Hi! This is my first story on fanfic, so be nice! Having said that, all reviews welcome, even if you hate it.

Learning.

The name 'Kristy Thomas' is synonymous with control. Look up 'control' in the dictionary and there I'll be. That's the way it's been for some time now. And I like it – scratch that. I love it. I love to feel as though I have the power; I'm in control; I'm the person calling the shots. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I could be even remotely happy if someone else were in control. This is why I panicked when Abby Stevenson moved into town. Because for some reason I knew right away that she was the epitome of 'control'. Control of the worst kind. Control that is hidden, to the point of being invisible. The kind of control where nobody knows they are being controlled, and therefore can't try to stop you controlling them. That's one form of control I have never mastered, and probably never will, because I like it when people acknowledge that I am in control.

Abby gives off an aura of being relaxed and oblivious. But I know better. I know better because I can see it in her eyes, when she holds the power, I can see how much she loves it. And when she has that power, she loves to watch me, to see if I'm letting it get to me. At first I tried to hide it. But it was hopeless. Because she could tell. She could tell, and it took up too much of my time. The more time I wasted getting worked up, the less time I had to re-establish my control over the group. And I loved to see Abby's eyes flash like those of a tigress when I took back my control. It made her almost as stunning as she was when power and strength made her eyes light up with passion. It is a mystery to me why nobody else sees the thrill in both of our eyes when we are locked in a power battle. It's all in the eyes. A good controller doesn't show it in the rest of her body. But you can't fake the eyes. I have always been a sucker for eyes. Even in regard to people I'm not particularly attracted to. Like Bart Taylor.

Abby once told me, with a teasing look on her beautiful face, that I didn't always have to be in control. I shot her a sneer and put it down to her being new in town and not knowing me at all well yet. But she was insistent. She told me that day, that the time would come when, tyrannical as I was to the rest of the world, as unwilling as I would be to admit it aloud, in my heart of hearts I would know that she had been right, that I didn't need to always be in control to be happy, and that when that realisation came it would be immediately following the happiest and most fulfilling moment of my life. She told me she was jealous, because she was the sort of person that had to be in control, even in situations when people should be equal, and it was exhaustingly harder to be that sort of person. I told her, without a doubt in my mind or a fear in my heart, that the day I realised I didn't have to be in control would be the day my whole world fell apart. She dropped the subject.

And yet here I am, only a few months later, in a beautiful room in a beautiful house, laying in a beautiful bed next to a beautiful girl, following the happiest and most fulfilling moment of my life, realising that the sleeping girl with her arms around me was right.

I don't always have to be in control and, surprisingly enough, I can be the type of person who, on occasion, doesn't even need to be equal.