So much for making friends.

“Hey, Luce.”

If I’d still had any back there, the hair on my neck would have stood on end. “Hey, Jude.” Composing whatever I was able to of myself, I turned. He was still grinning like this had been the best thing to happen to him all week and, other than the fresh scar cris-crossing his eyebrow, he looked exactly the same: dark clothes, dark hat, dark secrets.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“Really?” I said, trying to act like we weren’t on a stage for everyone to witness. “I didn’t expect to see you here either, especially when the last time I saw you, you were being hauled away in a police car.”

His expression twisted as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, about that. I suppose I’ve got some explaining to do.”

“Some?” I said. “I’d say you’ve got yourself a mountain range of explaining to do.”

“I know,” he said, his face shadowing. “I know.” Reaching for my shoulder, his fingers twisted in my hair. “Your hair looks pretty.” He pulled gently on the end of it, where it now barely skimmed my shoulders. I was lucky I still had any hair and just as lucky I happened to know the Annie Sullivan of hairstylists, but I missed my long hair every day. Every time I poured too much shampoo into my hand, every time I tried to tie it back into a ponytail, every time I reached for something to twirl around my finger. It was a shallow, even vain thing to mourn for, but I still did.

“Pretty awful,” I replied, trying to tell myself the lightheadedness I was experiencing was due to an empty stomach and not the way his fingers slid through my hair. “But at least I’m not bald.”

Jude laughed, the kind that filled the entire cafeteria. “If anyone could rock a bald head, it would be you, Luce.”

“So when did you get out?” I asked quietly, looking around.

“It’s all right. Everyone already knows,” Jude shouted, “what a good for nothing SON OF A BITCH I AM!” His voice thundered against the cafeteria walls, followed by a chorus of spoons clattering onto trays. “I got out a couple weeks ago,” he said in a normal voice, lifting a shoulder.

I tried not to act thrown. “And you couldn’t call?”

“Of course I could have called, Luce,” Jude said, his voice tight.

“So you didn’t call.”

“Do you need an answer to that or are you just looking for a way to make me feel shittier than I already do?”

“You feel shitty?” I said, stepping forward. “You feel shitty?” I repeated just because it felt good. “I was almost burnt to death by a couple of your acquaintances I never would have had the honor of meeting had it not been for you. My dog was burnt to death. I had two feet of hair go up in flames, was choked, gagged, and dosed in gasoline thanks to your friends. I’m officially an honorary Southpointe High slut because somehow everyone knows I know you, so that must mean I’ve slept with you six ways to Sunday.” I was giving the audience exactly what they wanted, a damn show, and they weren’t missing a hot minute of it.

“There it is, there’s your answer,” Jude replied, his jaw popping. “That’s why I didn’t call. That’s why I didn’t show up on your doorstep the second I was released from juvy like I wanted to. I’m cancer, Luce. And not the kind that you can kill off with radiation. The kind that kills you in the end.” That vulnerability I’d caught glimpses of before was there again, drowning in his eyes.

I was too pissed, or too hurt, to let those eyes affect me. “Well, thanks for nothing. Have a nice life.”

Quite possibly the hardest thing I’d done to date was turn my back on him in front of a wide-eyed cafeteria and walk away.

I didn’t know where to go, but I couldn’t march angry circles around the cafeteria unless I wanted to add mentally unstable to my laundry list of titles. So, swallowing my pride and my opinion that Taylor might be the most manipulative female to have ever walked the earth, I marched my butt right back to her table.

“I didn’t expect to see you again,” Taylor said, crunching into a carrot stick and giving me a look that would have flattened a lesser woman.

“Why’s that?” I said as nonchalantly as I could. “I told you I just wanted to say hey to an old friend.”

“That was one hell of a hey,” Taylor said, all snarky like, before taking a sip of diet soda. The group of girls sitting around her, not nearly as genetically blessed, but still pretty enough to turn their surgically molded noses up at me, snickered into their own cans of diet soda.

“What that was, Taylor,” I said, pulling a chair out and sitting down. I didn’t need an invitation if they weren’t going to issue one. “Was one hell of a goodbye.”

“Doesn’t look that way,” she said, staring over my shoulder.

Turning in my seat, I found Jude standing in the exact place I’d left him, watching me with an intensity I’d never experienced before, staring at me like he didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of him doing so.

Flipping back around, I tried on my glare for size. “Ah, Taylor, I don’t know. I’m sure you of all people know that looks are deceiving.” Pulling an apple from my bag, I sunk my teeth into it and gave her a challenging smile.

“Meaning?” she said, leaning forward.

I was pissing off the wrong person, I knew that, but I’d been through enough in life to recognize petty bullshit when I saw it, and this chick was the queen of petty. “Let’s take you, for example. Someone like you, pretty in a conventional, surgical,”—a combined inhalation spread around the table—“put-together way, can say and use in a sentence words like mitigate”—I was doing cart wheels inside, letting this girl have it—“well, someone like that you wouldn’t expect to be such an insufferable, nasty, b—”

“Hello, ladies,” a newcomer interrupted, nudging a couple of the open-mouthed girls before stopping behind the chair next to me. “This seat taken?”

I shook my head, giving him a once over before pulling a bottle of water from my bag. Smile too bright, streaks too blond, tan too fake, shirt too ironed. Handsome in a very vanilla way and definitely not in a handsome to me way.

“So you must be the girl everyone’s talking about,” he said, taking a seat.

Snickering circled around the table.

His face turned red, realizing his mistake. “I mean, everyone’s talking about in the sense that you’re the new girl,” he clarified, which did nothing more than earn another round of laughter from the table.

“Of course that’s what you meant,” Taylor said under her breath.

He shot her a give-me-a-break look before turning in his seat towards me. “I’m Sawyer,” he said, smiling that artificially white smile. “Sawyer Diamond.”

Oh, man. Even his name was too . . . annoying. If dad found out I went to school with a guy whose last name was Diamond, he’d try to shove an arranged marriage down my throat. His Lucy in the sky . . . a Diamond.

“Lucy,” I said, taking a sip of my water, reminding myself that making rash decisions in the heat of anger was always a bad idea. Next time I found myself marching away from someone, I’d march a million circles before sitting down at this table again.

“Lucy,” he said, pulling a sandwich from his lunch bag. “A pretty name for a pretty girl.”

I was mid-eye roll when I felt an ominous figure hovering above me.

“You’re in my seat, Diamond.”

I didn’t look back. I didn’t need to. I’d recognize that voice if I heard it in my next life too.

“I didn’t realize this seat was spoken for.” Sawyer twisted in his seat, squaring his shoulders.

“Your mistake,” Jude said, gripping the back of Sawyer’s chair. “You make a lot of those, don’t you?”

Sawyer rose to a stand, turning on Jude. He wasn’t quite as tall as him, but close, and he was nowhere near as filled out as Jude.

“Care to expand on that, Ryder?” he said, crossing his arms.

“Not really,” Jude said, staring down at Sawyer purposefully. “You and I both know what I’m talking about.”

I had a premonition I was about to add an all-out cafeteria brawl to my list of things that should only happen on reality television list, and whether or not I was pissed beyond repair at Jude, I couldn’t stand watching him dragged away in cuffs again.

Popping up, I slid in between the two of them. “I’m leaving. You can have my seat if you want.” I didn’t look him in the eyes. I didn’t want a reminder of what I was turning my back on.

Without another word, I stepped away, exiting the cafeteria one beat shy of a jog.

I wasn’t sure what was required for home schooling, but I’d take ten hours a day, seven days a week, with no bathroom or lunch breaks if it meant never returning to this cesspool of suck again.

Dodging around students, I didn’t stop until I found an empty hall. Ducking into the closest locker alcove, I slid into a corner, curling my head into my legs. I wanted to cry so badly right then, I wanted to let every tear I’d held back for years have their moment, but something wouldn’t let them form. Some mental block inside me would not allow the release I needed so badly.

“Dammit,” I muttered, slamming my fist into a locker.

“Luce?”

So not what I needed right now. So just what I needed right now.

Why did he have to be everything I did and everything I didn’t need at any given moment?

“How did you find me?” I said, keeping my head ducked.

“It was easy,” he said, taking a seat beside me. “All I did was follow the cursing.”

I laughed. Hard. I was always emotionally unstable in these kinds of moments when I needed to cry and couldn’t.

I was an emotional wreck next to a man that defined wreck and who, if I let into my life, would turn me into the same. He scooted close against me, hitching his arm around my neck, and pulled me into him. I should have resisted, at least put up some fight given I still knew nothing of Jude’s past, present, and future, but I didn’t.

“So?” he said, his voice muffled by what was left of my hair.

“So,” I said, as a herd of boys shuffled by us. They didn’t say anything while they were in view of Jude, but they were elbowing each other so hard down the hall I could hear it. Sitting here alone, snuggled up to Jude, was likely to do wonders on my pristine reputation.

“Explanation time,” he said, like there wasn’t a choice.

“Explanation time.” Now was better than later, although sooner would have been better than now. Oh well, I’d take what I could get when it came to Jude.

“Ready when you are,” he said.

Then, finding myself swimming in carte blanche in Q and A with Jude, my mind went blank. Like no question or answer would change anything I felt for him. This was an insane thing for a girl to conclude when it came to someone like Jude.