“Edie talked?” I asked.

Dean laughed. “Talked? She sang like a fucking canary. She gave us so much information about how abusive Jordan was toward his son and her. Yeah, Edie padded us real good with all the info we needed. Why do you think Amanda gave you a bulletproof case? Edie told us about the abuse, the neglect, the bruising grips. Then she mentioned something about her dad constantly making her mother tea, and the addict in me got inspired and put two and two together. He drugged her mother. She just didn’t fucking realize it.”

The tea. All the info I got had been through Amanda. But a lot of what she’d given me was patched up from the cloths my friends and Edie had produced.

“Edie also hooked us up with the woman helping her with her brother’s case—your little friend, Sonya.” Dean’s lips curved into a knowing smile. We were all sitting in front of the pool, but our bodies were tilted to one another. A huge stone lifted from my heart, and I began to breathe again, coughing out the sweet, rancid smoke inside my lungs.

“How the fuck did Edie have Sonya’s contact info?” I gritted my teeth.

“Sonya is her best friend’s mother,” Vicious supplied, opening his arms in a check-out-this-shit-show gesture.

My jaw locked. “Bane?”

“Five points to the man with the sixteen-inch dick.” Dean clapped.

“That motherfucker.” Jaime laughed. “You should have seen the stare down between him and Vicious. Vicious straight up asked him if he was his Made-in-China version.”

The four of us shared a low chuckle before Vicious arched an eyebrow. “Hey, asshole?” he called to me from his lounger.

I looked up from my joint. “Yeah?”

“Do you miss her?”

Vicious was not the kind of asshole to pillow talk. Not with his wife, and sure as hell not with his friends, so I knew he had a motive. The lie danced on my tongue. No matter how big and tall and old and rich you are, when asked about the girl who broke your heart into a thousand pieces, you’ll always be the thirteen-year-old kid who still didn’t know what to do with his hard dick and out-of-control hormones.

I shrugged.

“Answer with words, Mute,” he pressed.

All eyes were on me. I looked away to the pool, squinting. “She’s in my fucking blood,” I admitted.

Vicious got up, shoved his hand into his pocket, and threw something small in my direction. I caught it, opening my palm and staring at it in disbelief.

I looked back up. He shook his head.

“She never gave this to Jordan, Trent. She couldn’t do it.”

Dean leaned toward me from his lounger, nudging his shoulder against mine. “Did you hear that, fuckface? You finally got someone to love your cold ass. You need to put that shit on lockdown because she is still young and naïve enough to like you.”

I clutched the flash drive in my fist. I swore it smelled like her.

Later that night, I sat in my car and stared at it, thinking it could be so easy. I could ignore it. I could move forward with my life. We wouldn’t have to deal with how I’d locked her father up in jail, and the judgmental stares, and the uncomfortable questions, and the fucking gossip.

We were already apart, and we were surviving just fine.

The flash drive dug into the skin of my palm until I bled. Then, and only then, I started the car and drove away.

THE WORST PARTS WERE THE nights.

When I couldn’t feel his body next to mine as I lay on Bane’s sofa. The memory of him was a weapon against me. His lips brushing the back of my neck like a lion that’s about to dig into his mate and fuck her raw. His hands running along my arms like he was undressing me from all my hang-ups, worries, and dark thoughts. His warm, slow breaths against my mouth. His pulse beating against mine. Was life worth living without these moments?

Every time I asked myself this question, I pushed the thought away and turned to the other side of the couch, fighting either the yellow itchy fabric of the back of the sofa, or squinting away from the light of the TV in Bane’s cabin, which was directly in front of me. Bane had been great about giving me a place to stay without asking when I was going to move, or to chip in on any costs for groceries. He did not, however, stop for a second his wild, rough life. Not that I’d expected him to, but with Mom in rehab and my father in jail, I really had nowhere to go. Mom’s lawyer offered to rent me a room in a hotel, but that was just more money I couldn’t afford—and who in the hell wanted to be alone in my situation? I needed a distraction. Human contact.