Author's Note: New story, this one is one I've been looking forward to writing. It's Reid/OC and I have spent a great deal of time on this girl, creating her character, and I'm very happy with the out come. I have most of this story outlined, and a couple of chapter already written. This is the prologue, I hope you enjoy it. Thanks, I love you guys.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Covenant or its characters.

Prologue

"Do you remember when we didn't care?

We were just two kids that took the moment when it was there,

Do you remember you at all?"

—All-American Rejects, "Another Heart Calls"

He couldn't remember the first time he'd seen her, it was farther back then his memory went, but in all his memories of his childhood, she was there. A constant, just like his brothers. Her name was Millie, shortened from Mildred, which in her opinion was the worst name known to man. Sometimes he would call her that, just to get under her skin and drive her crazy, it was his specialty. He knew her so well back then, he could remember how she laughed, how she used to have freckles across her nose, how her mother would look disapprovingly down at them when she would return with a dirty dress or a scraped knee from their hours of playing in the yard behind whatever mansion the 'play date' was at that day. It was just the way things were. Until it stopped.

He didn't know what had changed, or, at least, he didn't want to admit it to himself, but one day she just quit talking to him, quit answering the phone when he called, quit being his friend, or whatever they were that week, sometimes it was hard for him to keep track. They had been freshmen at Spenser, halfway into the year, but already everyone knew them. They were the Sons of Ipswich after all and with a name like Garwin people talked. They talked more than they should and assumed things they shouldn't. In Ipswich, a connection to one of the Sons was nearly as good as being one, you were instantly loved and coveted and hated to an extent it was insane. Apparently this hadn't been enough for Millie, who had suddenly become some kind of social climber, and started dating a senior from the soccer team, (even though she had never officially broken up with him) and hanging out with Kira. Two months ago she had hated Kira Snyder and all her friends. Of course, two months ago he had been allowed to hold her hand.

Reid had felt abandoned, thrown aside when something better came along. They'd spent the whole summer together planning their lives as "high school students" as if this was some kind of big accomplishment, living this far. They would lay on his bed for hours and watch stupid movies and talk about how middle school was over, finally. They were leaving all that stupid little-kid drama behind, little did they know they were trading it in for something more complicated, that was over their heads. They didn't know how that first half of the year would be something wild and unexpected and so incredibly…naughty.

There was no way they could have known what they were getting themselves into. It wasn't really their fault that they dove in headfirst, no one ever warned them of what might, no, what would happen if they weren't careful. Maybe if things had been different, they weren't so daring, their parents cared a little more, maybe if someone had come along told one of the millions of horror stories that were part of the package of the life they were about to collide with, maybe, they wouldn't have lost the people they'd always been, maybe they wouldn't have lost everything they ever loved. Maybe.

By that time the other guys had already drifted away from Millie so they didn't take her departure quite as hard as the blonde, who felt like she had taken his heart, stepped on it, and then tried to put it in backwards. He loved her, he knew he did, but he was only fifteen. He couldn't know what love was yet. That's what everyone told him. But in his mind, what he felt for her was the real deal. That real love they always talked about in books and movies, when you fall head over heels and nothing else matters. The feeling scared him. He couldn't really be in love so young? No, it wasn't possible. But sometimes when he would think about her his heart would pound double-time and make him feel breathless, and to him, that sounded very similar to what they said love felt like.

By the beginning of their sophomore year she was exactly where she wanted to be, top of the list, most popular, best friends with Kira. She had dumped the last guy for the newer model. When she walked down the hall everyone would stare; she was so beautiful, so perfect. But Reid could see the change, he could see that something was wrong, she wasn't happy like she'd thought she'd be.

It all really came down to Kira's sweet sixteen party. Everyone was there, weather they were invited or not, the Sons falling under the 'not' category thanks to their from-the-dawn-of-time battle against Aaron Abbot and his crew, and Kira was dating Brody at the time, who was tight with Aaron. This put Millie and Reid on different sides of the line, in different spectrums as far as social laws were concerned.

Millie and Kira were showing off their tans from the time they'd spent in the Hamptons that summer. Their dresses were so short Reid could just almost see the scar on Millie's thigh that she'd gotten climbing trees in his backyard when they were eleven. He could usually only see it when she wore a swim suit. He wanted to talk to her, just one conversation. He wouldn't tell her how he really felt, or what he thought of her ignoring him. No, things like that didn't need to be spoken.

He just wanted to tell her how beautiful she looked, even though she was way too skinny, he wanted to say that he missed her. He missed how crazy they had been last year and for their entire lives before that, he missed how she could instantly calm him by simply running her fingers through his hair, he missed how she could take one look at him and know exactly what he was thinking about. But what he really missed the most was that smile, the one reserved just for him that meant everything and nothing and was pretty much the best thing he'd ever woken up to.

When he saw her go up the stairs, he knew it was his only chance. He followed her out to a balcony and watched from the doorway as she stood in the moonlight. She was too beautiful to disturb. She gripped the railing tightly, her hands far apart. Her shoulders were shaking, he realized. She was crying.

"You okay?" He said, making himself known. She turned to face him quickly. He had scared her.

"Reid." She said it strangely, not like his name used to fall from her mouth. She said it with a bit of nervousness that someone would see her talking to one of the forbidden Sons of Ipswich, she said it with an annoyed tone. She said it like a curse. It hurt like hell, twisting the knife she had plunged in his scared heart. He turned to leave not wanting to deal with the pain she caused him any longer. He had pined after her too long, lost too much of his life to her.

"Reid, please." She was pleading, for what he didn't know, but her voice, so enchanting so wonderful, and now so desperate. He turned around, her shape a silhouette with the moon shining brightly behind her, she was so beautiful. He forgot how to breathe for a moment and the world stopped spinning. She was all he could see and every memory of them together flashed through his mind. In trees as kids. At school. In his pool with her in that tiny swimsuit. And then that one last scene, from last year, when she had pressed her lips to his and the fire had begun to engulf him.

She crossed her arms, hugging herself against the bitter Ipswich wind and turned her head away from him because she knew if she looked into his eyes again the space between them would cease to exist.

"I'm sorry." She didn't say it in the off-handed way people usually said it. He could feel the meaning behind her words. But they both knew the rules and no matter how sorry she was, they were different now. Her words didn't change anything.

"Me too." Reid answered and then turned and left because he couldn't stand there any longer and look at what he could never have. Downstairs, after raiding the Snyder's liquor cabinet, he found something a little stronger, something that made him feel numb and dizzy and not a good drunk by any means, but it made his heart hurt a little less. What pain the alcohol didn't take away, was driven out by Mercedes Wilder, a senior, in the back seat of her Porsche.

And so it began. Him with his one nighters and her with a new, classy lifestyle where he didn't register on the radar. At all. He drank and had sex that could never be described as "making love" because he didn't even know most of their names. She smiled and showed the world her perfect self when she really cried herself to sleep at night. Reputations grew fast at Spenser and by the end of sophomore year, theirs were so vastly different, on such different levels, that it would be unheard of for their lives to ever cross again. So they didn't. It was forgotten that they'd ever been friends. Or anything else.

Everyone left for the summer, off to the Hamptons, or Europe, or where ever their family vacationed. Some of them back to their not so great lives in not-so-great houses where they actually studied to maintain the scholarship they had worked so hard to earn. Everyone forgot about drama and social statuses and had fun that wasn't allowed during the school year. But come September the uniforms were again donned, the halls again full, and classes began again in a routine that was already old by the end of the first day.

It didn't take long for everyone to realize that their queen bee, their royal leader, had not returned to Spenser Academy. And everyone soon learned what Reid Garwin already knew. Millie, his Millie, was gone.

Thanks for reading, please review, I would love to know your opinions!