempted to sleep in a hallway shared by a bunch of strangers, but the students made a point to be so loud and obnoxious he couldn't think straight. He remained surprisingly calm, rationalizing all of his stress in perspective to his goal. He refused to leave Kisara's campus until the two of them had a chance to talk.

It wasn't until 4am, when the racket of the college students calmed down, that Kisara's door opened. Seto was in a daze when she emerged. She noticed he had his knees bent in front of him, his arms wrapped around the front, and his head buried in the darkness between his knees and his chest. He hadn't noticed her. Kisara closed the door behind her and sat down beside him, crossing her legs on the floor and letting her arms fall to her sides. It was this motion that finally awoke him.

Seto jerked awake. His head shot up from behind his knees and smacked against the wall he was leaning against. He winced with pain and unraveled his knees. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kisara sitting beside him, looking at the ground. "Kisara, you're here…" he said, still waking up from his twenty minute power nap.

"I am," Kisara said softly, sounding weak in her voice. Seto turned his head and saw that Kisara's face was red and puffy—she had been crying for hours. She looked even more exhausted than he did.

"What are you doing out here?" Seto assumed Kisara had fallen asleep hours ago when he stopped hearing her sobs from the other side of the door. "I was starting to think you never wanted to see me again…"

"I didn't," Kisara replied, "but Granny King used to tell me never go to bed angry."

"But you've been in there all night."

"Yeah, I know. I tried going to bed angry and it didn't work. Now I'm out here." Both of them returned to the sounds of silence, the sounds that had separated them since Mahad's departure. Despite being only a couple feet away from one another, the hours spent apart made them seem farther away from each other than they had ever been before, as if Mahad's reappearance created an even bigger distance than the one they felt when they were broken up. Seto craved to regain that closeness again, something he had never achieved with anyone before—the kind of closeness that made him feel, for the first time ever, that he wasn't alone.

"It was on September 8th." Kisara blinked her eyes, returning to reality from whatever daydream she had floated off to. Several minutes of unspoken tension had passed.

"Excuse me?" Kisara asked, her voice still hushed as if worried she might wake the mass of hung-over souls passed out in their beds.

"Last year, on September 8th, I saw you for the first time and that was nearly a week ago. I meant to tell you about it that day but I forgot. That was the same day you had your first exam in statistics so I didn't want to distract you." Kisara didn't know what to say. She hadn't remembered that September 8th was the day they first met. Was she supposed to know? Would Seto's feelings be hurt if she expressed otherwise? Kisara, unable to process the information due to lack of sleep and emotional exhaustion, could only come up with one response.

"…Oh."

Seto looked away for the moment, watching as his fingers made nonexistent circles on the cold hallway floor beside him. He watched his hands move in a circular motion, as if searching for the meaning in his thoughts by watching this meaningless action. That was when he continued, not entirely sure what words would come out next, "It's weird… the way I remember that day. I didn't know it then."

"Didn't know what?"

"I didn't know that day would be the most important day of my life and yet I remember it so well. Isn't it strange how the brain works? How you remember some days and others not at all, even when the importance of the day doesn't come until a year later?" Seto eyes shifted from the circles he was drawing on the floor back to Kisara's face.

Kisara shook her head in disbelief.

"That couldn't have been the most important day of your life."

"It was certainly one of them. The first time I saw you—the first time I talked to you—changed my life forever. You know that, right? I can never go back to the way things were. I tried when we broke up but there's something about you…" Seto didn't even know what it was about Kisara that made her different from every person he had ever met before. His voice trailed off, the circles he was drawing on the ground became bigger, and his thoughts became lost. There was something about her that not even he could put his finger on.

There was a pause in the conversation. Kisara knew that it was her turn to speak, but she wasn't sure how to respond. Seto remembering the first day he saw her a year ago only served as a reminder that it had been a year since she left Egypt, since she tried to forget Mahad. Seeing him again reminded her how little she had managed to forget about Mahad in the year that passed.

"I'm sorry about what happened… about Mahad showing up. I thought we were done." Seto turned his head toward her.

"He said that he loved you." Kisara face immediately contorted with frustration.

"Mahad says a lot of things he doesn't mean."

"So you don't think it's true?"

"I know it's not true."

"Why would he come all this way to see you then?"

"To try and mess with me," Kisara snapped, "He's such a bastard." In spite of her sleep deprivation, her anger was seething through her body. Seto raised his eyebrows. He couldn't remember the last time he had heard Kisara curse. Her knuckles were white as she squeezed her hands into fists.

"He's always been like this, even before we were dating. He's so cunning sometimes, you can never tell what he's thinking. It was like one day he would say one thing and the next we would get into a fight. He had this ability to be so sweet but only for a price." Words were spilling out of Kisara's mouth; she didn't know where one thought began and one thought ended, "He always wanted to sleep with me and he did everything in his power to do it. I told him I wasn't like that and there would be times where he said he didn't care. Most times, he made it seem otherwise…"

Seto sat silently, listening to every word, following her every movement and hand motion as she described her relationship with Mahad. She got so riled up speaking about him. Seto could understand why; he sounded like a complete jerk. At the same time, why was she so angry? It made no sense. Kisara and Mahad's relationship was over and had been over for quite some time. What did it mean that she felt the need to talk about their relationship? She spoke of it with so much passion that it almost appeared as though… his eyes widened.

"He was the kind of guy who would tell me that he loved me and that I was beautiful, right before he would belittle me and tell me that my dreams were stupid. Why would someone like me want to be anything more than a pretty face? He only loved me for what I looked like standing beside him and—"

"Do you love him?"

Kisara's expression in that moment was a mix between being offended and being absolutely livid.

"Are you seriously asking me that right now?"

Seto nodded. He was more afraid of the response than the way Kisara was looking at him.

"How could you suggest I was in love with a guy who only liked me for how I looked? Or better yet, someone who made me feel like I was always doing something wrong? Following my dreams wasn't all we fought about. Every day I did something new to piss him off and it was always my fault; as if he was Mr. Perfect and he expected me to see him the same way. It would be the most mundane things that we would fight over too, and yet the moment I would try to defend myself, he would shoot me down like I didn't know what I was talking about.

"That's not to say that there weren't good days. There were. I won't lie that there were days where he would be sweet to me. I will never forget the way he would look at me or the way he would hold my hand. I never wanted to let go on those days." Kisara paused, looking away from Seto and shifting her gaze to the floor. "We didn't have a lot of those days, because most of our days were filled with fights, saying things we would have to apologize for and take back later. We would say things we didn't mean but our fights were so frequent that sometimes I would wonder which things we actually meant and which ones we were taking back to deceive ourselves into thinking we'd be okay."

Kisara paused. She continued to stare at the floor. Mahad's smile is what she always remembered the most when she wanted to get through the hard times with him. He had this sort of smile that could move mountains, rivers, and most importantly, her heart. Just one smile on his face could make her believe she wanted to be with him until the end of time. The only problem was that his smiles were attached to his lips and his lips were directly tied to the arguments they had that lasted until two in the morning.

Seto remained quiet until he felt sure Kisara had nothing more to add.

"So you do." Kisara looked up. Her anger appeared to have subsided.

"I loved him." Kisara leaned over, placing her hand on Seto's, staring him deeply in the eyes. Her hand was cold and frail, like that of a branch after an ice storm. Her thin fingers felt like they were engulfed in a layer of ice. Even in the florescent light of the hallway, her eyes looked as blue as ever. They were as deep as the ocean, obscure and uncompromising, giving little to no indication of what emotions were truly felt and what were forced. Her eyes that left him in darkness, a darkness that he could not understand.

"I love you." There they were. The three magical words Seto was sure he would never hear escape Kisara's lips. Her hold on his hand tightened, "He's the past and you're the future. What we have is all that matters to me now." Her face inched closer to his. Seto was still fixated on her eyes, not wanting to break their gaze until he was absolutely sure she meant what she said. He searched the depth of her eyes to find a sliver of truth in her words but they closed too quickly for him to find. Her lips pressed against his and he was left to wonder whether he should kiss back.

Could he trust Kisara's words? Seto wasn't one to take chances, especially not in the few matters that involved his feelings. At the same time, wasn't it Kisara who was in the same position as him not too long ago? When he had shown up at Kisara's door a month and a half after they had broken up, wasn't she the one who took a chance on him when he admitted to being in love with her? Didn't it mean something that she had opened the door at all that day?

Out of love or logic, Seto kissed Kisara back. Fully aware that the concepts of love and logic couldn't exist in the same universe, he allowed himself to reciprocate Kisara's affection. It was a well-known fact that Seto rarely took chance but he decided that loving Kisara would be one of them. Maybe he would never be sure of how she truly felt. In that moment, though, he was willing to risk everything because she was everything to him. It was just like he said; his life could never go back to the way it was. The damage had already been done, whether he liked it or not, he was in love with Kisara.

Seto's arms wrapped around Kisara's shoulders and brought her in closer. The feel of her lips, her arms, her skin… they all were reminders that he never wanted to let go. With her arms wrapped around his neck, Seto could live like this forever. He could feel the brush of her smooth skin against his own, mold his lips to match hers, and not once want to live in a different reality. With her, he felt completely at peace. The kiss lasted only a few seconds before Kisara broke away. At first Seto thought it was because something was wrong but then he saw the exhaustion on Kisara's face. He imagined his face probably looked the same.

"Let's go to bed," Kisara said. He helped Kisara to her feet and allowed her to guide him into her bedroom. Seto laid down on his side, his back against the wall, and wrapped one arm across Kisara as she laid down beside him. He pressed his nose into Kisara's hair and shut his eyes for a moment, letting the familiar smell of her apple shampoo fill his nose. She shifted her body once or twice before becoming completely still in Seto's arms.

Seto gently pulled the covers from the bottom of the bed and placed them over her and his body. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness that filled the room, he noticed there was a note beside the bed. It was folded into a small square and on the front it had his name written on it. He thought about waking Kisara up to inquire about it but he was too tired to stay awake long enough to ask.

Seto's eyes began to grow heavy as he continued to stare at the note. The longer he stared, the more his heart was gripped with fear. Could Kisara really mean what she said… could she really be in love with him? She had always seemed so resistant to the idea of ever falling in love again. Had Seto really been able to break through her walls as she did his? Yet the inscription of his name on the note was all he could see, the letters practically glowed in the darkness of the room.

With Kisara's body pressed up against his, Seto followed every breath she made and the rhythm of each breath made his eyes grow heavier with exhaustion until he could no longer keep them open. When his eyes finally shut, he buried his head deeper into her hair. It didn't matter what the note said because he was sure they were going to make it. He had let her go once because of fear and he wasn't going to do it again.

Seto was ready to let himself love Kisara with every fiber of his being, even if it meant never truly knowing how she felt about him.

A/N: Happy new year, everyone! Yes, 2013 has come and gone and 2014 is only just beginning. Isn't that exciting? Not only that, but I've decided that my first order of business for 2014 is gracing you with this long awaited chapter! For those of you who haven't read my "Story Section" on my profile, I've been unable to update for the last three and a half months due to finishing college. Nevertheless, I graduated about two weeks ago and now I have more time to focus on my writing! I'm not sure what that means for updating in the future: if it'll become more regular or if the abundance of time will make me stagnate even more but I liked to think this'll mean more updates. I had originally intended to finish this story in December of 2013 but due to my month to two month long hiatuses, I wasn't able to make that deadline. There's also the fact that I don't actually know how many more chapters are left in this chapter (so don't feel sad yet!). I'm sure figuring that out, along with post-grad life, will be quite the learning experience. Other than that, I want to say thanks to all of my readers and reviewers of 2013! I hope you continue to like the stuff I have to write. A special thanks goes out to my friend Caroline who was my beta reader for this chapter! Love you guys and I'm excited to see what 2014 has to offer.