He hated her. More than anyone else who had tormented him, Amber had shown how superficial her judgments went. Any person that didn't fit or willingly walk inside the little boxes she set up for them was lower than dirt to her. When he first attended Sweet Amorous he stayed out of her box and stuck by the girl he had decided to follow there. A dumb move on his part, because she wanted little more to do with him than Amber did but at the time he hadn't cared if she treated him like vermin as long as she looked at him.

Kentin realized after he left, his heart never quite recovered from the cold goodbye his "friend" gave him, that he deserved better and that he wasn't going to accept anything less than sincere regret from the people who previously tormented him before he forgave them. He was content to let it lie that way for everyone but one, he wanted a revenge on Amber and he knew that to get it he was going to have to get personal.

So he sent the anonymous flowers with the note containing the place and time, stood outside the dollar shop in casual clothing that was drastically different than what he wore before boot camp, and then waited for Amber to show up. She looked almost exactly as she did when he first meet her (which forced him to repress a sneer) except this time she was glowing with excitement. This confirmed why Kentin couldn't afford to trust in appearances. At that very moment Amber appeared to be the most beautiful and innocent girl alive, and he knew that she was by no means either.

None the less, he continued with his charade. It wasn't until after he kissed her that he knew he was in trouble. He had wanted to kiss her and nearly asked her on a second date. The entire time they spent together he kept wondering if they would be dating for real if she never knew him before he had been sent away to boot camp. It took everything he had not to follow through with his plan and be on good terms with her for once, but he managed to crush the phone she gave him and deliver his cruel lines. For a split second her eyes held a pain that he recognized far too well from back before he went to military boot camp and he was always being tossed aside by people he cared about. It was gone before he could change his mind about his actions and he was swiftly reminded that Amber wasn't like him. She was the one who tossed people aside and she would never let herself believe that someone had just done so to her. Honestly, he was better off because everything went according to plan.

Except it hadn't not exactly anyway. He was still thinking about her. The moment he rejected her was supposed to expel her influence from his mind, but she clung to it like tar. Everywhere he went her influence revealed itself to him; storms were nature's attempt to capture her anger, skyscrapers her determination, trees her namesake, books the first time she cornered him alone was in Sweet Amorous' library, music of her mercurial moods, chocolate of the bittersweet feelings he felt when she found out who he was, carnivals of the unequaled joy he felt when their lips meet, and he couldn't find anything to focus on that didn't bring his thoughts directly back to her. Even as only a phantom presence within his mind she was as demanding as she was in reality.

His only hope to be released from her would be to forget about her completely, but she had already branded herself into his mind as one that he could never afford to forget. Even before he had kissed her, and subsequently had his life turned upside down, he knew he couldn't risk forgetting his greatest enemy. Now that he had kissed her Kentin knew that she would forever be a part of his life. Whether as an enemy, friend, phantom, or something else entirely Amber would be there with him until the day he died. What truly terrified him, was that he wasn't minding that as much as he should.