"Seriously? I'm trying to run a tight ship here. This isn't free labor."

"Uh, technically it is free. You're teaching us how to paint cave art."

"Smart ass."

Ever since he'd gotten his voice back Grey had been nothing but a smart ass. It wasn't like I was actually complaining, though. I would've given anything for him to talk back to me the way he had been just six months ago. Now that it was actually happening, it was hard to believe sometimes.

"Cami, try to use a relaxed hand when you're spreading the paint."

"Yeah, babe. Relax your hand."

Grey sidled up beside her and slipped his hands around her waist and she giggled. She actually fucking giggled.

Jesus, these two were disgusting.

I hid my smile though. I didn't want them to know their PDA actually made me happy.

It wasn't the PDA in itself that made me happy. No, that I could do without seeing constantly. It was the happiness shining clear and true on both of their faces that forced the smile from hiding and back onto my face where it belonged.

Cami and Grey could finally relax. Colton was sentenced to seven to ten years in the state penitentiary where her father was currently doing time for the murder of his mother.

Normally when a man was accused of sexual assault or harassment, it went either unpunished or completely ignored, but in this case with dozens of women coming forward after he'd attacked her at the high school on camera, the case had garnered national attention.

His trial was publicized across the world, and he wasn't given the option for parole. He was going to serve his entire sentence, and be on the sex offender's list for the rest of his life when he got out. If he got out. Sex offenders didn't do well in prison with other inmates who'd committed different crimes.

Alec came up to my side and I pulled back to look up into his brown eyes. There were stars in them, floating through his irises in the dim amber light of the cavern.

"Abstract this time? What's this one supposed to be?"

"A monster...confronting his own inner demons."

I didn't tell him what it was actually referring. The monster was me, and the demons were the people in the world around me.

Though I wasn't nearly as conflicted as Alec, I still had my own issues to work through before I could be truly happy with the turns and twists my life had taken.

I finally remembered the reason I'd gotten into a fight with Colton the night I'd met Cami at the football game and my concussion had kept me from remembering the events.

He'd told me that he was the one who'd basically cat-fished Leah Maren into my brother's bed. He'd been texting her from an unregistered number pretending to be Grey. He even gave her the code to our garage for her to slip into our house with.

She'd been waiting half naked in my brother's bed when I went inside knocking. I hadn't even realized Grey's motorcycle wasn't in the driveway. I'd only blamed first and asked questions never.

But that wasn't the entire reason for the fight...

He'd been on my phone looking at a video from a rival high school, the players on the team trash talking our school and promising a beatdown the next time our schools met on the field.

It wasn't the video that had his attention, though.

It was the text from Alec that he pulled down and started going through our entire thread while I'd been gearing up for the scrimmage that was where we'd eventually come to blows.

It was the photos we'd sent back and forth to each other that had him ready for the mocking.

It was the messages he'd sifted through and the privacy that he'd invaded and it was the words coming out of his mouth that I'd thrown the punch for.

It was Alec's identity that I'd kicked his stomach on the ground for.

It was the hit I'd taken to my skull and lost my memory for.

The only person I'd ever told was Grey when he was in his coma, and in those texts with Alec.

"And are you ready to do that?"

"What?"

Alec's words had pulled me out of my reverie.

"Are you ready to confront your inner demons?"

"I am if you are."

He didn't waste time slinging an arm over my shoulder and turning me to face the newest mural I'd painted with delicate purples and deep forest greens, splashes of deepest black cutting through the middle.

"I've been ready for a while, I think I've just been waiting for you."

"Parker! I don't think Grey's doing this right."

I sighed out and pulled myself from Alec's warmth and went to see what Grey's painting issue was.

"That's because you mixed too many colors and now it's all just poop brown."

"I don't think I've ever heard you say the word 'poop'. Say it again."

Grey leaned in Cami's ear and whispered something to her which made her erupt into a fit of laughter.

I couldn't wait until I could have something like the two of them. Ever since they'd escaped from school their first day back, the two of them had been inseparable even despite the fact that she no longer lived with us.

Apparently it would be considered inappropriate for the two of them to be dating and living together because of her foster placement.

Not like my father had any say in what happened in our home anymore after my mom filed for divorce.

Apparently she was working with Grey to find his birth father, too.

Things were looking up.

I glanced back over at Alec who stared at my latest mural in silent contemplation.

Yes, things were definitely very much looking up.

Grey wrapped his arms around Cami's small frame as she picked up a can of spray paint and aimed it at Grey's sludge colored base.

"What are you going to do with neon purple?"

"I don't know, but purple always makes everything look better."

She sprayed the paint out in arching circles, and only then did I realize that Grey had covered up the monstrosity I'd painted in my grief over his flatlining only three months ago; the woman with her lifeblood dripping from the bullet wound in her1 head.

It had triggered something in Cami and made me regret ever painting it in the first place.

It was good that Cami and Grey were painting over it. It was good that they were reclaiming it as their own.

She sprayed and slashed arcing strokes across the cavernous walls overlain with the dark brown base.

There was a smile on her face that I hadn't seen in the entire time that I'd ever known her.

Grey's hands tightened on her, and I felt a pinching sensation overcome my chest. This was too much to watch, to bear. Their happiness, though well deserved and earned, was slamming into my heart and forcing me to bear witness was almost torturous.

I slipped out of the cave unnoticed, following the sounds of Alec throwing rocks at the outside entrance.

"Hey," I started, not sure where I was going with this but wanting to get it out nonetheless.

"Hey."

For a moment, we just stared at each other.

There was nothing we could do in the gravity that kept us suspended in a realm of limbo, a sea of 'what if's' and could've been's. Maybe if things had been different from the start. Maybe if I'd actually seen things for what they were and not for what the world would do to me if I decided to be true to myself...

"I don't really know how to do this," I began, stuttering on every other word because the words felt like lead bullets in my mouth and I was cocking the proverbial gun by starting down this path, this dangerous, treacherous path.

"How to do what?"

It was like I was under water for so long, and finally staring at him was like parting the surface and watching as the sun came out for the first time in a decades long stretch of ever present darkness. It was like having him here with me in this life was everything I could ever want, even despite the fact that I'd denied it to myself for so long.

I didn't want to admit it; that there was something wrong, something different, something that would have others look at me differently.

But standing before him, I realized it.

There was nothing wrong with me. There was nothing wrong with who I was in love with, and I was going to make sure he knew that too.

"I thought I was bi for a while, you know? I appreciated a beautiful girl. I still can, but I'm not attracted to them. Not really. So I guess that makes me...gay. I've never said it out loud before, but we've texted about you before, so I started going over important moments in my life. How I lost my virginity and felt nothing. How I was just going through the motions of a life I wasn't even sure I wanted as my own anymore.

"It was when you started trying to hurt yourself for how you felt inside that I realized how much I could sympathize with you. Because I wasn't just hiding this thing from the rest of the world; I was hiding it from myself. I wasn't about to admit it to myself, ever. I was positive it would never come out, that I would never come out. But after everything with Grey and him almost dying, three times so far at only eighteen, I realized that it was time I stopped worrying about the what-if's and actually decided that it was time to stop being scared. I know you've been going through a lot, Alec, but I want you to know that you don't have to go through it alone."

He didn't look my way. His eyes faced the horizon in the distance, wistful temptation crossing his star flecked features.

"I've known about you for a while. We used to tease each other all the time on the phone, and we've flirted with pictures and texts for a long time now, but it was never in person. You'd never been this direct with me. I was convinced you were going to live in the closet forever. I...I told my parents yesterday. Everything I was worried about—them kicking me out of the house and disowning me—it was all in my head. They were so happy for me. They knew all along."

"Alec, that's—"

"But I still wasn't happy. Because the one person I wanted to be out with, to be happy with, was still in denial. How long have you known this and waited to tell me?"

"I've known it all along, but I didn't want to admit it to myself. I've known I was going to tell you since Grey's surgery complications, but I was just waiting for the right time."

"And you think this is the right time?"

"Yes? No? Why does it feel like you're mad at me right now?"

He stepped closer, hair glinting in the spray of sunlight beams coating his body.

He was so tall—he towered right over me, but I didn't back down. I stared right up into his gilded eyes.

"I'm not mad. I'm overwhelmed...I've waited for this moment for a whole hell of a lot longer than you'd think. Fuck, Parker. Do you know how long I've been in love with you?"

I didn't waste a moment. I was going to make this happen.

My first real kiss.

It was warm and strong, his lips slipping between mine like they were always made to be there. His arms wrapped around my sides and pulled me tighter to him as the breath left my lungs in one large whoosh of air.

I was tasting colors and sifting stars through my fingertips.

I was floating through galaxies and spinning in interstellar webs of sunlight and cosmic dust.

I was everything and nothing all at once, pulled apart and stitched back together by this man holding me like I was the world to him.

He pulled away suddenly, breathless, flushed, beautiful. Perfect. Mine.

"You're in love with me?"

A wolfish grin pulled at his features.

"I thought that was obvious."

"I love you too."

Another grin, cocky and the hottest thing I'd ever seen.

"I know."

He pulled me by the arm back into the cave and wrapped it around my waist, but I didn't pull away even as Cami and Grey turned to view us walking in together.

"Hey, I think she finally got this right!"

"Let's see what you painted, then," I said to cami as we ambled over to the spot of cave that they'd claimed for themselves.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

I'd been expecting paint splatters, not an actual outline of a painting that, once fully fleshed out, would be breathtaking.

They were silhouettes, and for some reason I could discern which person they represented.

There was Cami in the middle, her silhouette purposefully smaller than the rest while the rest of the figures spread out on either side of her. Grey was to her immediate left, tall and imposing, and I was there on her right, steady and strong.

Fanning out, I could pinpoint her best friend Mori, my mother, even Alec and Victoria as the two of them had grown close in the aftermath of the attack.

More and more figures panned out as she began explaining the meaning behind the painting.

"It's supposed to be everyone in my life, and everyone who's ever been in it. I used to think I was alone in the world, but I was wrong. I have people that are there for me. I have you guys, my old foster siblings, my new friends, and I still have my mom, somewhere out there."

Grey turned her toward him and she tipped her head up and laughed when he brushed a thumb beneath her wet lashes.

"You're right. You're not alone—none of us are. We've got each other."

"Alright, no more waterworks, let's get back to painting."

Cami sniffled once more and Alec caught my eye with a gleam sparkling in it.

"Nah, you have one assignment left before that."

"What?"

I didn't give her or Grey a chance to back up before I stumbled forward with Alec on my arm as we pulled them into a crushing bear hug.

"Group hug? Really?"

Grey's voice was dry and sarcastic, but the smile on his face told me that he was secretly happy for it.

The sun crested over the lip of the cave at the opening directly above us, and for a moment the entire cave was awash in pale yellow sunlight—every painting I'd ever painstakingly brushed and sprayed and sketched bathed in brightness that it normally never received.

Reds and blacks glimmered harshly in the light; pinks and whites glittering beautifully with the new bright treatment the paint was receiving.

Scenes of pain and beauty glowed for a few moments as I clasped the people I loved around me, and for that one moment together, the entire world gleamed bright and pure and vivid, shining with all the pigments of a kaleidoscopic rainbow stretching over a dreary horizon.

I picked up the nearest spray paint bottle and held it out with a flourish to my family beside me.

"So, who's next?"

Well...it's really over!

I can't wait to post bonus chapters for this story! I have ideas for prom, a sneak peak at scenes from the 2 weeks Grey and Cami had together that wasn't really shown, and so much more!

I hope you all enjoyed this rollercoaster of a novel that had me crying more than any other book I've ever written!

I hope you'll stay tuned for a sneak peak at my next book, 'Spotlight' which I'm posting on May 15th—only 5 days away!

I truly appreciate each and every single one of you who have read, voted, and commented, your support means so much to me!

Until next time my lovely readers,

Kristen :)