"Am I everyone?" she asked, and sat up, pulling her knees to her chest.

Whether it was her tone, her question, or if her mood was contagious, she didn't know, but she recognized pissed off when she saw it. And Derek was pissed off. "Maybe if you'd been more accessible to me, instead of worrying that someone might figure out you liked me, we could have spent more time talking."

"I think I've apologized for that." She hugged her shins. "Not that it means you've forgiven me," she said with a touch of sarcasm.

He shook his head. "Okay fine, so maybe I don't have a right to be mad about that."

His inflection on the word that led to her next question. "But you're mad about something, right?"

He frowned. "I shouldn't be." He ran a hand through his hair and looked at her. The deep emotional hurt that Kylie saw in his eyes chased away her own bad mood and she started to worry about him.

"What is it that you shouldn't be mad about?"

He stood up from the bed and paced across the room. "You never lied to me. Not really. And I could see you still had feelings for him. You'd feel guilty and I knew you were probably thinking about him. I knew it, because I felt it. Yet like an idiot, I kept on pursuing you, even when you refused to go out with me."

She shook her head. "You're not making sense."

He stopped walking and let go of a deep breath. Then his beautiful, warm, and still-hurting eyes met her gaze again. "I can only be mad at myself."

"For what?" she asked again, her bad mood trying to move back in.

"But what I can't get over is that you didn't tell me."

"What didn't I tell you?" She felt confused and yet ... not really. She sensed he was talking about Lucas. Not that it really mattered, because she and Lucas were history. She'd made up her mind.

Yeah, there were the dreams. And she felt the guilt creep around her again.

He waved a hand in the air. "You see, this is how you feel half the time I'm with you. Guilty." He shook his head. "Tell me it's not true. Tell me that you haven't been getting letters from him this whole time."

His question bounced around her head. "I ... I never wrote him back."

She wanted to assure Derek that she hadn't done anything wrong. But the truth hit and it hung on like a big mean dog to a bone he considered his own. If he'd been getting letters from some girl who'd kissed him, she would have been jealous. She wouldn't have liked it. Certainly not if he'd been having sexy dreams about her, too.

"Derek," she said softly, "I swear to God, I didn't mean-"

"To hurt me," he finished her sentence. "I believe you. I know you didn't do this to hurt me. You aren't cruel or mean. You don't have a devious bone in your body. You're just ... confused."

She stood and walked over to him and tried to take his hand in hers, but he pulled away. His withdrawal hurt. Meeting his eyes, she tried to find a way to explain it. "You're right. I'm confused about a lot of stuff.

But I'm not confused about what I feel about you. I care about you. A lot.

When I'm with you, I feel safe and when you kiss me I feel everything. Everything looks so beautiful and ... and I don't even care if you're doing it anymore. I just want that feeling, okay? I want to go out with you."

"If you'd really wanted that, you'd have said something earlier."

"I did want to, I was ... just confused. Like you said."

"Because of Lucas?"

"No." She offered him the answer she'd offered herself. "Because I'm still trying to figure out what I am."

"But I told you that what you are isn't important."

"It is to me," she said. But deep down, deeper than she wanted to look, she knew what he said was true. Not knowing what she was, was only part of the reason she hadn't agreed to go out with him earlier. The other part was Lucas.

But that didn't change how she felt about Derek, she insisted to herself.

It was just like Holiday's aunt Stella. She might feel an attraction for Lucas, but she wouldn't act on it. She tried again to take his hand, but he wouldn't let her.

"You have to decide, Kylie, because I can't stand living in this limbo. I have too much limbo in my life with my father and I just can't deal with it anymore."

"I've already decided," she said. "It's you. I was going to tell you yesterday and then ... everything happened."

He stepped closer and her heart sighed with relief. She leaned in for a kiss. She wanted him to kiss her so badly; she wanted to make him see how much she cared about him.

He touched her cheek. "Until you're sure about what you feel about him, then you can't trust how you feel about me."

"That's not true." She tried to kiss him, but he put a finger over her lips, stopping her.

"No. No more. Until you've made up your mind, we're just friends. Just friends." Pain and hurt echoed in his voice and took a flying leap, landing right in her heart.

She didn't want to just be his friend. She wanted more. "Please don't do this, Derek. I never meant-"

He put his finger over her lips again. "I know you didn't mean to hurt me, Kylie. But it does hurt. I feel ... everything. That's what makes this so hard." He took a step back. "I'd better go."

Pain welled up inside her. Tears filled her eyes. She was going to lose him. She knew it as well as she knew her own name.