IN TOO DEEP || Liam Dunbar [3]

THREE

A/N: I had to change up the timeline a bit so it could better fit with Kat's involvement in the story, so hopefully it still makes sense???

For three days, Katherine felt unbelievably, inexplicably, wrong.

Her mom — the word felt wrong even before it had ever left her mouth, though she had no clue as to why — had made her breakfast when she'd woken up the first morning, had gotten her a cup of coffee, had reminded her to take her meds before she left for school. She'd packed her a lunch and kissed her on the head when she'd felt for school, which also felt wrong.

She'd been getting dressed that morning when she found a strange, unheard of word scrawled across the inside of her left forearm; Stiles.

Even though she had no clue what it mean, after taking one look at it Katherine couldn't stop crying and ended up being so late, her Dad had stepped in and asked her what was wrong, because she didn't want her mom near her, though she couldn't figure out why. She'd sobbed out the word Stiles and had felt him tense briefly before looking at her, confused, and she'd cried harder.

Then asked if she had a brother.

After calming down, as she closed herself in the bathroom to put on makeup to cover the redness of her eyes, she heard her mother utter the words Eichen House, maybe...might help her...if she thinks she has a brother for whatever reason...and when she'd come out the conversation had stopped quickly. Her Dad asked her if she was getting a ride with Liam that morning — which also felt wrong because something in her head was screaming jeep, though she didn't know why either because they'd never had a jeep before — and she had.

The moment he'd seen her, Liam had known something was wrong in a way only best friends ever did.

He'd left Hayden's side immediately and pulled her into a tight hug, softly asking her if it was an off day because she'd taken her meds late or something, an she'd jut buried her face in his shoulder because truthfully, she didn't know. She didn't know what the hell was wrong with her, or why she felt like part of her was gone and she couldn't get it back; she didn't even know what that part was.

But he'd hugged her, and hugged her, and continued to hug her until the bell rang for classes, and then he'd walked her to hers first without caring that he'd end up being late for his own, and when she'd asked him why, he'd simply responded with you'd do it for me.

Hayden had given him a funny look for it, but he hadn't spared her a look.

For the first time since they'd started going out, Katherine had his full, undivided attention.

She didn't mind having Hayden around anymore, she could even say they were friends, but she had missed it just being her, Liam and Mason, who was also extremely worried about her though he was much better at hiding it, and let her handle it by spending her time with Liam while supplying her with an endless number of hugs in hopes of helping her feel less alone. But ultimately, he'd send Liam her way whenever he noticed her spiraling particularly downwards because he knew that was what she needed, and didn't care about her any less for it.

The next night she'd been watching Bones down in the living room and called one of the characters a fucking dumbass, and had listened to her mother tell her jokingly to watch her language. She wound up sobbing so hard on the couch for reasons she couldn't fathom that they called Scott and Liam over to the house. When the two of them had tried coaxing out what had happened, all she'd been able to say was; I — I've heard that before...someone used to tell me that all the time...I don't know who it was...I can't — I can't remember.