“I know how to take care of wounds,” he replies.

“Okay… good.” Or not good because that means he’s had a lot of them. My heart is beating so loudly I wonder if he can hear it. I hope he can’t.

I’m walking down the hallway so fast I’m scared I’ll trip. I can’t stop myself from going, though. I need out of here before I change my mind. Before I decide to be a normal eighteen-year-old and pretend he’s a normal… however old he is… guy and that nothing matters but hooking up and having fun.

So much more matters than that, and I can’t afford to pretend it doesn’t.

“I’m sorry for your hand,” I say when I get to the door. “And thank you… for helping. For maybe saving my life.”

It feels like a fist slams into my chest at that. Did he save my life? After my family took one away from him?

But then I pause, my hand on the doorknob. Now I can’t seem to leave without asking. I turn, looking over my shoulder. Adrian’s standing in the hallway, like he came partially out to get me but changed his mind.

“Why Casper?” I ask.

“Because you’re the girl with ghosts in her eyes.” That simply, Adrian turns away and walks down the hallway. I’m stumbling out the door, slamming it behind me.

“Because you’re the girl with ghosts in her eyes…” I don’t know why that hits me so hard, but it does. And he’s right.

It’s not until I’m halfway home that I remember I have Adrian’s phone in my purse and his drugs in my trunk.

Chapter Seven

~Adrian~

My hand hurts like hell when I wake up about one in the afternoon. I never sleep this late, even when I’m up half the night, but since I didn’t have my phone, I didn’t have people calling all day waking me up. I realize she gave me space for a second time, only this time I didn’t have to ask for it. This time it was just because she accidentally took my connection to the world.

For a second I let myself remember what it felt like to kiss her. I would have taken her then and there if she hadn’t stopped me. I need to get her ghosts out of my head, but the second she stopped feelin’ it, I did.

When I was eight, I saw my dad force himself on my mom for the first time. It’s the first memory I have of vomiting. Seeing her tears as she couldn’t look me straight in the eye and hearing her say, “It’s okay, baby. Close the door.” But it wasn’t fucking okay. I puked right there in the hallway, pizza from lunch all over my shirt and the floor.

Then I cleaned it up. Scrubbed the carpet while I fought like hell to block out their sounds because I knew if he saw my lunch on the floor, he’d beat my ass. Maybe I should have let him see it. Maybe I deserved an ass-kicking for not making him leave her alone.

Before the memories become too much, I open the drawer beside my bed and pull out the pipe inside. I fill my lungs with smoke before setting it down and wrapping my hand around Ash’s shirt under my pillow.

That’s all I give myself. That one little touch before I’m out of bed, grabbing clothes and heading to the shower. It stings when the hot water hits all the openings in my skin. I close my eyes, imagining the water somehow makes them spread and get deeper until they swallow me whole and all the pain is gone.

But no. I’d never take the easy way out like that.

I turn the water off, wrap my hand, and get dressed. There’s not much time until people probably start showing up at my house, wondering why they can’t get a hold of me and itching to party. The water did nothing to make me feel better. I wish it could absolve me, cleanse me and make it so I never brought Ash in the front yard that day. So that maybe it was me instead of him.

I head over to the little house only a few streets from me. My good hand comes down on the door three separate times before it finally opens to show a little Italian lady named Lettie who’s probably not even five feet tall.

“You’re late,” she says. “Screwing around with some girl when you’re supposed to be workin’?” The old woman winks at me. She has to be at least eighty, but you’d never know it. Her mouth is worse than Colt’s and I’m not sure she isn’t up to something shady, but we help each other out, so it works. She owns my house and about ten other ones in our neighborhood. She has to have money. It’s obvious yet she lives in a house almost as shitty as mine and she pays me more than I deserve for helping her take care of them.

“Nope. That was last night.” I return her wink and she thumps me on the head.

“Asshole,” Lettie grumbles.

“How are you?” I ask her, noticing her limp. She’s tough as hell, but I see her body betraying her. That’s how I ended up helping her. Came over to pay my rent and heard her cursing inside. She’d fallen and fought me like hell when I offered to help her. I did it anyway and since she wouldn’t let me take her to the hospital, I sat with her for three hours and she offered me a job.

“My hip hurts like hell. I’m old. How do you think I am?” She almost trips and I reach out to grab her. She tries to shake me off, but I don’t let go and walk her back to her favorite chair. “What are you doing here? If you’re not going to be on time, what’s the point in coming?”

“Checking on you before I go take care of some shit.”

“I’m good. Don’t need your help today.”

At the same time her little yappy dog comes out barking at me. “Want me to walk him?”

“No.”

“Okay,” I tell her, but I grab the leash anyway. She grumbles the whole time I hook the dog up, but I know she wants me to do it. I still hear her cursing at me when I go out the door. It doesn’t take me long to take care of the dog and then I’m bringing him back and he stalks off the same way Lettie did. She has her arms crossed and won’t look at me.

“Thanks,” she mumbles. I nod, even though she won’t see, and leave.

* * *

Sitting in my car outside of Lettie’s house, I tell myself not to go. I should head home and wait for people to come over and keep living the life I have been, but I can’t.

Instead I turn the key in the ignition and head in the opposite direction. It’s not like I have a choice. The girl tried to stop my bleeding last night. The least I can do for her is make it so she’s not driving around with my shit in her trunk all day. Or doesn’t have my phone going off and driving her crazy.

Luckily, I have my notebook and The Count just in case Colt and his girl aren’t home. It would probably be better if they weren’t; that way I wouldn’t have to try and explain why I’m waiting around to try and find which apartment Delaney lives in.

It doesn’t take me too long to get there. Casper’s car’s parked out front and I wonder if she wakes up with the ghosts still in her eyes. If they always live there or if a new day gives her any reprieve.

My fist slams down on Colt and Cheyenne’s door. “Open up!” It’s crazy how easy it is to be someone else. How easily that mask slips into place without even trying.

Grumbling comes from inside before Colt jerks the door open. His hair’s all messed up and Cheyenne’s lying in the bed, dressed but looking just as worn out as Colt.

Guilt burrows around inside me, finding another place in my insides to make a home. I feel like shit for interrupting them, for slicing through their limited time together and pulling them apart.

I tap the side of my forehead. “What’s the point in knowing shit if you can’t have a little fun with it?”

Cheyenne laughs and sits up. Colt doesn’t look quite as amused but steps aside and lets me in.

“What’s up, man?” I ask.

“Really want me to answer that?” Colt scratches his neck and sits next to Cheyenne on the bed.

“Oh my God. Guys are so gross.”

“No. We’re honest.” I smile before walking to the window. It’s got a bench seat in it and faces toward the parking lot where Casper’s car is.

Cheyenne’s eyes get big when she sees the wrap on my hand. “What happened?”

Colt looks at it, too, before his eyes find me. It’s different than the look his girl gives me. She’s all concern and with Colt I see the worry, rimmed with a dull, sad blue. It’s crazy the things people see if they take the time to look. If they don’t only go skin-deep and try to find their way below the surface. In a lot of ways, Colt’s a prick. People will look at him and that’s all they see.

They don’t know the guy who has more balls than I ever will. The one who didn’t run when his mom was dying. Who stayed and would have burned the whole fucking world to the ground if it would have saved her because she meant more to him than himself or anything else. I never could have stayed and now I just keep running. Maybe not physically anymore, but my mind and heart are backpacking through the darkest corners of the world trying to get farther and farther away.

What would have happened if one, just one fucking teacher or neighbor or anyone would have opened their eyes? Would have looked deep into that quiet kid I used to be to find the war that raged around inside me?

Maybe… just maybe things would have been different.

So that’s what I see when I look at him. That dull, sad blue because I take the time to look below the surface.

“Well?” Cheyenne asks, pulling me out of those thoughts I lose myself in so much.

“Hello, window, meet hand.” I smile before sitting down.

* * *

We hang out for a while before Cheyenne goes into the bathroom to start getting ready to meet her friend Andy. Andy’s her roommate at school, even though Chey really stays with Colt. It works for both of them because it gives Andy time with her girl and Chey time with Colt.

I know they’re both wondering what I’m doing here, but they don’t ask and I don’t offer. Colt has to go to work in a while. Still feels crazy to think those words but he’s got a part-time job and is taking a few classes. His schedule isn’t as intense as it was before because he doesn’t know what he wants to do, which to me means he really does know what he wants—to be happy and not to settle.

Just as Cheyenne’s coming out of the bathroom, I see Casper’s dark hair as she walks toward her car. I push to my feet. Her brother’s motorcycle is here, too, and the last thing I feel like is a run-in with him. “Catch you guys later,” I say as I move to the door.

“Great. Now that Chey’s leaving, you go,” Colt calls from behind me. I know he won’t give it another thought, but I can pretty much promise Cheyenne’s going to wonder what’s up with me running out, so I close the door before she gets a chance to say anything.

I take the stairs two at a time. Casper is walking away from her car. I cross my arms as I walk up to her, smirk, and then keep going so I can lean against her car.

I hear her say, “Oh-kay,” before she turns around and takes the few steps back to me. “You’re here for your stuff, I’m assuming?” She crosses her arms like I do, but her body is stiff, her voice slightly off, and I think she’s trying to sound more indifferent than she really is.

“Maybe.” I shrug. “And maybe finishing what we started this morning?”

She’s wearing makeup, her eyes painted dark and her lips red, but the lips are natural.

“Adrian… that was a mistake. I… there’s so much going on. I just can’t.”

The urge to ask her what’s going on rapidly boils inside me, threatening to spill over, but I clamp the lid down. “Are you sure? It would be fun. Nothing more than that, but a whole lot of fun.”

She shakes her head, looks behind her and then at me again. “Why are you pursuing me? I’m sure there are a hundred other girls out there looking for the kind of fun you want to have.”