All I can keep picturing is myself at eight years old, gasping for air, wanting to be able to breathe, but it seeming so hard. I looked a lot like Violet did when she collapsed to the ground and I felt that way when I took off for that strip club yesterday. We’re both stuck in the same situation, not having anywhere to go, and it really doesn’t make any sense why I’d try to help her when I can’t even get myself out of the situation. Yet right at the last second, I straighten the wheel back out and keep heading straight, toward my dorm. I don’t know why I do it, other than there’s this part of me that wants to help her—wants to understand her.

She doesn’t ask me where I’m going and it doesn’t seem to faze her when I pull up to my dorm building and park the truck near the entrance doors. There are only three cars left in the parking lot and a couple sitting in the shade under the trees.

I turn off the engine and wait for her to say something, but she continues to stare out the window. She’s making this difficult. I’m not used to being the person who works to open closed doors. I’m the one who wants to hold them shut.

“So you can crash in my dorm until I have to leave tomorrow,” I tell her, my eyes widening at my words as I slip the keys out of the ignition. I pause, get myself together, before I look at her. “You’re welcome.”

That gets her to turn her head toward me. Her green eyes burn and I lean back in the seat. “I’m not going to f**k you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she says bluntly.

I tuck the keys into my pocket. “It’s not even close to what I’m thinking.” Well, it wasn’t until she brought it up.

“Then what are you thinking?” Some of the harshness evaporates as she studies me.

“I honestly have no idea. You’ve seriously got my head f**ked up and all over the place,” I admit.

She seems pleased over this. “Why?”

“Because I have no idea what you’re thinking and that’s not normal for me.”

“What are you? A mind reader?” she asks, sarcasm dripping from her voice.

“No, just observant.”

“Well, maybe you can’t tell what I’m thinking because I don’t have a whole lot going on inside my head.”

I almost smile as I recline against the door and rest my elbows on the windowsill. “I don’t think that’s even close to the truth. I think you have a lot going on inside your head. More than most people, which is why you had a panic attack.”

“It wasn’t a panic attack,” she contends, resting back against her door. “I just got caught up in the excitement.”

I touch my split lip with my fingers and wince from the sting. “You think watching two guys beat the shit out of each other is exciting?”

“Maybe.” She pulls a regretful face as she admits this, bringing her legs up on the seat. “Does that make you afraid of me?” she wonders.

I’d laugh at her, but I am kind of afraid of her. Afraid of how she makes me feel, the way I get swept up with her, the fact I’m thinking about her and not just myself, something I promised myself I’d never do in order to keep control over my own life. Me and me alone. “So Kayden moved out.” I switch topics to avoid the pull I’m feeling toward her, the needy ache, to kiss her, feel her, be with her. Complicated, I remind myself. “You can crash on his bed, but tomorrow I can’t help you.”

She sits up, slides her knees toward her chest, and wraps her arms around them, hugging them against her as she rests her chin on her knees. She looks so vulnerable and helpless, the armor she wears chipping away. I can’t seem to think about anything else but how easy it’d be to hit on her, play her until she gives in to me. I’d lay her underneath me and f**k her over and over again until I got this stupid obsession I have for her out of me.

“Where are you living for the summer?” she asks, slamming me away from my thoughts. “Are you staying here or going home or something?”

I lean away from the door and open it up without answering her, ready to escape the conversation. Then I hurry and hop out of the truck and head up the sidewalk, hearing the truck door open.

She quickly rounds the front of my truck, skittering in front of me with her arms out to the side of her. “That’s not fair,” she says with a frown. “You know my sad little story, at least part of it, and it’s only fair I get to know yours.”

“The only thing I know is that you were going to live with some old pervert who likes to hit you and now you have no place to live,” I clarify and dodge around her, heading for the entrance doors.

She walks across the parking lot beside me. “Do you have someplace to live?”

I rake my hand over the top of my head. “Does it really matter?”

“Maybe.”

“That seems like your go-to answer.” I bite my tongue, deciding whether to shout at her to back the f**k off or run like hell. “Don’t flip this to being about me.”

“Why?” she says, spinning around and walking backwards in front of me. “You know I’m homeless, so why’s it a big deal if I know you are?”

I stop at the curb, feeling something force its way up inside me. I’ve never been asked questions like this. People are usually too afraid of me and that’s the way I like it. And if it was any other girl I’d probably think she was just trying to get an invite home with me, but I’m starting to understand Violet enough to know that she’s probably getting a kick out of being a pain in the ass.

“You’re right.” I throw my arms up in the air exasperatedly. “I have no f**king place to live.” I breathe heavily. “There, are you happy?”

She shakes her head, pieces of her hair blowing in the warm breeze as she looks over at a couple laughing beneath the trees. “No, not really.”

“Me neither.” I glance around the campus yard, scanning the trees, the few cars in the parking lot, my boots, looking anywhere but at her, otherwise she’ll pull me into her, like she’s been doing since she made me care enough to follow her to her car after she kicked me in the face.

“So now what do we do?” Her eyelids flutter against the sunlight as I glance up.

“You’re asking me what we should do?” I arch an eyebrow at her. “Really?”

She looks around defenselessly and I wish she’d bring back that detached attitude so I wouldn’t feel such a need to help her. “I’m running out of ideas, but if I have to I’ll sleep on the streets,” she says.

“You’re not going to sleep on the streets… we’ll figure something out.” I close my eyes when I realize I said “we’ll,” like we’re a couple, which we’re not. We’re just two strangers who keep crossing paths and can’t seem to get rid of each other. “If we have to, we can sleep in my truck.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen how well that goes. You’re a serious seat hog.” Humor laces her voice.

“You can sleep sitting up,” I retort, opening my eyes. “Or take the back.”

“Wow, what a gentleman,” she jokes with a small smile and the tension around us crumbles.

“I’m not trying to be gentleman,” I say, fighting a smile. “And I’ll never try to be one.”

“Good, because I don’t want you to try. Guys who claim to be gentlemen are full of shit.”

“Okay…” I say. “I’m glad you don’t want me to be a gentleman.”

She grins and it reaches her eyes and reduces the hideous swelling in her cheek. It must hurt like hell. “I think I won that one.”

I can’t help but smile and it feels strange and unwanted, yet it’s there. “Were we playing a game?”

“Aren’t we always?” she counters, plucking strands of her hair out of her mouth as the wind blows through her hair.

Again, she throws me out of my element, but instead of continuing to lose whatever game we’re playing, I surrender. “We should go get something to eat,” I tell her. “Because I have absolutely nothing in my room but a bottle of vodka and a lemon.” I glance down at her hands, the palms covered in dry blood. “And we need to pick up some peroxide and Band-Aids.”

She folds her fingers into her palm as she chews on her lip. “Are you giving up our game?”

“What game?” I fake forgetfulness. “I’m just hungry. It’s like one o’clock and I haven’t had anything to eat. And the peroxide is for you—your hands look like shit.”

She looks down at her palms, cut up from the rocks, blood oozing out, and then back up at me. “Haven’t had your hangover food yet, huh?”

“Yeah, and I’m dying. I need to get some tacos in me.”

“Tacos? I thought you said you didn’t like hamburger?”

“Tacos are about ground beef. Not hamburger.”

“Potato, potato. It’s pretty much the same.”

“It is not,” I argue as I turn around and we start back toward the truck. “It’s completely different.”

“Maybe you should go get cleaned up first.” She runs her thumb down the side of my lip and the connection sends uninvited emotions coursing through my body. I have to clench my hands into fists, just to keep myself from grabbing her and crashing her lips against mine. She withdraws her hand and wipes her thumb and her finger together. “You have blood on your face and clothes.”

I shrug, smothering the desire to jerk her hand back to me, rip her clothes off and bend her over the hood out of my truck. “I’m fine with looking like a man who just beat the shit out of someone, but if you’re too embarrassed to be seen with me, you can sit in the truck.”

“ ‘A man who just beat the shit out of someone’?” she muses, stopping at the passenger door of my truck, her hand hovering above the handle of the car door. “Or a guy who just got his ass kicked?”

I can’t tell if she’s toying with me or not, but it’s both irritating me and exciting me in ways I didn’t know were possible. Half the damn time I have no f**king clue whether she’s being serious or not. Being a control freak, this should send me running, yet it’s having the opposite effect when it comes to her.

I decide to give her a taste of her own intense medicine, throw her off a little, regain the upper hand and hopefully scare her away. “Are you saying that I’m not tough?” I position myself in front of her, trying to get her to back up into the truck, but she stays still. “Or that I’m not a man?”

“I’m not saying either,” she says with a fervent look in her eyes that nearly sends me soaring through the roof. The more intense I get the more excited she gets, which makes me want to get even more intense. “Although, I’m guessing that despite that fact, you’re still about to show me that you’re both of those things.”

“Is that what you want me to do?” My voice comes out husky. This isn’t working out how I want, my plan of keeping her away backfiring on me. I take a step forward and then another, until I’m pretty much stepping on her feet. She still doesn’t back up and it frustrates me even more. “For me to show you how tough I am or how much of a man I am?”

She presses her lips together, her gaze unwavering, eyelashes fluttering. “I don’t want anything from you, Luke. I’m just simply saying what’s in my head. And the longer you’re around me, the more you’ll realize this.”

The longer I’m around her? Fuck. I reach a hand around the side of her and grab the door handle of the truck. “So you don’t think I’m tough?” I ask.

“I think you want to show me how tough you are and how much of a man you can be,” she says.

I put my other arm on the other side of her, so she’s pinned between my arms. Most girls in this position would back up into the door, but she stands firm, refusing to let me control her like I desperately want to.

“And how would I show you?” I drop my voice to a husky growl, intentionally this time.

“I’m sure you have your ways,” she replies, her gaze flickering at my mouth as I lean forward and our bodies press together.

It takes every ounce of strength not to seize hold of her h*ps and gently shove her back. Instead, I lean farther in, our lips inching closer. “I do have my ways…” I lick my lips and feel the sting of the cut. It reminds me of everything I just witnessed; with her, with me. I know if I kiss her it’ll more than likely lead to me jerking the door open and throwing her down on the truck seat, right here in broad daylight. I wouldn’t care who saw us. I never do. I’d just want to get this God damn need to regain control out of me, the need she’s putting in me. But then what would happen after it was all over? Would we go get tacos and come back to my dorm and hang out? Yeah, that doesn’t seem at all possible, but neither does screwing her and then bailing. I’m too far into her and I’m not sure how to get away or if I can get away at this point.

I clench my hands into fists as I fight the urge to shut my eyes and kiss her until she can barely breathe. I feel weak the moment I flip up that handle and start to pull the door open because I’m choosing to feel the vile, pathetic feelings of my past—how I did things I didn’t want to do, how my mother messed with my head, how I had no control over my life. I was a puppet. I was weak. I don’t want to be that person ever again.

I wait for Violet to move out of the way so I can get the door open, but she doesn’t budge and I’m the one who ends up stepping back, losing again. It’s an unsettling place I’ve arrived at and I don’t know what to do with it beside drink myself into a stupor and hammer my fist through anything that gets in my way. My body is actually shaking as my mind craves the burning, blissful taste of alcohol.