“Oh.”

“What’s up?” She was talking to someone on speakerphone. Beck?

“Nothing. Jesse and Bane are fucking against my door.”

“Yet the dipshit still ain’t taking my calls.” Yup. Beck. “Can you slip him a note for me?”

“Hard no, Woody.” She called him Woody? How had I not noticed it before? Oh. Right. I’d been too busy trying to get Bane to touch me.

“Think they’re back together?”

“Who knows?” Gail chuckled, her slippered feet descending back to the living room. Roman groaned into my mouth, squeezing my ass tight with one hand while finding his way into the waistband of my jeans with the other. My fingers and toes curled in delight, heat gathering in my belly. He found my clit and toyed with it. Pinched it, flicked it with his thumb, and rubbed it between his two fingers like he was going to light it on fire.

“Missed you.” He stamped my mouth with another searing kiss. Overlapping sensations of complete abandon and odd empowerment zinged through me.

And love. The kind of love that made me feel immortal.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” I growled into our kiss, rubbing into his big palm with my groin. “I still hate you.”

“I know,” he said, his mouth filling mine with the fresh taste of rain and cinnamon. We were grinding against each other in a rhythm that belonged to us, no one else’s, in the kind of chemistry you couldn’t fake or stage, like two pieces of an elaborate puzzle that only had one place: right next to each other.

“But I’m here for you, Snowflake. I’ll be sitting on the sidelines cheering for you because you’re the strongest girl I know, but I’ll also be there if you need me. Needing someone wouldn’t make you any less strong, Jesse. It would just make you human.”

I planted one last kiss on his nose before I slid down the door and stood up, his hard-on between us, nearly poking out of his cargo pants, the air saturated with what we’d just done. I took a deep breath, tilting my chin up.

“You gonna leave me like this?” He cupped his junk.

“How else would I leave my enemy?” I asked.

“Spent,” he deadpanned. I shook my head and pushed the door open, hearing him taking a step back behind me.

“I can’t wait to fuck the old Jesse.” He sucked his teeth. “She seems like a fighter.”

“Stay out of my shit, Protsenko.”

But he was already going down the stairs, laughing like a maniac.

THE NEXT MORNING, I PULLED a pillow over my face and ignored the alarm clock yelling at me that I had a shift at Book-ish in an hour. Gail breezed into my room. Well, her room, really. We were sharing her queen-sized bed without any trouble, other than that first night where she’d told me she found it gross to sleep next to a person who’d been in bed with Bane Protsenko.

“It’s like secondhand smoking, but with prostitution.” She’d pretended to gag. Secretly, I was happy I could still laugh about it and still remember how to breathe.

I knew that I needed to remove myself from Gail’s apartment at some point, because Gail was too nice to kick me out, but decided to deal with the situation only after I’d dealt with Emery and his friends. One thing at a time. That was perhaps the only motto Mayra had taught me that had actually stuck.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.” Gail splashed down on the bed, lacing her black tattered Chucks. I peeked at her from under the pillows, my eyebrows pinched.

“Hi.”

“Have fun spreading STDs on my front door yesterday?”

“I think we missed a spot or two. Might revisit it tonight,” I grumbled.

“Yeah. I don’t care. I didn’t come here to hear about Bane’s dick. That shit should have its own Wikipedia by now. I’m here to tell you that your mom’s downstairs.”

That made me jump out of the bed and fling away the blanket. I charged for my Keds, tightening the laces like they’d wronged me somehow. My hair was a mess, and my breath still had that after-make-out aroma—a little dry, a lot horny. I shot Gail a look from behind her shoulder.

“How does she know I’m here? Did you have another slip of the tongue, like with Bane?” I immediately regretted the uncalled-for comment. Gail owed me nothing, and it really had been an honest mistake on her part. “Sorry,” I muttered, untangling my hair with my fingers and taking a sip of water from a bottle discarded on the floor. Gail fell onto her bed and flicked chipped black nail polish from her nails.

“I didn’t talk to her. I came back from the grocery store, and she was there, hanging out and asking questions. You really know how to channel people’s inner creepers, know that, Carter?”

I didn’t put it past my mom to have hired a PI to find where I was. I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl in Gail’s kitchen and jogged downstairs to face The Wicked Witch of the West. She was wearing sunglasses the size of Cyprus and enough Prada to open a store. Her hair was newly bleached, and she looked about as mournful as I looked like a Hula girl. I dug one hand into the pocket of my black hoodie and took a juicy bite of the apple, leaning against the entrance of Gail’s building. Last I’d directly spoken with Pam, she’d been flailing in the pool, spitting water. I doubted this was a social call.