Whelp, here it is. It's late I know, but I forced myself to do it before I go under with all the projects I put off this semester. So, sorry, if it isn't that exciting. I promise to make up for it real soon.

Anyway hope you enjoy this chapter. Please comment and vote (if you want) so I know you don't completely hate me.

Thanks!

--VIVKELLER23

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Teagan

He seriously needed to stop using movies and books that were so out of reality as references. They weren't real. In movies, the normal thing to do was to take the unreasonably angry and hurt heroine and kiss her. No warning, no foreplay. Just... bam!

Music started playing, the two main characters started getting it on, people whistled, and all was good in the world.

Yeah, right. The Ice Queen didn't appreciate the art of spontaneous kissing. Where as any other girl would have melted against him and given as good as he gave, she remained unmoved, frozen, until he realized she wasn't cooperating.

Then, she slapped him.

It was all very dramatic. Aris behind him whistled as Rain spun on her black knee-length boots and hurried out of the cafe.

It took until Friday for him to receive any form of communication from her. He was in the middle of warm ups at Welter's when Gavin's running changed to strutting. It was sad to admit, but despite knowing the Ice Queen was technically engaged to one of the Jeffers boys, Teagan couldn't shake the reality that Gavin was his greatest competition.

You haven't even met the lucky groom-to-be, the logical voice in his head pointed out. While true, Teagan was set on the idea that since Rain's fiancé was related to the jerk who hurt her not too long ago, the man in question wasn't all that great either.

He still knew next to nothing about her. Except for the time spent in Tilden's class, the visits to the library, the running into each other outside of classes, there wasn't anything remotely concrete he could offer that would surprise anyone. Well, that wasn't all true. He knew Rain Sullivan wasn't opposed to leaving her prestigious side of town to help strangers with their laundry.

He also knew that she had a short temper, which was so unlike her detached exterior. She cared a lot more than people gave her credit for, but she hid it well.

She also kissed like she wasn't afraid of anything, like she wanted to burn until there was nothing but ash and bone left. But her eyes said she was afraid of everything. It was a breathtaking contradiction.

And you're still a wannabe Shakespearean poet, when you're honestly more of a Dr. Seuss.

Okay, that one hurt.

"What're you doing back on the soccer field, Rainy?" Gavin called, a cocky smirk on his too young face. He was sweating buckets, his dark hair plastered onto his forehead, but he still flashed those stupid dimples. "Miss me?"

Teagan wanted to groan aloud. The minion had the confidence of an A-lister. "Gavin, keep warming up. I'm not going to take the blame if you pull a muscle because you were too busy flirting."

"Ah, Coach, don't be jealous. Besides, I'm past warm and straight up to smoldering."

Why, the little demon. "Do you even know what that means?"

"Caliente!" Gavin drawled with a kiss directed at some point beyond Teagan's tensed shoulders. "I'm burning up now, Tee."

The other boys burst into fits of laughter at that.

He didn't even have to ask why the boy was burning up. The gleam in his eyes and the way he carried himself told him all he needed to know. It was obvious there was only one lady who could get that response from Gavin Santos, and if he guessed correctly, that would mean the Ice Queen had decided to grace them with her presence.

All of his confidence disappeared as soon as that thought registered. He didn't like it. That was part of the reason he'd decided to call up Gia Dyer after the sundae he's shared with Rain. Teagan wasn't the kind of guy who grew flustered and lost his cool in the presence of a female. That wasn't his style at all.

In his mind, there was only one way to fix the fluke. His answer was to go back to what he did best. Sleeping around.

Classy. So sue me, Teagan thought irritably.

It wasn't a crime when his bed partner was willing to join him. But that hardly explained why he'd felt so guilty afterwards. Seeing Rain that Monday, meeting her eyes and seeing the accusation there, he'd felt like the lowest of the low. Maybe he was the scum she'd first regarded him as?

What was even worse than knowing why he'd gone to Gia though? It was knowing that despite Rain's ex-best friend's obvious enthusiasm, Teagan hadn't felt a thing. Nothing. Not even a spark.

But how did he explain that to the Ice Queen if she already assumed the worst?

"What brings you down to our humble land, my Queen?" Teagan drawled in an effort to clear his mind of his sobering thoughts.

He heard her sigh. Gavin took a seat on the patchy grass field, his observant eyes bouncing back and forth between the two adults. "You'd be surprised just how at home I feel on this side of town sometimes," was her soft reply.

It was answers like that, the ones that were so calm, yet gave nothing at all away, that made him itch to uncover the secrets beneath the ice. With a frustrated sound, Teagan blew his whistle and granted the boys a five minute break. Once he was certain Gavin understood that he needed to walk away, too, Teagan turned to face the woman he couldn't shake.

She wore a dark plum colored blouse tucked into dark gray slacks. The cool Fall air was blowing steadily, but not a strand of golden brown hair was out of place on her head. On her feet were shiny nude heels that shouldn't have been attractive at all. But, of course, that didn't stop Teagan's sick mind from trailing off topic. He imagined the shoes would be very nice if she wore them alone. Just the heels and that tentative, gorgeous smile.

Animal. Compared to her, the sweaty white muscle T-shirt and black gym shorts he wore looked like filthy rags. A complete contrast, like night and day. "Yeah? How often do you find yourself doing other people's laundry?"

Her purple eyes flashed but she remained cool. "I do other work, but things like laundry, cooking, visiting take up most of the time." She shrugged, pasting a half smile on her flawless face. "But I'm sure going to the laundromat is more than you could handle, huh? Can you imagine if you knew all of it?"

What else was there? He burned with the need to ask her. "I'd surprise you, Rainy Day, if you could manage to trust me with the secrets you try so hard to bury."

There was a look on her face. A searching look, her eyes taking in everything about his appearance, while something in their depths told him she feared giving in too fast, too much. "Perhaps. But that wouldn't be too far fetched, seeing as you've been nothing but surprises recently."

He was going to regret asking, but he couldn't help it. "How have I surprised you?"

The curve of her red lips broadened, almost like she was amused. "You have two jobs, for one, when most people can hardly handle one. You've got questionable taste in music, but you can quote one of the best comedy films of all time," she began. He assumed she was referring to the line from Mean Girls. "You flirt with every breath you take, but you refuse to take advantage of girls who aren't entirely sober or sane."

Was all of that surprising? He'd never particularly tried to hide any of the things she found so shocking about him. "I'm amazing, I know."

"Mmmm," she murmured, neither agreeing nor denying. "You're also the kind of guy to do things just because you can. You can mess with a girl's head and not even know it, at least not until you've decided to move on, and she's left to fall apart at your feet."

Okay, so I'm just short of amazing. "If this is about us and what happened with Gia-"

The control vanished. Her eyes widened, and the gentle curve of her mouth disappeared. "I don't think I want to hear about that." Her voice was small, the catch at the end giving away just how much she wanted to know. "You might be comfortable talking about something so private, but I am not. Besides that, I've decided that I don't really have a right to ask."

Now he was confused. If she didn't want to know then why did she behave as if she did? She'd been really upset the day she'd kissed him. Emotion like that didn't just disappear because she wished it to. Another thing, if she was so unmoved and certain that they were nothing more than the barest of friends, there was no reason for the hot and cold attitude he was getting from her. Unless she knew it, too, and that was what bothered her?

He frowned at her, taking a step closer when she lowered her gaze to the ground. "What convinced you that you didn't have a right to ask about my relationship with Gia?"

"The fact that Gia and I aren't friends anymore. It's hard to even remember the times when we spoke, she's so distant, so... cold, but I'm the one who's stuck with the icy name." Rain used the toe of her heel to play with the dirt and grass beneath her feet. "Also knowing that the hookups and the careless flirting are a part of you-" she shook her head- "I can't always expect you to be something more than you've promised to be."

"And what have I promised to be?" Was that his voice? The almost regretful note he heard in it made it seem like he cared what she thought of him. On some level he'd accepted that sometime between the night of the party and the day he found her fighting off the Jeffers fool he'd lost his cool around her. She was important to him, even if all they could ever be was almost friends who knew a little too much about each other.

But it was an entirely different matter to have others know it.

"Just you, Teagan. A thoughtful Casanova with a touch of gentleness." She looked at him then, and he almost wished she hadn't. There was something in those majestic purple depths that drew him in even as she was trying her hardest to push him away. "An absolutely lethal combination for a woman like me."

What was that supposed to mean? Before Teagan could open his mouth again to ask her to explain herself, Rain turned her attention to the boys who had given up trying to busy themselves to allow the adults their privacy.

Gavin was excited to have the Ice Queen's attention back. "Did Coach show his true colors at last?" the boy asked with a knowing smirk. If he didn't know any better, he'd think the little twerp was happy to see Teagan mess up.

"I'm not a peacock, Gavin. There's no colors to flash."

"That's not what Grandma says," the boy replied and the way he said it made it seem like the grandmother could speak no wrong.

Perhaps Grandma Santos knew something the rest of the world was blind to. "If you aren't here to demand an explanation from me, then why did you come?" Teagan asked with an edge to his voice, his eyes trained on Rain as she walked out onto the field. He couldn't pick her apart and that was getting to him. In his mind, the kiss they'd shared and the moments they spent together had moved them past whatever this awkward stage in the relationship was.

She shrugged, stopping to give him a shy smile that boiled his blood a lot faster than Gia's seductive caresses had. "You haven't been in class. We still have the rest of the semester to try to get along without stepping on each other's toes." Rain fluttered those ridiculously perfect lashes at him. "And Tilden sort of made it clear he won't be accepting half finished papers."

Dang it, old man. Trust Rain to go out of her way to settle the rough patches to make the grade in the crazy professor's class.

But he was going to show her that she couldn't simply keep him in a box. No, the Ice Queen was going to listen to the truth so she would have no reason to push what was happening between them away.

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