“I’m nineteen,” I growled.

Her smile was patronizing. The type of smile you give a kid when they hold up their hand and say, “I’m five now!” I closed my eyes and rested my head against the cold leather couch.

“Yes, you are,” she agreed. “I think you’d be a good group leader too, Demetri.”

Was she high?

“Um, you know I’m kind of in a group, right? As in, my brother and I are in a group, and I’m the lead singer?” I was looking at her like she’d lost her mind.

“Got that.” She winked. “I mean a group leader in group therapy.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “I think I’m a little too messed up in the head to lead anyone right now.”

“Which is why you’re perfect.” She stood and brushed her hands on her skirt. “The rest of the group will relate to you, and I think you’re ready for the next step.” She sighed and looked straight into my eyes. “Demetri, can I be honest with you?”

“Aren’t you always?”

She gave me a hand up. I was towering over her as she slipped off her glasses and wiped them on her shirt. “I don’t think you’re going to keep making progress until you start to heal, and I don’t think you’re going to start healing unless you deal with the grief you went through. I think you need to be around people who understand that grief. Maybe together you guys can work through stuff. Besides, you’re a natural leader, which makes you either the most powerful man in the room or the most dangerous.”

“Why the most dangerous?” I drew my eyebrows together and shoved my hands in my pockets.

Mrs. Murray returned her glasses to her face. “Because, you can lead people to success, or you can bring them down with you.”

“Kind of how Alec brought me down with the whole drugs and alcohol thing?”

She nodded and grimaced. “Yes. Though when you remind me of things like that, you make the mom side of me want to check up on him and Nat.”

“Nat’s fine.” I rolled my eyes.

“Right.” She patted my arm and led me to the door. “Just think about it, okay?” She pushed a small, yellow paper into my hand. Did that mean I had to read it?

I stuffed it into my pocket. “Fine. Hey, is Nat home?”

Mrs. Murray tilted her head. “She didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“One of the shows was canceled, so Nat flew down early to be with Alec.”

“Oh.” A stab of disappointment jammed my chest, irritating the hell out of me.

“Demetri?”

“Yeah?” I turned back around.

“You need to find some friends.”

Find? She made it sound like a Where’s Waldo game. Crap. At this point I’d even settle for Waldo, but there were next to no normal people in this small town. Most of them partied anyway.

How did a person even make friends without partying? I laughed and shrugged her off. “Story of my life. I’ll let you know how the search goes next time I’m out and about, singing my taffy song.”

“Okay.” She smiled warmly, and I left the house.

The warm summer air whipped my hair against my forehead. I pulled out my cell phone and sent a group text to Nat and Alec.

BOTH OF YOU SUCK. I HATE U. O, AND I ALMST CRIED IN MY COUNSELING SESSION. YOUR FAULT. BOTH OF U. P.S.

I TRIED THREE FLAVORS OF TAFFY TODAY. SCORE!

I jumped into my car. Within seconds the phone buzzed. I looked down, and there was a picture of Alec and Nat both making sad faces, and below the picture it said, WE LUV U. STOP BEING A BABY. MAYBE IF U EAT THE ALCOHOL-FLAVORED TAFFY, YOU’LL STOP BEING SUCH A GIRL. KIDDING. STAY CLEAN !

“Right.” I rubbed my eyes and started the engine, then remembered I lived next door. What the heck? Maybe I was losing my mind. The last place I wanted to be was home by myself. Bob might get pissed, considering he’s kind of like my babysitter, but still. I wanted to go. Out.

I put the car into drive and headed toward city center.

Chapter Five

Alyssa

I closed the door to the store and leaned against it. There wasn’t much to clean up, considering we hadn’t been very busy.

After my counseling appointment, I came back to the store to work.

Dad and Mom both decided to go home and have some dinner. But I wasn’t hungry; besides, someone had to stay and lock up.

I went to the counter and put away the free samples. We had just made a new flavor. It was salted caramel popcorn. I had wanted to try it, but the smell kept me away.

Grimacing, I threw it in the trash and gathered up the tossed wrappers. Within a few minutes the back counter was cleared. The sun was beginning to set. I went to the windows to pull the blinds, when a flashy car caught my eye.

What the heck was Demetri doing back at work?

I knew his schedule. Okay, so I hated myself that I knew his schedule. But he only worked until four every day. It was already past six. I was still trying to decide how pathetic it was that, after only a few days, I knew exactly when the guy arrived and left work. Clearly, I needed to find a hobby or something.

Like a peeping tom, I drew the blinds farthest from the door then peeked between them. Demetri’s car was parked by the taffy store, but he was nowhere to be seen.

I squinted and opened the blinds wider.

Weird. Did he go inside?

I was just getting ready to open the door and step outside when a hand hit the window in front of me.

With a curse, I fell back to the ground taking an entire row of taffy with me.

Lucky for me, the blinds to the door weren’t closed, meaning Demetri, the bastard, saw everything.

Though to be fair, he did look a bit shocked as he ran into the store and helped me to my feet.

“Trying to kill me?” I brushed his hands away, but he kept prodding at me as if I was some sort of science experiment gone bad, so I shoved him. It just seemed like it was the right thing to do.

And honestly, it felt good to hit him. Maybe I was packing a lot of rage for the rock star. But nobody should have it as easy as he did.

Good looking? Rich? All he had to do was smile, and he had the world at his feet. Maybe it was jealousy that while I was stuck at my parents’ store, he had the whole world as his oyster, yet chose to get high and nearly kill himself instead of doing something with his life.

“I’m so sorry.” Demetri dropped to the floor and began putting the taffy back into the buckets.

“You’re sorry you scared me? Sorry you nearly gave me a heart attack? Or sorry you caused me to bruise my butt?”

Demetri looked up into my eyes with his smug smile. “Your butt, huh? Want me to take a look? Wouldn’t want any permanent damage.”

“No thanks.” I rolled my eyes and knelt down next to him.

“You can go. I’ve got this.”

“This…” He pointed to the mess at our knees. “Is all my fault. Honestly, I was just trying to scare you, not kill you or destroy your taffy. Hey, what flavor is this?”

“ADD much?” I snatched the taffy from his hand.

“ADD? Hey, that’s like our band name, AD2…” He grabbed another piece of taffy from the floor. “How about this one? What’s this flavor?”

“Oh my gosh! Just leave!” I snatched the taffy from his hand.

He shrugged. “I have nowhere to go, and this is going to take you at least another hour. Plus, it’s the least I can do after nearly killing you at the ripe old age of…” His voice trailed off as he looked at me with seductive eyes.

I felt myself flush as I looked away. “Eighteen. I’m eighteen.”

“Me too.”

“Congratulations, you’ve found common ground. Now we can get married.”

“Ah, the other one.” He snapped his fingers in the air and grinned.

“Huh?”

He unwrapped a piece of taffy. “The other sarcastic client Mrs. Murray had today. Thanks for that, by the way. By the time I got to her she had already had her fill of sarcasm for the day. And I ate an entire bowl of popcorn to keep myself from spilling all my feelings.”

“An entire bowl?” I divided the taffy into piles, so I could put them in the right buckets. “And you’re still hungry?” I pointed to the taffy he was unwrapping.

“Oh this.” He put the trash in his pocket and popped the taffy into his mouth. “I told my friend, Nat, that I’d stay clean, right?”

I nodded.

“So, I have this thing. Every day I stay clean, I try at least three new taffy flavors. Gives me something to look forward to and all that.”

“That’s depressing.”

He laughed. “If you only knew.” His eyes sparkled just a bit before he scratched his forehead and swallowed the taffy. “So what flavor did I just eat?”

“I don’t know, give me the wrapper.”

He pulled it out of his pocket and placed it in my hand. I purposefully ignored the fact that his touch lingered longer than necessary and lifted the wrapper to my nose. “Blueberry pancakes.”

“Whoa. Taffy super powers. Nice.”

I laughed. “To be fair, you have the taffy jingle super powers, so we’re kind of even.”

He smiled back at me. My heart nearly stopped. His deep-set dimples brought attention to his mouth, and when I looked at his mouth, I felt things I hadn’t felt since Brady. I cleared my throat and continued putting taffy into piles.

Demetri sighed. “Right, so I’ll just help you sort all this.”

We worked in silence. Demetri ate two more pieces of taffy, each time asking me to please sniff the wrapper, because it was the most exciting thing he’d seen in weeks.

It was hard not to laugh around him.

“That it?” He picked up the last bucket and shoved it onto the rack.

“Yup.” I looked around the store.

“Can I ask you something?” Demetri looked at me then down at his feet. Was he nervous?

Amused, I crossed my arms. “You may ask me something, yes.”

“Promise not to laugh?”

“No.”

“Promise not to feel sorry for me.”

At that I did laugh. “Easy. I’d never feel sorry for a celebrity who owned a car more expensive than my house, but since it seems to piss you off more, yeah, I feel real sorry for you.”

His shoulders seemed to sag a bit. “Fine, at least promise you won’t blog about what I ask you.”

“That, I can promise,” I agreed. “That is, if you promise to leave.”

He rolled his eyes and ignored my jab. “What’s it like to have friends? Actual friends. The types you can tell anything to, the ones that you do stupid shit with and stay up all night with just shooting the breeze?”

That was not what I was expecting him to ask. Stunned, I could only stare at him as I told my mouth to work and form words.

He cursed. “Forget it.”

“No, wait.” I grabbed him before he could leave. My hand was on his thickly muscled forearm. I swallowed the dryness in my throat as I looked into his eyes. I expected to see some sort of smugness or at least the familiar cockiness, but all I saw was pain.