Welcome back! I dunno how to write this, so I'm going to try and move ahead a little bit. If it messes up plans, let me know.))

Katrina felt the burning in her lungs, the cold air causing her to gasp for breath in massive heaves, clutching at her abdomen as she forced herself to run further, run harder.

So many thoughts ran through her mind. Was this how it was supposed to happen? Should she leave again? Would he? Would he forgive her? Would she even have feelings for him now? Was this just a figment of her imagination? Was it the guilt that had forced her to become so soft?

Like clockwork, she felt herself being led to the male staff dorms. They sat adjacent to the barns, on the complete other side of the property. Therefore, there was no reason for her to be there, for the silent padding of her running sneakers to bounce off the concrete, echoing as she scanned the door numbers with sullen eyes. Yet, she couldn't pull herself away. She hadn't slept in months. It was because of the man who was probably peacefully sleeping on the other side of one of the rooms, not even fazed by their meeting.

Sighing, she simply stared at the doors, then at her watch. It had a GPS tracker, which alerted Rhynn if she went outside of a thirty-mile radius--the girl had insisted on it, convinced that it would prevent Katrina from, "leaving her too." Little did Rhynn know, little could she fathom all the leaving Katrina had done since she was all of fourteen years old.

Readjusting her focus to the numbers on the watch, the time said 3:32am. She sighed, putting pressure on her temples and watching the doors. What did she honestly expect was going to happen? She didn't even have his door number, didn't even want to disturb the sleep she knew he was getting. There wasn't enough melatonin or nyquil in the world to get her to sleep until she moved past the damage she couldn't even blame Scott for. She'd done this to herself, time and time again. But this time, it was worse. So much worse.

Scott quietly stroked his gelding. He didn't know why he was still there. Did he want to go for a ride? No, that wasn't it. The last time he took a midnight ride, he got injured and scared everybody. It was too late to go to a bar now. Most of them are probably closed. No. Scott was just content standing there with his beloved black gelding, trying not to focus on the events that happened today.

This was crazy. He had found Katrina! He had always waited and waited for her to come back. He was so hopeful at first but after 3 months or so, that hope had withered away, partially with the help of alcohol. The days wore just wore on by and everyday Scott got worse and worse. Still waiting for the day that he would look upon her beautiful, freckled face and just smile. That day had finally come but with more heartache that was actually unexpected. Scott's reaction was not the reaction he had in mind at all. He didn't want to just stand there in complete shock unable to speak.

As Scott let his thoughts run rampant, he stood there with a puzzled look as he stroked Dante. The night was long and seemed like it was only getting longer.

There was nothing for her in the men's dorms. Not at the moment, and not ever, probably. How could she know, though? While jaded about anything and everything, this was completely uncharted territory for her. Scott was... different. How, she did not know, but he was. She was concerned about Spencer coming after her again, concerned about fire, concerned about the wellbeing of Rhynn, who had become her responsibility somehow. Yet, none of these were rooted deeper than concern. Her thoughts and reminisces about Scott went deeper, to the point where it brought her physical pain to think about him, and what she'd done, and now being back in the same space as him. It caused her so much grief it actually hurt her to stand still for any amount of time, the sleepless paranoia causing an already terrifying situation to be exponentially worse.

She felt like the air in her lungs was deflating like a balloon with a hole in it, never enough air to take a deep breath. Before long, her chest started to hurt, and her breath came and went in shaky gasps. She forced herself to run out of the dorm, sprinting the half-mile across the property towards her dorm. She had dreaded going in, knowing it was sterile and untouched, unlike Rhynn's, which was probably already a pig pen. That wasn't the source of her fear, though. The source of her fear was that a dorm indicated permanence, and that meant she had to face her problems. Leaving Scott was the hardest thing she had ever had to do, second to the events she knew she'd face in the upcoming weeks, if she'd even stay that long. If he would.

Pushing open the door, she scanned the darkness with dialated pupils, searching aimlessly for the light switch. After a few moments, the room was illuminated, and she simply froze like a deer in the headlights, her warm brown eyes searching the room for any false signs of homeliness: she found none.

The room was a slate grey, ugly and lacking vibrance, lacking life. It smelled of mildew and, more faintly, dust, and the only furnishings the main room had were a stained white couch and a small bed that sat in the corner of the room. To her suprise, the bathroom seemed much cleaner than the living area, although hardly stimulating anything other than the barrenness the rest of the room exemplified.

It wasn't bad. No, she'd lived in worse. At one point she'd even been living in her truck while working at Moonlit. Yet, something about this place was so much more horrid. Maybe it was that ugly color, or the smell, or the cramped style, or maybe it was just that the solitude of her own place didn't make her feel like her innocence and childlike nature could still be hers, the way she felt when she'd been reunited with the only person she'd ever truly loved, whether she'd admit those feelings or not.