Virginia's family was absolutely crazy. Nuts. Off their rockers. Insane. Bat. Shit.

The fact that not only did her cousin get away with telling lies about Virginia, but her father believed it, too. I was seriously starting to have my doubts about him, but his skills as a coach were unparalleled in his field, and having him backing me on my journey to the NBA would be invaluable. Agents and teams would take me more seriously having him by my side, and I couldn't risk the chance of not having him there.

So, when I stopped by coach's house to apologize for skipping out on some of our drills early and ran into Virginia, I was prepared to grovel on my knees and apologize, but something different happened.

I found myself entangled with her yet again, our eyes locking as I stood on the front porch babbling like an idiot until I made an even bigger fool of myself and knocked heads with her after reaching for the same keyboard she'd been going for at the same time.

And then everything happened so fast, her father banning her from going to her show, and I could tell that she desperately wanted to go so of course I volunteered to take her, because how could I not? And then he invited that asshole Jared and her cousin Sara along, and then I wasn't too excited anymore, but that meant I still got a chance to plead my case with her, but I blew it. Again.

The look of betrayal on her face when I asked her to let her dad know that I apologized was like a knife in the gut. She took everything I'd been saying the complete wrong way, and then I got a phone call from hell.

My little sister, crying on the other end of the line about how unfair my step father, her real dad, was being about not letting her play basketball like me.

My step dad was a sexist asshole, if that wasn't already glaringly obvious.

So, yeah, I left them at Virginia's concert. There was no doubt that I had wanted to stay and watch her sing her heart out, but family comes first, always has and always will, and that's just something that my mother or step dad have never understood, and never will.

I took her out for ice cream and to her favorite clothing store, letting her buy whatever she wanted. It was therapy for the both of us, not having to be in the company of our parents for a while, because the majority of times we were allowed to see each other was only in their company.

"Oh my god, is that your ringtone? Sawyer Reeves? How lame," Elodie chastised me, and I reached over to steal a bite of her chocolate swirl ice cream.

"Hey!"

"That's what you get for mocking my taste in music," I reminded her while simultaneously answering the phone with my other hand.

"Hello?"

"Eli, son. I need you to come back to the house. It's a bit of an emergency, if you can pull yourself away from the concert early."

Shit. Coach still thought I was at the concert with Virginia.

"Um, actually coach, I had a bit of a family emergency myself, so I had to leave, but I can make it back there in about an hour. I'll just need to pick up Virginia first-"

"No, that won't be necessary. That girl can find her own ride back here. We all need to have a discussion regarding boundaries, anyway. One hour is fine."

And then the call was over, though I didn't recall saying goodbye or hitting the 'end' button on accident...

Well, that was rude.

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah, I just need to take you back home. Coach wants to see me."

"Oooh, you in trouble already? What did you do, kiss the coach's daughter?"

Elodie batted her eyelashes at me, laughing while fake pouting her lips.

"No," I said begrudgingly, though I wasn't going to lie and say that that thought hadn't crossed my mind before. No, it definitely had, more times than I cared to admit.

And so, I dropped my little sister off with the assholes we called 'mom' and 'dad'. Well, more like 'mom' and 'stepdad' for me, because I would never call him dad, a fact that royally pissed off Jay Shepherd, but I didn't care in the slightest. That monster didn't deserve to be Elodie's dad, let alone mine.

At least he didn't hit her. I told her, the first sign of him getting aggressive with her and I was yanking her the hell out of there. I'd kidnap her if I had to if it meant keeping her away from his fist and foot, his belt and god forbid anything worse. He'd never crossed the line with abuse as far as sexually, but I didn't put it past him with Elodie since she was a girl.

God, just the thought made me almost throw up in my mouth, but I held the bile down and punched it to coach's house, not liking what I found there when I arrived.

It all unfolded in almost slow motion, Sara pointing fingers and fake crying into Asshole's-I'm sorry, Jared's shirt, Kara falling for it a little too well, coach listening intently to the load of bull coming out of Sara's mouth and falling for it hook, line and sinker, and then Virginia arrived, windswept, beautiful and out of breath, like she was still exhausted from her show.

She had a glow to her, one that was hard to miss even in the dim atmosphere of the office we occupied. She looked different than she had before, almost...happy.

And then Sara opened her mouth and her light dimmed just as low as the lighting we were surrounded in.

But still, she kept her cool. She was so calm and collected, in a way that I definitely wouldn't have been if they'd have been lying about me so directly. I knew Sara was full of shit from the description of the story she was telling, because even though I'd only known Virginia for a short time, I knew that Sara was already jealous of her and the asshole was willing to go along with whatever she said.

Plus, it didn't seem like something Virginia would've said, or done.

Why they'd done it was a whole other story, but from the discussion before Virginia arrived and the aunt, Kara, suggesting not allowing Virginia to contact or speak with Jared from then on out, it was getting more and more clear that Sara felt threatened by her cousin, and pulled this stunt to try and hold onto the asshole.

A lot of effort for something not really worth it, in my opinion, but that was just me.

And then she'd handled the 'punishment' well, almost too well. She clearly didn't care that her father forbade her from contacting me, or Asshole, and while I didn't care about the other guy, the fact that she was so flippant and careless that she couldn't speak to me again rubbed me the wrong way.

And then, before her feet were out of the door, she turned to face me.

She apologized, and said I didn't deserve what they'd done to me. Our eyes laser focused on one another, and that was it. In that moment, I knew I had to get to know her better. Had to break her father's rule. I had to dig underneath that surface of hers and finding the treasures lying beneath it just waiting to be unearthed.

I wanted to peel back her past and her layers almost as badly as I wanted to peel her clothes off, but it wasn't just purely physical or sexual with her. It was like we were two magnets, negative and positive ends, being pulled together by the forces of nature and who were we to stop them?

She was incredibly talented and incomprehensibly beautiful, mature and capable, composed, and had the wit and sarcasm my father had passed down to me. She masked her pain with humor, something I could relate to, and it was all wrapped up in a neat package that I wanted to disassemble...with my teeth.

So, when she called me that night after the debacle ended and we spoke about nothing and everything, I didn't hold back one bit.

I wanted to tell her how much I wanted to continue talking, how I wanted her to come over to my dorm and never leave, but that was too much, too soon. She'd just been verbally attacked by her entire family, and while she needed someone to talk to, she didn't need someone in that capacity. Hopefully one day soon she would need someone in that way, and I'd be there, waiting patiently.

Because if my disinterest with Mia wasn't already a sign enough, that night cemented in me what I'd known to be true. I was all in with Virginia, and she didn't even know it. But she would.