Sorry this took so long. College is kicking my butt! And the Reamy breakup broke my little shipper heart.

For a full half hour after the 'Stay' kiss (which is totally what Lauren would call it in her head for the rest of time) neither Karma nor Lauren said much. Or moved much. Or did much of anything but stayed there, huddled together in the closet (if holding onto each other with their foreheads pressed together and the feel of the other's breath on their lips counted as huddling) until Shane, somehow, managed to get Amy out of there.

It had been a close call. Too close, they both thought. Which was, probably, why they stayed 'huddled' for a good ten more minutes after Shane and Amy's voices had vanished off down the hall.

"We should probably go," Lauren had finally whispered, her words ghosting across Karma's lips and it was all the redhead could do not to kiss the other girl into silence. "You know, in case one of them comes back."

Karma nodded. Lauren was right. It was the smart thing to do.

So, since they stayed there for another five minutes, they were both clearly stupid.

As they stepped out of the closet, Karma wanted to ask Lauren what she thought they should do about Shane. Both of them were smart enough (huddling notwithstanding) to have realized that there was no reason for Shane to have been in the empty wing other than them. They didn't know how, but they both knew he had figured it out.

The fact that neither of them realized the same held true for Amy… well…

They were being stupid, after all.

Karma wanted to ask but the words caught in her throat and she just couldn't do it. She knew they were going to have to do something because she knew Shane wasn't the type to just let this go. But their close call had been bad enough. Karma didn't really want to consider what dealing with Shane would do to this… whatever… they had going on.

Lauren paused in the hall, just around the corner from the closet and, for just a second, Karma thought they'd been busted again. But Lauren just stood there, staring down the hall with her back to Karma.

"Why'd you say it?" she finally asked.

"Say what?" Karma replied even though she knew damn well what!

"You asked me to stay," Lauren said. "You said 'stay'."

Karma knew what she had said and, as much as she hated to admit it, she had no fucking clue why she had said it.

Except that wasn't exactly true.

Karma took one step closer to Lauren, close enough that she could (and did) reach out and take the blonde's hand, ignoring the way every instinct she had screamed at her.

We're in public! Anyone could see! What if Shane comes back? Or Amy?

Karma laced her fingers with Lauren's and whispered. "I wanted you to stay."

Lauren didn't turn around or speak. But her fingers squeezed Karma's and the younger girl knew she'd had the right answer. And then Lauren dropped her hand and hurried off to the last five minutes of class. Karma gave her a couple of minutes head start and then followed.

Her last class of the day was with both Shane and Amy and, really, she wasn't looking forward to it at all (she was definitely going to have to avoid eye contact with Shane) but she was, pleasantly, surprised when she got there and discovered she'd beaten both of them to class.

Karma took her usual spot by the window (only one chair next to her, which would be Amy and that might be a little… awkward… but it was absolutely better than Shane!) and fidgeted with her pencil. No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't get that one last kiss out of her mind.

She still couldn't believe she'd done it. She'd been so preoccupied with Amy being right outside the door and with what Shane might or might not know (he had to know something, why the hell else would he have been there?) that she hadn't even really thought before the kiss. She'd simply reacted when she'd heard Lauren's voice and just kissed her.

Kissed her!

If every kiss the two of them had shared up until that point was hot and sexy and passionate (and they all were) then that last one was… well… Karma didn't have a word for it. And part of her didn't really want to.

She'd kissed Liam dozens, maybe hundreds of times and none of their kisses (and Karma meant none) had been like that. Liam had soft lips, that was sure, like tiny little pillows. But Lauren's lips…

Damn.

Just… damn.

It wasn't that they were softer than Liam's because, really, they weren't. And it wasn't that they tasted better than Amy's (even if Karma was trying so very hard not to remember what Amy's lips tasted like) because, really, they didn't. But there was something about them, something magnetic that drew Karma in and something addictive, something that kept her from ever getting enough.

It might have been, Karma supposed, the person they were attached to.

Nah. It couldn't be that.

After all, she hated… well… OK, maybe she didn't hate Lauren. Maybe she hadn't really even hated Lauren before this, and she definitely couldn't say she hated Lauren now. Maybe Amy and Liam could… you know… with someone they hated. But Karma wasn't wired like that.

Maybe, she thought, most of her feelings toward Lauren had been of the jealous variety. After all, Lauren just sauntered into town and moved right into the Raudenfeld house. Even worse, she'd been accepted. Farrah loved her from the start (Amy was always convinced Farrah thought of Lauren as the daughter she'd never had) and Karma knew that even though Amy's mother liked her, that was as far as it was ever going to go.

Which was fine. Really. Karma didn't mind that at all. So what if her parents thought of Amy as their other daughter? So what if they loved her like she was their own and would have moved heaven and Earth if Amy needed something?

Amy was loveable. Karma knew that better than anyone.

Lauren, on the other hand, was… well… Karma didn't really have a word for that, either. It wasn't that Lauren was a bitch (usually) or mean (OK, sometimes) or stuck up, resentful of being moved to Austin, or ungrateful for everything she'd just been handed…

OK. So maybe it was all that. And more.

But somewhere deep down inside, Karma understood. She knew Amy never would because Amy couldn't care less about things like popularity and acceptance and adoration. Sometimes, on the few occasions they'd been left alone together (before the closet and the kisses and definitely before 'please stay') Karma had actually… studied?... Lauren. And she'd found herself wondering what it must be like to be her.

She'd even tried talking to Amy about it once.

Once.

"I'm just saying," Karma said, "that it must be hard. Getting yanked away from all your friends, especially, you know, if you had a lot of them."

Amy had looked at her like she'd grown a second head. It was, Karma remembered, very similar to the look Amy had given her when she suggested they fake it.

"She could make friends here," Amy said. "If she, I don't know, tried being human?"

Karma sighed. "It's not that easy, you know. You try going from the top of the food chain all the way to the bottom. If it weren't for dating Tommy, she'd probably be even less popular than we are."

Karma remembered Amy smiled at her then, and took her hand. "We're plenty popular," she said. "You're my favorite and I'm yours. What else do you need?"

Nothing. That's what Karma said. She needed nothing.

She lied. She lied like a rug! Karma loved Amy (even if back then it was a little different kind of love) but popularity was the one thing they were never, ever going to agree on. Of course, in the end, Karma's obsession with being popular led them to faking it and that led to Liam and that led to Amy and Liam and that led to Reagan and…

And that all just made Karma's head hurt. And made her wish Lauren was there with her perfect lips (no matter if they weren't the softest or the tastiest) and her perfect ass and her arms that felt so good around Karma's neck and before she knew what she was doing Karma had her phone in one hand, tapping out a text message to Lauren and the fingers of her other hand were slowly running across her lips.

Shit.

This was so not good. So very very not good.

She glanced down at the message on her phone.

Meet me in the parking lot. Five minutes before last bell. By your car.

This was not a good idea. This was, in fact, the opposite of a good idea! This was the worst idea in the history of worst ideas! The parking lot was not the closet and Lauren's car was sure as hell not a dark bedroom in the Harvey house.

Karma's finger hovered over the send button. She knew if she did this there was no taking it back and, whether Lauren agreed or not, nothing was going to be the same.

Please. Stay.

Fuck it.

Karma pressed send and dropped her phone back into her pocket just as Amy sat down next to her. She smiled at her best friend, totally missing the way Amy's eyes burned into her or the way her hand shook around her pencil for the entire rest of the class.

She didn't miss the way Shane looked at her when he walked in twenty minutes late. Karma saw the way his eyes practically danced their way off his face and the sassy little smirk he shot her from across the room and all she wanted, right then, was to know where he'd been for the last twenty minutes.

And maybe why it was taking Lauren so long to text her back.

So when her phone finally buzzed under the desk, Karma felt her heart leap into her throat. As discreetly as she could, she slipped it out of her pocket so she could see the message.

Shane: Knock, knock.

Karma glared at him across the room and refused, on general principle, to answer the message. Her phone buzzed again in her lap.

Shane: Knock, knock, Karmakins

Karma: WTF Shane?

She tried, as best she could, to focus on the board. But she wasn't good at math when she was paying attention and Shane's annoying-ness and not hearing from Lauren was killing her ability to think about anything else.

Another buzz, another message. Shane: That's not the way it works, Karma. Knock, knock.

Karma: Fine. Who's there?

Karma's phone buzzed one more time and she looked down at the screen. And felt every bit of blood drain out of her face.

Shane: Lauren and Karma. Sitting in a tree. Or a closet. Either way, really.

She didn't dare look at him because she knew he'd have that shit eating grin on his face and she couldn't be sure how she'd react to that. It's OK, she thought. She'd known that he knew (though getting confirmation of that was so much worse than she could have thought) but this was workable. They (and did she really just think of her and Lauren as a 'they'?) could totally handle this.

Really.

They could.

Sure. Yup. Uh huh.

Shit.

They were so well and truly fucked.

Her phone buzzed and Karma looked down, almost afraid to see the message.

Lauren: I'll be there. We need to talk.

We need to talk? Well for fuck's sake. Everyone knew that 'we need to talk' was code for 'I'm about to break up with you' and was that even possible? Could someone she wasn't actually with (unless you counted closet time) break up with her?

She felt her phone shake in her hand and she didn't even want to look. But, she did.

Lauren: And stop freaking out. I'm not breaking up with you. Could I? Is that even possible? Never mind. I'm not doing it anyway. You asked me to stay. So I'm staying.

The message blinked away, replaced by a new one, a very simple one that brought a smile to Karma's face.

Lauren: So you better be staying WITH me or so help me God, Ashcroft….

Five minutes before last bell, Karma asked to go to the restroom (noticeably taking all her stuff with her) and scurried from the room. She ignored the bemused grin on Shane's face and somehow resisted the urge to flip him off on her way out the door.

She never saw, or even felt, Amy's eyes on her the whole way or saw the way the blonde's trembling hand snapped her pencil in half and then stared at the board, not seeing a single number on it.

Karma had other things on her mind.