“It’s mine,” Bane said conversationally, but his posture, tense and commanding, suggested that he was a breath away from tackling Darren.

“What’s yours?” I leaned against the door, folding my arms over my chest.

“The boutique hotel on the promenade. The one that’s being gutted,” Bane bit out, his voice manufactured and detached. His eyes were still hard on Darren, and the threat was there, stark clear and shining in his pupils. “Your stepdad has some very elaborate ideas of what I should do about it, even though I never asked for advice.”

Bane grabbed my hoodie from my bed and walked over to me, tossing it into my hands and looking back to my stepdad, who stood there, in the middle of my room, looking like a wounded soldier who’d come back home to find out that everything he knew and loved had been consumed in flames.

“Come on, Snowflake. Food, then we’ll take Old Sport for a walk.”

“Shadow is sleeping,” I muttered, still confused by the entire exchange.

“Dogs are always sleeping. We’ll wake him up.” He mussed my hair, like I was an adorable kid.

The way he touched me, so casually, as if it was okay, as if I was normal, made my heart skip several beats.

I stole one last look at Darren, trying to find the pity I had usually felt for him. His eyes were blank, his jaw tight.

Usually, looking at him losing another battle made my heart pinch.

This time it didn’t.

We didn’t talk about what had happened in my room.

Something told me that the minute I addressed it, it wouldn’t happen again, and that was a scenario I didn’t want to entertain. We put Shadow—who was looking slightly better—on a leash, then grabbed some pizza downtown. I ate two slices and whimpered at the first bite, surprised by how much flavor it had.

Then we sat in his rusty red truck and called Dr. Wiese’s office. The receptionist yawned a generic don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you, adding that it’s been hectic at the clinic, so we might need to wait a few extra days. Then we dropped Old Sport back home and headed to the beach. Bane had promised Beck he’d surf with him, and I didn’t care what we did. The sky was dusky, and for the first time in a long time I felt liberated.

Liberated from the idea that Bane would think my “slut” scar was ugly.

Liberated from worrying about Shadow’s blood work.

There was a perfect moment on that beach, right after Bane introduced me to his friends, Beck—whom I’d already met at Café Diem—and Edie, a blonde surfer who was every insecure woman’s worst nightmare. Petite, pretty, and approachable. It was when they were paddling deep into the water while I settled against my backpack, drowning in the words of The Princess Bride. The feeling of solitude holding hands with intimacy. I was hanging out with Bane without really hanging out with him.

I looked up every now and again and smiled.

Sometimes he didn’t notice me.

Sometimes he smiled back.

When he took me back home, the thought that he might be going to one of his clients slammed into me, hard, and suddenly, prolonging our time together as much as I could, in some half-baked plan to make him cancel on whoever this woman might be, took the front wheel.

“Edie is nice.” I opened his glove compartment to find a mountain of cinnamon gum and a small plastic bag with weed. I took two pieces of gum and closed it.

Bane shrugged, but didn’t answer.

“And she’s a surfer, so she’s obviously your type.” I searched his face.

His mouth curved into a comma-like smirk, his eyes still hard on the road. “Obviously.”

“Come on, Bane. You wanna tell me you’ve never considered dating her?”

“I have. And I did. For a year. Ish,” he said, so casually, though I guessed for him, it was. My mouth went dry. Up until then, I’d suspected I was jealous of Bane’s clients. But I wasn’t. Because this was jealousy. The thought that Edie—whom I’d enjoyed hanging out with and actually shared a joke or two with—was the devil and public enemy number one. My head swam, and I curled my fists beside my body.

Bane took a left turn, tipping his chin down.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist. It was in high school.” I hate high school.

“Who ended it?” I tried to sound chipper, but it came off a little manic.

He pushed his lower lip out, giving it some thought. “I don’t know. It was never serious. We mainly fucked, and I took her to prom. Guess we stopped dating when we started fucking other people, too. Then she met her husband, Trent, and we just stopped completely.”

I love Trent.

Seriously. It was getting pathetic, how relieved I was to hear Edie was married.

Bane used the neighborhood’s remote nonchalantly—like it wasn’t illegal for him to have one—and eased his truck in front of my house, cutting the engine. I stayed put in my seat, half-wishing he’d forget that I was there and decide to take a spontaneous nap.