He seems taken back by the question for a moment. He clears his throat, one eyebrow quirked, as if trying to find what wave length my brain is on.

"Uh... what? When?" He looks genuinely confused as he scratches the side of his jaw.

"In high school. When I was ruining your sister's life. Why did you just let me do that? Why didn't you corner me, whip some sense into me, feed me the same abuse I threw at your sister? Where was the overprotective brother?" I'm staring at the balls on the table as words flow from my mouth.

"First of all," he begins as he lays his cue stick across the pool table and then turns back to face me. "I would never hurt a girl, and secondly..." He stops as he rests his butt against the pool table. He takes a deep breath before continuing. "I didn't know."

I blink twice. "What?" I gasp as I search his face for answers, "How could you not—"

"Trinity was a pretty private person. She always kept to herself, so there really wasn't any way for me to know what she was going through." He rubs a hand through his hair messily, and my eyes are momentarily drawn to the pieces sticking up. "She would hide behind a smile and this enthusiastic attitude, and she was really good at it. Really good at faking it."

"How'd you find out?" The question leaves my lips with a hesitant whisper, but Trevor hears me perfectly, because his gaze flickers from the floor and directly into my own curious stare.

"I uh..." His voice grows raspy and he rubs his left shoulder aimlessly. "I found her."

I'm already getting the feeling that this is not going to be good. I am not going to want to hear this, but I have to. I deserve to. "Found her?" I encourage, taking a reluctant step forward and leaning against the table next to him. I stare at a stain on the carpet as I wait for him to continue. He doesn't, but I can feel him watching me, so I tilt my head to get a better view of his expression.

"Emma..." He almost sounds regretful with the way my name wearily falls from his lips.

My eyes flicker to his flexed jaw before landing on the soft lips that are pressed firmly together as if trying to keep any more words from being uttered. There's something about the way he whispered my name that has me wishing for something more. Something deeper. I needed something more than the casual banter between friends.

"Please," I mutter, hoping he'll continue. My eyes find his again, and I watch him search my face for several rapid heartbeats before his shoulders fall with a tired exhale.

"I'd kind of started to notice some things that were off about her. Her smile would slip, or I'd catch her with this look on her face while she stared at absolutely nothing. There were moments when I knew she'd been crying. I don't think my parents could tell at first, but as time went by it became a bit more obvious."

I'm watching him relive the memory, and it's causing my own emotions to bubble inside of me as I expect the worst.

"We would question her but she would deny everything, saying she was just a bit stressed with homework and improving her grades, which had also gradually declined. You see, contrary to what everyone believed about Trinity, she was extremely insecure. Any pressure and she would collapse. I remember once, this was a couple years before we moved to Illinois, one of her good friends told her that she was too easily swayed and needed to learn to be more confident in herself; grow some backbone. This broke her for a whole week. She wouldn't eat meals, she wouldn't laugh. We found out later that she was just more emotional than most people, which would occasionally result in periods of pretty severe depression.

"After a couple weeks of observing her, my parents and I decided that whatever was going on was big. We had never seen her act this way before and so we cornered her one evening. Asked her what was going on, why she was hiding things, and she broke down crying, but again, she just blamed schoolwork. Our interrogating wasn't getting us anywhere so we gave up." Taking a deep breath Trevor turns to face me.

"She, uh...I found her a couple days later." His eyes are flittering everywhere but at me, so I finally step forward and place my hands on his shoulder. He jerks his focus to my face where I'm smiling gently, hoping to encourage him to continue, though inside my stomach is a twisted mess of regret and fear.

"Look, Emma, contrary to what you may think, I really don't hate you, and I'm not here to get back at you for what you did. I don't want revenge. I'm not out for blood." He rubs his eyes with his fingers before continuing. "What you did to Trinity was stupid and immature, but if my whole goal was to torment you for what you did and guilt trip you into misery, wouldn't that make me just as bad? Wouldn't that make me a hypocrite?" I just stare at him in shock.

"I know I've already done some regretful things concerning you. Some of the things I've said have been extremely hurtful, whether I meant for you to hear or not, and that was wrong. The way I treated you for the first few days that we were partnered... that's not who I am. I forgave you for what you did awhile ago. When I sensed the change in you, I realized I needed to grow up and let go of my own bitterness, so I'm sorry for ever causing you pain."

I know my mouth is hanging open, but I don't have the energy to close it. Never in my life have I met someone with such integrity and maturity. I'm stunned into silence.

"So, if you didn't know it was me ruining her life," I say after clearing the shock from my face. "Why did you ignore me all that time in high school?" Trevor is looking down but he tips his head to cast me an apologetic glance.

"Please don't take this the wrong way." He actually turns and places his hands on both of my shoulders to gain all of my attention.

I nod to persuade him to keep going.

"I didn't actually notice you in high school."

I take in a bitter hiccup of air, but he hurries to continue.

"I mean, I may have if our school had been smaller, but our class alone had nearly five-hundred students, and you were really good at blending in." I can see the instant regret on his face as he removes his hands from my shoulders to rub them down his face. "I didn't mean it like that."

I'm just nodding mindlessly as his words sink in.

"Listen to me, Emma." He drags my chin up with his finger, forcing me to look at him. Forcing me to see the truth in his next words. "You're beautiful." He pauses when I gasp, and I catch his gaze flash to my lips quickly before he finds my eyes again.

My heart begins to swarm as it pounds against my chest and attempts to swoop into my stomach.

"You are," he confirms. "I just had a lot of distractions. We were in completely different groups of friends. We never associated with each other. It's nothing against your personality or your appearance because any guy would be lucky to have you."

Suddenly I find myself staring at the floor, feeling completely dejected. It's stupid really because he just called me beautiful, but somehow all this time I thought he'd ignored me because he hated me, not because he didn't even know I existed.

That's what my whole mission had been when I'd discovered we'd be going to the same college - to make him like me. And yet, he didn't even know who I was until those last few weeks that Trinity was there. Looking back, it does make sense. He'd never really gone out of his way to be rude to me or show me that he even disliked me until those last few weeks. Then suddenly he was glaring at me every time I entered the room. To find out that he didn't even hate me was a huge twist in my plan.

"Change of subject?" Trevor asks, snapping my attention back to him, and I can see he's really hoping I'll agree.

I offer him a timid smile. "Sure."

"That day in my room, when I didn't know you were there and I said all that crap... you left a bunch of stuff behind."

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. I'm going to hyperventilate.

He must see the desperation on my face because a playful smile tugs at his lips. "Were you going to teach me how to knit?"

I face-palm and turn to lean over the pool table where I throw my face into the crook of my arm to hide it from view. "Please forget that ever happened?" I plead as I mumble into the green felt cloth.

"No way Jose! Spill." I can hear the grin in his voice, and it just adds to the humiliation.

"Wow! You guys are just practicing away. I assume Emma's a pro now right?" I peek out from behind my arm to see Mike and Lindsey standing nearby. I groan even louder as Trevor enlightens them of my moment of brain malfunction weeks prior when I did, indeed, find it a good idea to teach Trevor how to knit while we listened to Katy Perry.

"It was her idea!" I whine as I point an accusing finger at Lindsey.

She throws her hands up as if she's completely innocent.

The depth of our previous conversation is lost as the four of us prepare to battle it out in a game of pool. I'm not letting this go, though. I will find out just how badly I hurt Trinity Nixon, and I will find out what it is about Trevor that makes him so gosh darn forgiving, even when I don't deserve it.

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Any guesses as to what happened with Trinity? What do you think about Trevor?

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Love ya all! :D