I Love You Girls

Keeley Hale stood her ground fiercely though tears threatened to spill out the corners of her eyes.

"What are you staring for? Leave," Aaron said flatly as he pulled out his phone and began scrolling through it.

Cold. Emotionless. Cruel.

Her husband of eight years looked as disinterested as ever and she was appalled. He had just told her his girlfriend was pregnant and he planned to divorce her as casually as if he were commenting on the weather.

"Not until you tell me the truth. Did she...have anything to do with my father's death? Are you covering up for her?" Keeley's fists shook but she wasn't sure whether it was from holding back the tears or from rage.

Her father-the only family she had left-died in a hit and run accident. The cops thought it was random but she couldn't believe that. Not after what she had seen. That woman was plotting to take her place from back when they were all in high school.

Aaron actually deigned to look up at her blankly. "So what if I am? She's worth more than fifty of you."

He had never exactly been the warmest person to begin with, but it wasn't always this bad. Keeley couldn't remember the last time he looked at her with any degree of tenderness.

"I'll expose you," she seethed as the tears broke free. "I'll put both of you in prison."

He smiled wickedly. "Money is power, sweetheart. You can't do anything to me."

She kicked a rock as she walked underneath some scaffolding on the sidewalk. New York was always under construction when the weather was nice.

Who could she talk to who had access to the traffic cameras that weren't in either the Hales' or Knightons' pockets?

She had to try and think clearly. Rationality was all she had left after the man she once loved so deeply dealt the deathblow to her heart.

The scaffolding above her started to sway dangerously and she hurried out of the way before it collapsed. Keeley's heart raced. A lot of accidents like this had been happening lately. She knew it was all Lacy Knighton's fault.

If only she hadn't gotten involved with Aaron Hale in the first place and taken what Lacy thought should have been hers. Her father would probably still be alive and her entire life would have turned out differently.

To escape the scaffold, Keeley ran into the street but she thought she was safe since it was a back alley that only delivery trucks used and none were around.

Too bad she had cried earlier. Her head was still fuzzy so she didn't see the car speeding towards her-a car that still had remnants of blood under its bumper if someone looked hard enough.

Keeley got a glimpse of the driver as she went flying. She knew him but couldn't figure out where from. He didn't stop to help, screeching away and leaving the smell of burning rubber behind along with Keeley's broken body.

As her consciousness slipped away from her for the last time, she swore that she would haunt Aaron and Lacy and make them pay for what they did to her family.

When Keeley woke up, she was in a hospital bed. "I...didn't die?" she asked groggily.

The nurse on duty laughed in surprise. "Were you so worried? They only did a routine appendix removal."

Appendix removal? But she already had her appendix taken out when she was seventeen!

She wanted to ask what was going on but was distracted by a very familiar figure rushing through the door.

"Oh, honeybun you're awake! I'm so glad," her father said with a relieved sigh as he caught his breath.

He was wearing a sweater over a collared shirt and, like usual, part of the shirt stuck out of the bottom. It was always becoming untucked. She used to tease him that it made him look like an absentminded professor.

She must be dreaming. Her father died more than two years ago. It had been so long since she heard anyone call her honeybun.

Or...was that other reality the dream? A premonition?

Her eyes filled with tears as she reached out her arms to hug the person she never thought she would see again. "Daddy!"

He moved over to the bedside to grant her request. "Daddy's here. I know this was really scary but you're going to be just fine."

"What happened?" Keeley asked.

She wanted to know if what he said was consistent with her memory. It was the only thing she could think of that could tell her what was going on.

"You were at school on a field trip when you said your stomach hurt and you collapsed, remember? Your teacher had to call an ambulance and you were rushed right here. I came as soon as I heard."

Right. They were visiting the Guggenheim Museum for history class in order to write a paper on modern art when it happened.

She went down in front of a Picasso. From her angle, it looked like the cubistic face was mocking her as her classmates began to scream for help.

The facts checked out. So was the future she remembered a dream or was she somehow reborn over a decade earlier?

Honestly, it didn't matter. Her father was alive. She hadn't met Aaron yet. All she had to do was avoid him.

Keeley tightened her arms around her father's back. Yes. She would stay away from Aaron Hale and Lacy Knighton no matter what. It couldn't be too hard to keep her head down.

Whatever had just happened, she was given a chance to do her life over right. Keeley could actually live her dreams instead of throwing her life away on someone who didn't love her.

This was the 21st century! No self-respecting woman should chase after a man that doesn't even value her. Love isn't necessary to be happy.

Besides, maybe someday she could find someone better for her. Anybody would be an improvement over her ex-husband.

Keeley forgot something very important in her quest to avoid Aaron Hale: when they crossed paths in the first place. The first time she saw him was at a basketball game. Their eyes met briefly and she blushed and scurried away to where her friends were sitting in the stands.

She had never seen someone so handsome before-or so cold. The moment their eyes locked was like staring into a dark blue abyss.

She was curious about those eyes but didn't notice them again until the seating chart was redone alphabetically by last name. She froze the moment she stepped into the room and saw him sitting leisurely at the desk next to the one she was supposed to sit at.

Aaron Hale. Keeley Hall. People had teased them when they started dating because their last names were practically the same.

Keeley felt sick. How did she forget that this seating arrangement was coming up?! She was too focused on avoiding all the basketball games in the weeks since she woke up! Her memory got it wrong.

She thought this happened during the last quarter of her senior year, not the third! There was supposed to be more time to come up with a plan. She wasn't ready to face him; not after how coldly he had treated her just before she died so traumatically.

"Mr. Weisz, aren't seating charts a little childish? We are attending a prestigious institution of higher education after all," she tried reasoning.

Private school teachers tended to be proud of where they worked. Public school teachers only cared about maintaining the chaos.

Keeley never would have been able to go to a school as elite as Westwind Academy if her crazy great-great-grandfather's will didn't specify leaving his inheritance solely for the education of his descendants after striking it rich during the Gold Rush.

Her dad held two Master's degrees, completely paid for by the trust. Her cousins, all much older than her, had at least one graduate degree as well. Several had more than one like her dad. That was how the trust worked.

The beneficiaries may as well utilize it properly, which is how the very normal daughter of a civil engineer ended up going to a high school surrounded by children of diplomats and Fortune 500 Company CEOs.

"Seating charts maintain the order of this prestigious institution of higher education, Miss Hall," the teacher countered, seeing right through her. "Take your seat."

"Yes sir," she muttered, defeated.

Keeley would not slump in her seat nor would she look at him. Aaron did not deserve the satisfaction of her acknowledging his existence.

Instead, she took out a notebook and started doodling stars in purple glitter gel pen in the margins of yesterday's notes, pretending to concentrate extremely hard.

"Taking notes before class has even started? Aren't you diligent?" a familiar icy voice sounded in her ear and sent shivers down her spine.

Thinking back, she couldn't understand why he bothered with her at all when he had the likes of Lacy Knighton hanging around him. Her father was a bigshot on Wall Street, like most of the kids here. She would have matched him perfectly.

Well good! She can have him this time! Keeley didn't want him!

"They aren't notes," she said flatly.

He peered at the paper with mild interest before mumbling, "I forgot you used to do that."

That sentence was enough to make Keeley look at him. He had a slight smirk on his face and it helped melt his Ice King demeanor a little bit.

Her heart thudded painfully when she remembered how much she used to love that little smirk. He didn't show his emotions often but that was how she knew he was amused or pleased back then.

"I don't know you. How would you know whether or not I've doodled before?" she asked stiffly.

He shrugged, nonchalant as his older self always was. "We've been in the same class all year. I used to sit a few seats behind you and saw it once."

A perfectly reasonable explanation. Her heart rate slowed. If a younger, more naïve Keeley knew he had noticed her before that basketball game, she would have flipped out with excitement. As things were now, it made her feel a bit sick.

"Right. Don't you know it's rude to call people out on things? It's just random shapes. It isn't hurting anybody."

"I never said it was hurting anybody," he said coolly but the conversation ended there because class began.

Keeley spent the better part of literature class trying not to be aware of the person beside her. Unfortunately, due to years of honing the skill, she noticed it all. Every twitch of his pencil. Every shift in his chair. Every bored sigh.

She wanted to scream. Too close! She was too close to her mortal enemy! How was she supposed to survive the next ten weeks like this?!

When the bell rang for lunch she couldn't escape the room fast enough. It would be easy to avoid Aaron outside of that one class. He always bought his lunch from the high-end cafeteria and sat with a snobby group of friends that included Lacy.

Since her father packed her a lunch every day, she avoided the cafeteria completely and sat with a couple of scholarship kids who also brought lunch out in the student lounge.

"Keeley!" Jeffrey Rosenberg waved her over. He was sitting with their friend Lydia Price at their usual spot.

She smiled brightly and walked over, putting thoughts of Aaron Hale out of her head. She wouldn't let him get to her this time. She would live life for herself and take full advantage of the family trust so she could get her PhD in genetics this time.

She always wanted to be a researcher but once she became the great Aaron Hale's wife, she was forced to give up her dream and become a socialite instead. That was her sacrifice for love and in the end it left her with nothing.

"Keeley, I think that guy is staring at you," Lydia said uncomfortably around a bite of her sandwich.

"What gu-" Keeley's blood ran cold. Sure enough, Aaron was staring at her. What was he doing? He had a lunch tray outside the cafeteria!

It was against the rules and he always followed the rules because they supported the system that built his family up. At one point early on he tried to convince her that they existed for the sole reason of keeping unworthy people in check.

"Who is that?" Jeffrey whispered.

"Are you crazy? That's Aaron Hale! The only child of the CEO of Hale Investments. Haven't you heard? He's been training to inherit the company since he was born. He's wicked smart-don't you know he's going to Harvard after graduation?" Lydia asked incredulously.

"I heard they wanted to give him a full-ride scholarship because of his grades and other accomplishments but he refused it because he was insulted that they didn't think he could pay for it himself."

"Well that's just stupid," Keeley said spitefully.

She remembered that well. She turned down her first choice-NYU-in favor of Boston University so she could be in the same city as him but he never wanted her to visit him at school so all of their dates happened elsewhere.

"What's stupid?"

All three friends cowered beneath the frightening figure in front of them. His uniform was identical to theirs but they could never match the way he carried himself. Aaron wore it like a king.

It didn't hurt that his chocolate brown hair never had a single strand out of place either. He was above them all yet here he was butting in on their conversation.

"Nothing!" they all yelled in unison. Angering this young man would likely be the last thing they ever did.

Keeley cursed herself internally. The bitter, angry part of her wanted to tell him to his face but it would only provoke him. If she wanted to stay under the radar, she couldn't get on his bad side.

"Mind if I sit here?"

Mind? Were any of them allowed to mind? They would have to be insane. But lunch became a very quiet affair after that.

Jeffrey and Lydia were too afraid to say something that would put a target on their backs. Keeley couldn't speak because she was afraid she might say something horrible that he deserved to hear.

"It's surprisingly warm for January," Aaron observed conversationally after a long stretch of silence passed.

Did he seriously come over to pick a fight with some scholarship kids over the weather?

Their little group very quickly became the center of attention. Scholarship kids, students who could afford the tuition but weren't well-known, and social outcasts hung out in the student lounge. The elite stayed in the cafeteria.

Most people in the school knew who Aaron was and even if they didn't, his aura stood out in a space like this. Nobody in the room understood what was going on, least of all Keeley.

"Yes," Lydia squeaked out. "I didn't even need a scarf today."

Keeley couldn't help but applaud her bravery. Aaron was terrifying. What had ever possessed her to love someone like him?

Those eyes seemed to hide some sort of secret from her. It was one she never figured out in all the time she knew him. Now she didn't care.

"I still need a scarf; I have to walk home," she said in a show of support for her friend. It would be awkward if Lydia was the only one responding.

"Please, you walk way less than I do. You're mostly on the subway!" Jeffrey pitched in.

This was true. Keeley lived all the way out in Brooklyn. Since Jeffrey was much closer in Harlem, he walked a good chunk of the way home without subway assistance.

And thus the conversation turned into a lengthy discussion of the merits and demerits of the subway. Aaron couldn't participate since he had never been on the subway in his life, always being picked up and dropped off by private car.

Only the wealthy and the insane regularly used cars in the heart of the city. Traffic was always terrible.

Keeley watched Aaron out of the corner of her eye. He seemed annoyed. What? Was the subway offending his rich kid sensibilities? Or was he mad that they were ignoring him?

It was most likely the latter. He wasn't used to being ignored since people were always fawning over him.

By the end of lunch, the group Aaron intruded on had switched from talking about the subway to discussing college acceptance letters. Most universities made their final decisions by the beginning of March. The emails could start coming in any day now.

"Where all did you apply, Keeley? I mostly applied to schools in New York so I could use in-state tuition," Lydia stated with a twinge of regret.

She really wanted to go to school in California where it was warm and sunny but she would need a scholarship to make that happen. She applied for several but there were no guarantees.

"NYU, Boston University, Penn State, Pace. I want to stay on the east coast so I can visit my dad easily."

"Boston University? That's not far from where I'm going," Aaron said casually, surprising everyone.

Why was he deigning to speak to mere mortals? This was surely the strangest lunch period Jeffrey and Lydia ever experienced.

She would rather die than go there now. Aaron would be at Harvard, she would be at NYU, and the world would reset itself to how it should have been.

He could have a rich and influential Harvard graduate wife and Keeley could live her life peacefully. Win-win.

The bell rang and she hastily wished her friends goodbye before rushing off to her next class, leaving that perplexing ice block behind her. There was absolutely no reason the golden boy should have eaten lunch with a handful of scholarship students.

Jeffrey didn't even know who he was. It was obvious he came over for Keeley. But why? What did he want from her? They didn't even know each other yet!