I just want to yell. I’m mad.

  She approaches me. “What happens after we get evidence on Reeves?”

  “We go back to our lives.”

  “Wrong,” she fires back. “You go to college and a string of friends and girlfriends born under lucky stars just like you, where you don’t need to be reminded that people like me are one town away. I go back to nothing. Not a damn thing changes for me.”

  What does that mean? I take a step, closing the distance. “What did you do?”

  “I don’t have to explain anything.”

  “What did you do?” I yell.

  She gets in my face, growling, “I looked out for me.”

  Goddammit. She has her own agenda, and we were never a team. I should’ve known. Another mistake.

  “I’m not letting you drag me down with you.” I glare at her. “I’m sick of your shit!”

  Mischief hits her eyes, and I swear I see a smile. She leaves, stalking down the hallway, and I almost go after her, but I’m not entirely sure what I want to do. Kick her out? No. This argument is my fault. I’m taking my anger out on her, and I already know I’ll have to apologize.

  I take in the popcorn all over the floor. I shouldn’t have gone to see Schuyler. My sex life is the last thing I should be worried about right now.

  Aro walks back into the room, and I turn, facing her. She carries a black duffle bag, and it’s like the one I threw over the cliff.

  She opens it, showing me stacks of cash, and I dart my eyes up to her.

  “Really?” I ask. Now I am a little pissed.

  That’s where she was when Kade and I got to the park. She was off stashing this.

  “You’re so careless,” I laugh, but I’m not amused. “Money comes and money goes. You can’t hide this from them! Stop thinking about tomorrow and think about what happens in five years! This isn’t the most important thing!”

  “Spoken like someone who’s never had to worry about not having it!” she shouts back. “That cash will feed my family for the next five years, asshole.”

  I rear back, about to lose my mind with her. “Like they’re not going to figure out that they’re the ones paying for your shopping sprees and pizza deliveries!”

  Is she really that dumb? She’s not old enough to get her brother and sister away from her mom, and her mom will fucking talk when she sees Aro bringing over groceries every week. When she sees her paying for toys and clothes and settling the electricity bill. They’re going to figure it out.

  I open the bag and look inside at the stacks of hundreds, gauging it’s probably no more than fifty thousand. Five years? She’ll blow through this in six months.

  “You brought this shit in here?” I ask, but it’s an accusation. “What happens if I get caught with this? What happens if they come in here and see this and assume we were both in on this? How much fucking trouble are we already in, Aro, and you go and do this? Don’t you get it?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, Pirate.” She taunts me. “I’ll take the rap for everything. This is all my fault anyway, right? I don’t have a future anyway, right?”

  She steels her defiant chin, but I see the tears she tries to hold back.

  I didn’t say that.

  Did I?

  I didn’t mean it if I did. And it hits me how much I want her to have a future. Everything she does—good or bad—is never for herself. I see that. She has good intentions.

  “It was always over for me.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “Since the moment they were born. All I can do is what I can do.” She turns, sliding down the island until she’s sitting against it on the floor. “For as long as possible.”

  A tear spills, but she’s trying so hard not to crack.

  “What happens after we get the evidence?” she drones on. “What happens if you get caught with the money? What happens, what happens…” She laughs to herself, shaking her head. “It all happens.” And she looks up at me. “Don’t you get it? I don’t care what happens next week. They need to eat today.”

  She drops her gaze again, resting her arms on her bent-up knees, and I grind my teeth together, feeling the sting in my own eyes. My throat grows tight, like needles are poking me, and I thought I understood, but I don’t.

  I’ll never know the things she knows.

  I lower my body, squatting in front of her, and I want to touch her face.

  But I don’t. Instead, I choke out, “What happens when I don’t know where you are?”

  She sits there, her face barely visible behind her hair, but I see more tears spill.

  “I like you,” I tell her. “Everything has changed for me.”

  I can’t go back to my friends and live like none of this ever happened. And my heart hurts, thinking about her out there, living as if I never existed. Will she forget me?

  “What would’ve happened if you’d needed me last night?” I ask.

  She can’t just go out alone. If they’d caught her, I would’ve never found her. She’d be gone. At the bottom of the lake, or in a lonely lump of wet earth out in the middle of the woods that no one ever found, because no one would look for her.

  I don’t stop myself. I take her face and bow down, pressing my forehead to hers. “I won’t stop you from doing anything, no matter how much I hate it,” I tell her. “But you have to tell me what you’re doing.”

  Her body shakes a little, but I don’t hear any sounds as she cries.

  “I can’t help you if I can’t find you.”

  I blink away the burn in my eyes. I’ll be damned if I let that piece of shit erase her like she doesn’t matter, or use her like she’s a commodity. I don’t know if we’ll win, but I can make sure she’s not alone anymore.

  I dive in, tucking her head into my neck, and she starts crying harder. But she wraps her arms around my waist, hanging on, and I tighten my hold.

  We stay like that for only a minute before she calms again, and I have a feeling those tears were a long time coming.

  She sniffles, pulling back and wiping her face. “Those windows aren’t big enough,” she says, tipping her head back. “You need a skylight in here.”

  “Why?”

  “I like to look up,” she says. “When things hurt.”

  The stars. Astronomy.

  I break into a smile and stand up, an idea popping into my head.

  I hold out my hand. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?” She takes it, and I pull her up to her feet.

  Keeping her hand in mine, I pull her after me. “This is worth the risk.”

  “What is this place?” she asks.

  I feel my way up to the control booth and turn on the system, an atmospheric sound drifting loudly out of the speakers. A tinkling starts next, and I turn down the volume, loading the screens.

  “Hawke?”

  “Stay there,” I shout down to her.

  She stands in the middle of the dark aisle, and I see the domed ceiling fade from black to purples and blues, the background music beginning.

  The theater lights up, casting a glow over her, and I look down, seeing her eyes tilt up and her mouth fall open.

  Leaving the booth, I walk down and lead her into the chairs, both of us taking a seat.

  But I don’t think she knows I’m here anymore. She gazes up at the fake sky, stars you can only see out in the middle of nowhere, lighting up the night. The image rotates in a circle, but it feels like we’re the ones moving, and she watches. Her mouth sits open a little, and I don’t think she blinks.

  “Have you ever been to a planetarium?” I ask her.

  She shakes her head, and I smile, because she looks like everything just changed for her. Like she’s starving and there’s a feast.

  “Look.” She shoots up in her seat, pointing. “That’s Sirius. It’s the brightest star.”

  “Right, the Dog Star.”

  She twists around, taking everything in. “Yeah, because it’s part of Canis Major. We can only see it right before dawn, but you can see the Milky Way really well if you get far enough away from all the light pollution.”

  She rises, looking at the screens behind her, too impatient to wait for them to rotate to us.

  I laugh quietly.

  “And Betelguese.” She points. “Orion will be over our heads in a few months.” She points again. “And there’s Mars. It’s visible a lot. Can you imagine what it’s like there?”

  “Cold.”

  She sits back down. “Quiet,” she says instead. “Mountains of rock and sand dunes, winds and storms and ice…” She continues staring up at the sky. “None of it we can touch, just look at.”

  She smiles, and my chest tightens a little. She looks so amazing right now. Peaceful. I suddenly wish I could put that skylight in the hideout.

  “There are so many stars,” she whispers. “So many suns. And so many with their own solar systems like ours.”

  I pull my eyes away and slouch in my seat, resting my head on the back of the chair. “What’s your favorite part of astronomy?”

  She follows, both of us relaxing and looking up as we leave planet Earth and enter an interstellar cloud.

  “I like the theory stuff,” she says. “Black holes and worm holes and all the crazy things physicists are afraid we won’t understand.”

  “Why do you like it so much?”

  “Astronomy or theoretical physics?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  She shrugs. “Possibility. Perspective.” She sits up again, tipping her head back and smiling. “It’s kind of comforting to realize how truly insignificant you are.”

  I watch her.

  She goes on. “I see the star, but the star will never see me. It’ll still be there long after me. Through millions of me’s.” She pauses and then whispers, “Life goes on, no matter if I pay the bills or not.”

  I ache, looking at her, because she’s right and I hate it. Life goes on.

  So, we live. As hard as we can for as long as we can, and we feel everything, because if it doesn’t kill us, something will.

  But she’s too busy fighting for things I’ve never had to fight for.

  And I hate that.

  My throat is tight, and I clear it before taking a breath. “Should we go?”

  She jerks her eyes to me. “Already?”

  I laugh again, because she looks devastated.

  “Live on other planets, I mean?” I tell her. “Instead of fixing this one?”

  She turns back to the screens. “We can do both,” she replies. “But we’ll definitely have to leave. Having all our eggs in one basket here on Earth didn’t work out well for the dinosaurs, you know?”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  We watch the film, traveling through space and time, galaxies and the birth of our own, and I feel it down to my bones. How lucky we are to be here.

  “You are significant,” I say quietly, still staring up at the screen. “Scientists say that nearly all the atoms in our bodies were made in a star. And many of those atoms have traveled through several supernovas.” I pause, seeing her look over at me out of the corner of my eye. “You weren’t born here. You were born billions of years ago, Aro. You’re stardust.” I look over, meeting her eyes. “The stars don’t need to see you. They know you.”

  Aro

  The tears streaming down my face mix with the spray from the shower, and I lean my forehead into my arm against the wall as the water warms my back.

  What is he doing to me?

  Making me think I’m special. That I’m important. That kind of thinking is a disease that slowly kills people who are tricked into believing they have a chance. You can’t give hope to someone who can’t afford it.

  But I can’t stop the sobs. They wrack my body harder, because I want to believe him. I want to think that I’m more than this and that anything is possible. That high school dropouts can all of a sudden have completely different lives, but that shit is for the movies.

  Hope breeds disappointment, and disappointment eats you.

  I don’t want to want things I’ll probably never have. It’ll hurt too much. I don’t want to know about the things missing from my life. I’m happier that way.

  I wipe the water off my face, feeling the ache inside me. The ache from the damage he’d done just by telling me that I’m stardust. Such a sweet, stupid boy.

  I shut off the water and wrap the towel around me, stepping out from behind the tiled wall. I dry my feet on the mat he has there and step toward the sink, the mirror foggy from the steam.

  I stare at the counter. “He’s sweet,” I murmur to myself.

  He’s self-righteous, a little uppity, condescending, and his playlist could use a serious update, but…

  He’s responsible. Honest, compassionate, smart, driven, and he pays attention. He sees things and takes the time to process them.

  And he’s sincere. He may have been telling me things I shouldn’t hear in that planetarium, but he meant every word. He didn’t like me thinking badly of myself.

  He’s a good man. He won’t hurt anyone on purpose, and he won’t make kids and abandon them. The other men I’ve met in my life—would-be-fathers and classmates and neighborhood assholes—flash in my mind, and none of them are worth a fraction of him.

  Whoever he finally falls in love with will have the best.

  But I frown, thinking about him finding love and knowing how hard someone like him can fall. She better deserve him. He would never hit a girl, but I’d look forward to doing it for him if she hurt him.

  I dry off and pull on a pair of the new underwear his cousin brought. I’m glad she didn’t get cocky and bring me thongs or some shit. Just straight black bikini briefs that actually look great with my skin tone. Not that I worried about that, but I’ll have to thank her. I’ll take it out of what she owes me. I should’ve just taken the money she offered, but I still intend to collect.

  I pull on a white T-shirt she loaned me and grab the pair of Hawke’s pajama pants I stole, but before I slide a leg in, I stare at them and then look at my still barely visible reflection in the mirror.

  I’d hurt anyone who hurt him. It’s the only thing I’m good for, but I’m good at it.

  He needs to toughen up, though. Women are going to roll all over him if he doesn’t stop worrying so much. He needs to learn. To stop overwhelming himself with these panics and just feel it. To know what it’s like to want nothing else but her.

  And maybe I want that, too. For just one thing to feel good in my life.

  I set the pants down on the bathroom counter, pull my hair out of its clip, and smooth it down around me. It’s still a mess, and I don’t really care.

  I head out into the hallway, turn left, and enter the great room. The scent of popcorn lingers in the kitchen, and I see him, slouched on the couch with his back to me, playing a video game.

  Above the screen, high on the wall, the painted words reach out and grab me by the neck.

  Let us live…

  I’m a blip in the universe.

  But I’m here.

  We’re here.

  For now.

  “Hawke?” I say.

  “Yeah?” He battles hordes of enemies for supremacy of some old, Gothic city.

  I inch closer, stopping at the island behind him. “You said you never feel at home with them. With the girls you date, you never feel safe, right?”

  His character stops on screen just as a beast charges him.

  My heart pounds, but I force out the whisper. “Do you…feel safe with me?”

  Hawke

  Huh?

  I turn my head, my fingers paused on the controller as she rounds the sofa and comes into view.

  My stomach drops, and my chest caves. Um…

  Her dark hair spills around her, mostly swept over one shoulder and hanging over her right breast, and I drop my eyes, seeing black underwear, no jeans, and the tight, white shirt that doesn’t cover much below her belly button. Glowing skin, big, brown eyes, lips pink and clean of lipstick or gloss.

  “It looked like it didn’t go well with your ex today,” she says, “so I was thinking…” She looks down, struggling to breathe. “Do you… I mean, would you like to…touch me?”

  The controller slips out of my hand and into my lap, but I don’t move. I can’t speak.

  Is she…?

  Blood rushes between my legs, and she climbs over the arm of the couch and sinks into the seat. “I realize I’m not blonde. I’m not content on the sidelines, and I don’t fucking giggle,” she tells me, “but I’ve got girl parts and I’m sleeping down the hall from you, so it makes it easy.”

  “I…” I don’t know what to say.

  I mean, in a different situation, I might like to touch her. Sure. But I’m pretty sure this is a bad idea.

  “No sex,” she says, turning toward me. “No pressure. We’re not dating. That’s not what I mean.”

  I listen.

  “You don’t have to worry about impressing me,” she goes on. “And I don’t have to worry about impressing you. We can just…practice.”

  “Do you need practice?”

  I feel like she’s doing this because she feels sorry for me. She’s trying to help, but I don’t want to use her.

  And I definitely don’t want pity.

  But she tells me, “I don’t really like sex.”

  I narrow my eyes.

  “I want to like it,” she says. “I want someone who explores. Someone who lets me explore. Someone who’s patient. And nice.”

  Has she never had that? How have people treated her? I want to ask, but I’m not sure I want to know about some guy not treating her right.

  “I just want to touch you.” She stares off, not looking up at me. “And maybe see if I like it.”

  Is she lying? I feel like she’s thinking she’ll act like she’s the one who needs help when she’s actually just handling me.

  But I don’t have time to voice my doubts before she’s reaching over and picking up the controller off my groin and tossing it onto the ottoman.

  Rising up, she swings a leg over my lap, and I rear back, sucking in a breath as she straddles me.

  Oh, shit.

  She places her hands on my shoulders. “Turn off the game,” she says. “Turn on some music.”

 

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